In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement[1], 194 countries plus the EU committed to reducing their emissions, working together to adapt to the impacts of climate change, and calling on governments to strengthen their commitments over time.
According to the EC Rolling Plan for ICT Standardization 2024 (section on ICT environmental impact [2]), ICT is currently one of the fastest growing greenhouse gas-emitting sectors, with an estimated footprint of between 2.1% to 3.9% of total emissions, and e-waste as one of the faster-growing waste categories. At the same time, ICT technologies and digitalisation can help to reduce around 15-20% of total greenhouse gas emissions. They can support the achievement of several targets established under the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The EU has addressed this paradox with several initiatives, and the 2024 plan includes, among others, the following requested actions:
- Definition of Global KPIs for Energy Management of Fixed and Mobile access and Core networks
- Guidelines for the use of Global KPIs for Data Centres
- Guidelines for the definition of Green Data Services
- Definition and guidelines of KPIs for ICT networks
- SDOs to identify needs and develop standards to support UN SDGs
Among those initiatives, the most global and relevant one has been the European Green Deal, a package of policy initiatives aiming to set the EU on the path to a green transition, with the ultimate goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. This package was launched by the EC in 2019 and includes the European climate law (by which the EU and its member states committed to cutting net greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels), the EU strategy on adaptation to climate change, the Circular economy action plan, and the “just transition mechanism” (financial and technical support to the regions most affected by the move towards a low-carbon economy, aimed to mobilise at least 55 B€ over the period 2021-2027).
This challenge is also addressed in other regulations, like “Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation”[3] and “Regulation on environmental, social and governance (ESG)”[4] agreed but pending for approval by EU Council and Parliament.
As part of the European Green Deal Green Deal distributed 1 B€ as part of the H2020 programme, selecting 73 projects[5] [6] to contribute to EU response to the climate crisis and the protection of EU ecosystems and biodiversity.
The Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) on Cloud Infrastructure and Services[7] aims to develop interoperable and accessible data processing technologies, enabling a cloud to edge continuum, and plans to contribute to the objective of achieving 10,000 climate-neutral highly secure edge nodes deployed across Europe by 2030.
Additionally, over 35% of Horizon Europe’s spending addresses climate change. As part of this programme, and focusing more on data and AI-driven technologies, the call HORIZON-CL4-2021-DATA-01-01 on “Technologies and solutions for compliance, privacy preservation, green and responsible data operations”[8] selected 5 projects aimed to “improve the efficiency and the use of trustworthy digital technologies to address the requirements of citizens, companies and administrations/public organisations on privacy and commercial and administrative confidentiality as well as responsible, fair and environmentally friendly (e.g., in terms of energy/carbon/material footprint) data operations in data spaces, across the data life cycle” [9] [10] [11]. Additionally, projects selected under other calls in Horizon Europe Cluster 4 are also contributing to this objective [12] [13].
To complement the above, as part of data spaces funded under the Digital Europe Programme, the preparatory action for Green Deal Data Space [14] has delivered a roadmap for implementing and deploying the Green Deal Data Space. This infrastructure will allow data providers and initiatives to openly share their data to tackle climate change in a multidisciplinary manner.
Also driven by the EC and focused on HPC, the EuroHPC JU (see BDVA theme 3 for more info) strives to procure green supercomputers, with many of its supercomputers ranking highly on the Green500 list (the 500 most powerful supercomputers according to energy-efficiency). JUPITER has made its first appearance in the rankings, with a first module named JEDI (JUPITER Exascale Development Instrument) taking the first place in the Green 500 list[15] [16] [17]. As part of the EuroHPC JU, it is worth mentioning the projects selected under the topic “Energy Efficient Technologies in HPC (HORIZON-EUROHPC-JU-2023-ENERGY-04)”[18], with the objective of improving energy efficiency at increased overall throughput and utilisation of supercomputers, as well as the production of reliable common metrics to measure the efficiency of supercomputers to enable fine grained comparison between supercomputers and data centres to optimise operations.
Finally, some European initiatives are also contributing to addressing the impact and benefits of digital technologies on climate change. Among others, it is worth mentioning the European Green Digital Coalition[19], a group of companies committed to supporting the Green and Digital Transformation of the EU, and Digital4Planet[20], which brings together digital innovators, researchers, public authorities, civil society, and citizens at work to ensure digital transformation and sustainability go hand in hand.
On top of these activities and instruments, nowadays, the leading general trends on this topic can be summarised as follows:
- The circular economy aims at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources through principles like reuse, repair, refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling. ICT technologies are crucial in facilitating the transition to a circular economy. It includes, among others, concepts like resource efficiency, product lifecycle management, supply chain transparency and traceability, circular design and innovation, and consumer engagement and education. In this regard, the recently published Digital Product Passport legislation requires nearly all products sold in the EU to have a digital product passport (DPP) in place (products with a high environmental impact and potential for improvement will be prioritised) and is expected to be key on this approach.
- Sustainable resource management is using resources to meet current needs without compromising the future of the planet. ICT technologies can support efficiency, monitoring, and sustainability of resource management practices.
- Carbon Neutrality: the Paris Agreement included working towards a net zero emissions scenario (emissions to be reduced by 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050), which means cutting carbon emissions to a small amount of residual emissions that nature can absorb and durably store. This goal requires a transformation of how we produce, consume and move towards a complete change of mindset that affects most aspects of our lives.
- One health approach[21]: during the last years, and mainly due to the COVID crisis, we have becoming increasingly aware that people’s health is closely connected to the health of animals and the environment. This approach proposes a unified view to cover all those 3 aspects and the multidisciplinary involvement of many experts in different fields.
- Data for sustainability[22]: by leveraging data, organisations and governments can make informed decisions, optimise resource use, reduce waste, and monitor environmental impact. This specific trend was highlighted and further explored through a dedicated session[23] during the Data Week 2024 part two, held in Leuven and organised by BDVA.
[1] https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement
[2] https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/rolling-plan-ict-standardisation/ict-environmental-impact-rp2024
[3] https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/sustainable-products/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en
[4] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024/02/05/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-ratings-council-and-parliament-reach-agreement/
[5] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/environment-and-climate/european-green-deal_en
[6] https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/projects/success-stories/all/green-deal
[7] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ipcei-next-generation-cloud-infrastructure-and-services-boost-europes-digital-decade
[8] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl4-2021-data-01-01
[9] Glaciation: Green responsibLe privACy preservIng dAta operaTIONs
[10] Mobispaces: New data spaces for green mobility
[11] TEADAL: Trustworthy, Energy-Aware federated DAta Lakes along the computing continuum
[12] Waterverse: Water Data Management Ecosystem for Water Data Spaces
[13] Graph-Massivizer: Extreme and Sustainable Graph Processing for Urgent Societal Challenges in Europe
[14] https://www.greatproject.eu/
[15] https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/global-standing-eurohpc-supercomputers-three-systems-top-10-and-two-new-entries-2024-05-13_en
[16] https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/2024/06/
[17] The No. 1 spot on the GREEN500 was claimed by JEDI – JUPITER Exascale Development Instrument, a new system from EuroHPC/FZJ in Germany. Taking the No. 190 spot on the TOP500, JEDI achieved an energy efficiency rating of 72.73 GFlops/Watt while producing an HPL score of 4.5 PFlop/s. JEDI is a BullSequana XH3000 machine with a Grace Hopper Superchip 72C. It has 19,584 total cores.
[18] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-eurohpc-ju-2023-energy-04-01
[19] https://www.greendigitalcoalition.eu/
[20] https://www.digital4planet.org/
[21] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/one-health
[22] https://www.geospatialworld.net/article/data-revolution-for-sustainable-world/
[23] https://data-week.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Data-for-Sustainability_.pdf