What is the environmental impact of digital technology?

Digital uses are an integral part of our daily lives. However, their environmental impact is often underestimated. Paradoxically, the more we "dematerialize", the more materials we use..

Did you know that in 24 hours, digital represents : 

• 281 billion emails sent
• 1.4 billion connections on social networks
• 3.45 million smartphones purchased
• 840.000 tons of CO₂ for online videos alone, which corresponds to about 3% of global CO₂ emissions.

The footprint of digital activities in terms of greenhouse gas emissions is on a rapid and unsustainable growth trajectory. This footprint has exceeded that of aviation for several years and within two years is expected to reach that of global road traffic.

Globally, in 2019, digital accounts for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions (for comparison, the aviation sector accounts for 2-3%), 10% of our electricity consumption and 0.2% of our water consumption.

Added to this are other resource issues in systems that are becoming more complex, such as rare metals. The majority of the digital footprint is due to the production and renewal of devices and, compared to the infrastructure (servers...), users are responsible for the majority of this impact.

A French Shift project report, published in 2018, indicates, among other things, that the direct energy footprint of manufacturing and using equipment is growing by 9% per year. It points to the multiplication of frequently renewed digital devices (hardware) and the explosion of video uses (data traffic) as the main factors in this energy inflation.

The concrete ecological consequences of digital technology, both in the design of tools and in their use in our daily lives, are complex to measure and identify. The first challenge is to make the digital transition compatible with the constraints of planetary resources.