Today, Europe faces two major challenges: the green transition and the digital transition. Although these two movements may be considered incompatible, particularly due to the environmental impact of increasing data usage, they are nonetheless interdependent and one cannot succeed without the other. Marie Laure Codaccioni, Deputy Unit Director of mc2i, gives us her analysis.
Marie Laure Codaccioni, Deputy Head of Unit · mc2i
In fact, digitization offers new possibilities for remote monitoring of air and water pollution or consumption of energy and natural resources. The Green Pact for Europe – or Green Deal – wants to make Europe the first CO2-neutral continent and offers sustainability solutions based on the use of data. Today, several questions arise: The rise of Big Data requires storage capacities and thus an increasing use of energy. Are there really concrete solutions to solve this problem? More generally, where does Europe stand in terms of green digitalisation, are its ambitions realistic? How do companies integrate these European impulses?
Concrete solutions to limit energy consumption
Today represent data centers 3% of global electricity generation and 17% of total digital energy consumption. To combat this energy consumption, companies and cities have developed solutions, such as the data parks developed by the City of Stockholm, that integrate big data structures into their urban eco-design. Companies are also becoming increasingly interested in their energy production by making employees aware of the duplication of backup copies. This makes it possible to significantly reduce the power consumption of the clouds of certain actors while increasing their development capacity.
To accelerate this awareness and initiatives, as part of the Green Deal project, Europe has committed to finding data-driven sustainability solutions, such as The climate society, CGIAR and the Hunger early warning system propose to make production and consumption sustainable, efficient and without wasting food resources. Otherwise, the use of weather forecasts by combining predictive analytics and machine learning with satellite and historical weather data can also optimize energy production in existing solar, wind and hydroelectric power plants. Data on the smart diversion of excess energy into the smart grid energy system can also be collected.
Finally, in the transport sector, big data makes it possible to manage congestion in trains and stations using people flow technologies or to provide real-time estimates that enable commuters to make optimal travel decisions based on congestion, arrival and departure times routes. This is one of the strategic goals of SNCF DSI.
Are these ambitions realistic?
The ambitions appear difficult to achieve as they assume that in just 28 years (by 2050) Europe will invent and deploy a zero-carbon economy, “which is an industrial and historic revolution in that the previous two industrial revolutions lasted 250 years to invent the carbon economy. “precise Pascal Canfin, President of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.
The European Green Digital Coalition (EGDC) was founded by 26 CEOs of ICT companies who a Statement in support of the EU’s green and digital transformation on the occasion of Digital Day 2021. The statement builds on the conclusions of the December 2020 Council of the EU on digitization for the sake of the environment and recognizes that the ICT sector is a key player in the fight against climate change. By signing the declaration, they formed the EGDC and committed to act on behalf of their companies in the following areas:
- invest in the development and deployment of green digital solutions with significant energy and material efficiencies that generate a net positive impact across a variety of sectors
- Developing methods and tools to measure the net environmental and climate impacts of green digital technologies by collaborating with relevant NGOs and expert organizations
- create recommendations and guidelines together with representatives from other sectors for a green digital transformation of these sectors, which benefits the environment, society and the economy.