By Giulio Boccaletti, Markus Löffler, and Jeremy M. Oppenheim
This article was originally published by The McKinsey Quarterly, October 2008.
The rapidly growing carbon footprint associated with information and communications technologies, including laptops and PCs, data centers and computing networks, mobile phones, and telecommunications networks, could make them among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters by 2020. However, our research also suggests that there are opportunities to use these technologies to make the world economy more energy and carbon efficient. An analysis of five groups of abatement opportunities finds that such technologies could help to eliminate 7.8 metric gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually by 2020 (Exhibit 1)-equivalent to 15 percent of global emissions today and five times more than our estimate of the emissions from these technologies in 2020.
To calculate their carbon footprint-what it was in 2002 and 2007, and what it will be in 2020-we looked at the level of emissions associated with their use of energy and with their manufacture and distribution. We used standard industry estimates for growth in the number of computers and peripherals, data centers, and telecommunications networks and devices. Then we estimated the power usage of today's and tomorrow's installed base of these technologies, factoring in improvements in energy efficiency that could appear during the next few years, as well as current and future assumptions about fluctuating levels of power usage throughout the day. Finally, we assessed the emissions from the energy consumption of information and communications technologies (adjusting for regional variations) and added assessments of the emissions from their manufacture, transport, and disposal.
These technologies now account for 0.86 metric gigatons of emissions a year, or about 2 percent of the emissions added to the atmosphere globally. The world's increasing need for computation, data storage, and communications is driving rapid growth in the emissions associated with such technologies. By 2020, they will account for about 3 percent of all emissions: 1.54 metric gigatons, or twice what the United Kingdom produces today. What's more, this figure assumes that significant efforts will be made to improve the energy efficiency of devices, components, other equipment, and data centers. Although we looked into the most promising measures now on the drawing board to cut energy consumption during their manufacture and use, these technologies will proliferate so rapidly as to dwarf even the gains anticipated from these efforts.
The adoption and use of information and communications technologies in China, India, and other developing economies will account for much of this growth (Exhibit 2). Emissions from the manufacture and use of PCs alone will double over the next 12 years as middle-class buyers in emerging economies go digital. Similarly, worldwide growth in the use of mobile phones will triple their carbon footprint by 2020, in large part because of their consumption of silicon and rare metals. But the fastest-increasing contributor to emissions will be growth in the number and size of data centers, whose carbon footprint will rise more than fivefold between 2002 and 2020 as organizations in all sectors add servers to meet rising demand-even as companies and governments alike attempt to become more energy efficient.
