Unclouded
In the public debate on global warming and climate policies, an ever-important aspect is often overlooked: that of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the ICT - the sector of information and communication technologies. While many studies are depicting an increasingly alarming picture of its carbon footprint (which, globally, may have already topped the 4%), public opinion seems to focus exclusively on the environmental costs of the rare materials feeding its supply chain. Considering that most of the emissions come – indirectly – from every day, consumer-based usage, such tendency poses a series of timely concerns. As current technologies consolidate and new ones systemically come to the forefront, a committed set of initiatives seems urgently necessary to elevate the public’s understanding of the issue.
Visit Unclouded’s new website for more information.
Goals
Unclouded aims precisely at becoming a catalyst for revealing and disseminating knowledge about ICT pollution, researching, unravelling and translating existing data and making them accessible to the public at the intersection of the artistic and scientific language. Through the production of events and sharable content, it seeks to reach and reverberate within a wide general public, acting as a bridge between the academic realm and all of us - everyday internet users. Taking awareness-building as a first step, it aims to further shape and eventually remould current approaches, as well as seep into other areas of knowledge exchange with a special focus on culture.
Acting preemptively and proactively, Unclouded essentially strives to prevent the definitive and irreversible crystallisation of pollutive patterns on a societal level.
Context
There is broad scientific consensus regarding the considerable impact of the ICT sector on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions yearly released in the atmosphere. Whereas digital technologies play a role in curbing other sectors’ emissions, ICT’s own negative output seems to overtake these benefits by far. According to a number of studies, not only its carbon footprint might already measure up to 2.1 Gt (4% of the anthropogenic global emissions), but it is also growing by roughly 9% a year. This means that, in the light of the future systematisation of game-changing technologies such as 5G and IoT (Internet of things), we cannot but expect its carbon footprint to exponentially increase—and, according to some estimate, to reach 3.6 Gt (8% of current anthropogenic global emissions) by 2025.
Companies and policymakers world-wide have been aware of the issue for years. The European Union Commission, for instance, formally acknowledged it already in 2009, and started allocating funds in favour of a shared methodology for assessing both ICT’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. A number of civil societies initiatives have also been born, thanks to both public and private fundings.
However, these efforts have almost exclusively concentrated on the corporate and industrial level. There thus remains a pervasive lack of awareness in the public opinion, whereby virtually everyone who isn’t directly involved in ICT tends to completely misrepresent its pollutive side. In other words, there is a widespread misconception and tendency to associate ICT’s pollution only to that coming from the production of the so-called digital devices. In our minds, we entirely forgo that which is due to the use of these very devices, which, in truth, happens to be the greatest part (55%) of ICT’s carbon footprint.
Moreover, worryingly enough, it is us, everyday end consumers, who are using these technologies the most intensively, considering that (according to some reliable analytics such as those of CISCO) only about 20% of the data traffic is business or enterprise generated.
Unclouded aims precisely at this general, non-specialised audience, and tries to establish an effective working method for ensuring that essential information regarding these vital topics don’t go broadly unnoticed any longer.
A Digital Burden: on ICT's carbon footprint and the urgency for saliance
As much as ethereal in appearance, digital technologies do produce their own—substantial and ever-increasing—share of anthropogenic carbon footprint. While its exact size is still widely debated in academia, its growth seems fundamentally intertwined with both the frequency and nature of users’ digital actions.
Considering a set of alarming evolutionary trends, as well as a near-absolute lack of general knowledge, it is worth advocating for initiatives that aim to heighten the behavioural salience of these issue on a granular, every-day level.