Minor Digitalization and Environment: Friend or Foe?

Contents

• Session 1 - The Anthropocentric age
  • Carbon emission origin
  • Geographic and sector breakdown
  • The Paris agreement
  • Hands-on on Kaya equation: understanding the key levers on worldwide CO2 emissions. 
• Session 2 - Questioning Digitalization
  • The importance of tech for human societies
  • Energy for the dummies
  • GHG protocol and reporting by companies 
  • Case study: Netflix and GHG emissions of video streaming 
• Session 3 - Measuring direct and indirect impact of ICT (Information and Communication Technology)
  • Production vs. Usage
  • Ecological impact (minerals, air, water)
  • Life Cycle Assessment
  • Green IT and IT for Green
  • Case study: smartphone
• Session 4 - Lab on Power and Energy of Computers and network workloads
  • Graded lab
• Session 5 - The case of Data Centers
  • Local and national impact, e.g. land use, energy and power
  • How much does it cost to power a data center with renewable energy
  • Load adaptation to energy availability and main grid: video transcoding and AI
• Session 6 - Green Algorithm Design
  • Types of algorithms
  • Application to mobile networks, landline networks and data centers
• Session 7 - Law, Environment and Digital world
  • Disruptive Technology and their ecological impact
  • Compliance with Law
• Session 8 - MCQ and oral presentation of selected research articles and open debate led by students 

• Clément Courageux-Sudan, Associate professor, I3S laboratory. Field expertise: Networking and sustainable computing
• Luc Deneire, Full professor, i3S laboratory. Field expertise: Networking and telecommunication
• Frédéric Giroire, DR CNRS; Inria/i3S. Field expertise: Optimization, Analysis of algorithms, with applications to telecommunications and networking
• Mélanie Olivari, PhD candidate, GREDEG. Field expertise: Law
• Guillaume Urvoy-Keller, Full professor, i3S laboratory. Field expertise: Networking and sustainable computing

• Students must be able to install and run softwares on their computers.

• Udit Gupta, Young Geun Kim, Sylvia Lee, Jordan Tse, Hsien-Hsin S. Lee, Gu-Yeon Wei, David Brooks, Carole-Jean Wu: Chasing Carbon: The Elusive Environmental Footprint of Computing. IEEE Micro 42(4): 37-47 (2022)
• Netflix’s 2022 ESG report, available here: https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_downloads/2023/06/29/Netflix_2022-ESG-Report-FINAL.pdf
• Malmodin, Jens, et al. "ICT sector electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions–2020 outcome." Telecommunications Policy 48.3 (2024): 102701.
• Vlad C. Coroama, et al. : Digital Rebound - Why Digitalization Will not Redeem us our Environmental Sins. ICT4S 2019
• Jan Bieser and Lorenz Hilty, “Assessing Indirect Environmental Effects of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) : A Systematic Literature Review”, Sustainability 2018
• Horner, Nathaniel C., Arman Shehabi, and Inês L. Azevedo. "Known unknowns: indirect energy effects of information and communication technology." Environmental Research Letters 11.10 (2016): 103001.
• Gnibga, Wedan Emmanuel, Anne Blavette, and Anne-Cécile Orgerie.”Renewable energy in data centers: the dilemma of electrical grid dependency and autonomy costs.” IEEE transactions on sustainable computing 9.3 (2023): 315-328.
• Anna Vandi, Ramon Aparicio-Pardo Guillaume Urvoy-Keller, Green Data Centers as Grid-Forming Support Assets. In IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2026).
• FUN MOOC (FR) https://www.fun-mooc.fr/fr/cours/impacts-environnementaux-du-numerique/ 

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