Abstract
This paper considers key issues surrounding energy consumption by information and communication technologies (ICT), which has been steadily growing and is now attaining approximately 10% of the worldwide electricity consumption with a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The perimeter of ICT systems is discussed, and the role of the subsystems that compose ICT is considered. Data from recent years is used to understand how each of these sub-systems contribute to ICT's energy consumption. The quantitatively demonstrated positive correlation between the penetration of ICT in the world's different economies and the same economies' contributions to undesirable greenhouse gas emissions is also discussed. The paper also examines how emerging technologies such as 5G, AI, edge computing, and cryptocurrencies are contributing to the worldwide increase in electricity consumption by ICT, despite the increases in ICT efficiency, in terms of energy consumed per bit processed, stored, or transmitted. The measurement of specific ICT systems' electricity consumption is also addressed, and the manner in which this consumption can be minimized in a specific edge computing context is discussed.
- Ferreboeuf, H. et al. Lean ICT: Towards digital sobriety. The Shift Project. March 2019; https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/lean-ict-our-new-report.Google Scholar
- Gelenbe, E. and Caseau, Y. The impact of information technology on energy consumption and carbon emissions. ACM Ubiquity 15, June (2015) Google ScholarDigital Library
- IEA. Data centers and data transmission networks. IEA, Paris. July 11, 2023; https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks#overview.Google Scholar
- GSMA. Energy efficiency: An overview. 2019.Google Scholar
- ACM TechBrief: Computing and Climate Change, ACM Technology Policy Council (Issue 1, November 2021).Google Scholar
- Fagas, G., Gallagher, J. P., Gammaitoni, L. and Paul, J. P. Energy challenges for ICT. In ICT - Energy Concepts for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability. IntechOpen. 2017.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N., Smith, S., and Koomey, J. Recalibrating global data center energy-use estimates. Science 367, 6481 (2020), 984--986.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Pernici, B. et al. What IS can do for environmental sustainability: A report from CAiSE'11 Panel on Green and Sustainable IS. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 30, 1 (2012).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Enerdata. Electricity domestic consumption. World Energy & Climate Statistics - Yearbook 2023.Google Scholar
- Gelenbe, E. Energy consumption by ICT: Facts and trends. Keynote paper. IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society 2022 (ISTAS22). Virtual conference.Google Scholar
- Boiardi, S., Capone, A., and Sansò, B. Planning for energy-aware wireless networks. IEEE Communications Magazine 52, 2 (2014), 156--162. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Fröhlich, P., Gelenbe, E., Fiołka, J., Checinski, J., Nowak, M., and Filus, Z. Smart SDN management of fog services to optimize QoS and energy. Sensors 21, 9 (2021).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Abdelrahman, O. H. and Gelenbe, E. Signalling storms in 3G mobile networks. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). IEEE, 2014, 1017--1022. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ericsson. Global electricity usage of ICT network operators --- an extensive data set. Research paper. 2019.Google Scholar
- Bech, H. P. And the winners remain China and India. The Bech Index 2020. TBK Publishing. May 2020. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Zhao, X. and Zhang, X. Research on the evaluation and regional differences in carbon emissions efficiency of cultural and related manufacturing industries in China's Yangtze River basin. Sustainability 14, 17 (2022).Google Scholar
- As interest in cryptocurrencies and NFTs continues to grow, so too does the discussion around its energy consumption. But just how big is Bitcoin's energy bill? MoneySuperMarket.com. Sept. 16, 2022.Google Scholar
- Strubell, E., Ganesh, A., and McCallum, A. Energy and policy considerations for deep learning in NLP. In Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Florence, Italy. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2019, 3645--3650. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gelenbe, E., Domanska, J., Fröhlich, P. , Nowak, M. P., and Nowak, S. Self-aware networks that optimize security, QoS, and energy. Proceedings of the IEEE 108, 7 (2020), 1150--1167. Google ScholarCross Ref
- International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS). Towards low-GHG emissions from energy use in selected sectors. CAETS 2022 Energy report. Feb. 27, 2023.Google Scholar
- Gelenbe, E. Energy packet networks: ICT based energy allocation and storage. In Rodrigues, J. J. P. C., Zhou, L., Chen, M., and Kailas, A. (eds.) Green Communications and Networking. GreeNets 2011. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 51. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012.Google Scholar
- Gelenbe, E. and Ceran, E. T. Energy packet networks with energy harvesting. IEEE Access vol. 4 (2018), 1321--1331.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Gelenbe, E. G-networks with instantaneous customer movement. Journal of Applied Probability 30, 3, (1993), 748.Google ScholarCross Ref
Recommendations
Trends in worldwide ICT electricity consumption from 2007 to 2012
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) devices and services are becoming more and more widespread in all aspects of human life. Following an increased worldwide focus on the environmental impacts of energy consumption in general, there is also a ...
The centrality of electricity to ICT use in low-income countries
A growing body of literature that extols the ability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance well-being in developing countries tends to focus on long run institutional and socio-economic changes as key to driving Internet ...
Clustering Residential Electricity Consumption: A Case Study
EEET '18: Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Electronics and Electrical Engineering TechnologyElectricity is a crucial need of any modern society for improved lifestyle. Rwanda is a fast growing economy country, with some electricity access rolling out programmes and the country is trying its best to improve the national power grid ...
Comments