BARCELONA, Spain — At the U.N. Climate Change talks in Barcelona this week, industry experts are calling on policymakers to find ways to spur investments in information technologies that can help cut companies' and countries' greenhouse gas emissions.
The talks in Barcelona run through November 6, and are the last official meetings before the Copenhagen climate summit in December. At those talks, a delegation from the International Telecommunications Union is calling on policymakers to recognize IT's unique role in the climate challenge.
Not only does the world's computer infrastructure currently generate roughly 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but technology can help companies and organizations that "look at tackling the wider 98 percent" of emissions, according to a panel convened one year ago on reducing the IT industry's impacts.
One member of the ITU's team in Barcelona, David Eurin, the head of energy consulting at Analysys Mason, stressed the importance of including IT's impacts on that remaining 98 percent in achieving climate goals.
"The only way developed and developing countries will manage to balance long-term economic growth and sustainability is to invest a significant portion of today’s public- and private-sector budgets in advanced technologies and, in particular, ICT systems," Eurin said in a statement.
The case of the United Kingdom's government IT practices offers a recent example of both sides of IT's impacts: this summer, the government announced that it was struggling to meet its emissions-reductions targets in part because increased IT usage was driving up emissions from energy generation. But in a report on the "Greening of Government ICT" published the following month, the government reported that simple projects had saved millions in energy costs, and cut associated emissions by as much as 20 percent per year.
The ITU has been developing an IT footprinting standard, and we reported last month that the standard would be released in advance of the Copenhagen talks. The group is hosting an event tomorrow to highlight the ways that ICT can ease climate impacts across the world.