Study finds digital habits contribute to climate change

While scrolling through social media or streaming that latest show might seem like a harmless pastime, a new study has suggested our digital habits carry a hidden environmental cost. Roughly 40 per cent of the per capita carbon budget or the average amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) produced per person to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius can be traced back to digital content consumption, the research suggested. 

Global users of web surfing, social media, video and music streaming and video conferencing emit 229 kilogrammes of CO2-equivalent per year, corresponding to approximately 3-4 per cent of the per capita anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the study published in journal Nature Communications highlighted.

“We emphasise the crucial role of decarbonising electricity production in mitigating the climate impacts of digital content consumption,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

About 60 per cent of the global population has internet access, leading to a global data traffic of 3.4 zettabytes (ZB) in 2021. The segment has seen a 440 per cent growth since 2021. A ZB is equal to one trillion bytes. 

Previous studies found that global data centres (process and store data) and data transmission networks (transfer data between data centres and users) collectively account for 2-3 per cent of global electricity consumption. 

However, there is a lack of bottom-up analysis of internet consumption considering the users’ consumption patterns of different digital contents.

So, the team quantified the environmental impacts of digital content consumption from all the necessary infrastructure linked to the consumption patterns of an average user. 

They linked the user consumption patterns to the natural resources required and emissions generated throughout the life cycle of the internet network components, from raw material extraction to manufacturing, distribution, operation and end-of-life management. 

The impacts on the per capita share of the Earth’s carrying capacity were assessed by including 16 indicators related to climate change, nutrients, air pollution, toxicity and resource use.

They found that the global average consumption of web surfing, social media, video and music streaming and video conferencing could account for around 55 per cent of the per capita carrying capacity for mineral and metal resource use, 20 per cent for freshwater eutrophication and over 10 per cent for particulate matter, ecotoxicity and fossil resources use. 

“Our findings highlight the importance of not overlooking efforts to mitigate the impacts of the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to avoid exacerbating further the pressure on the finite Earth’s carrying capacity,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

But if the world rapidly decarbonises its electricity sector, it could reduce the climate change impacts of digital content consumption to just 12 per cent of the per capita carrying capacity by 2030. 

The researchers noted that ICT companies are primarily focusing on deploying renewable energies. There is also an increased corporate momentum towards carbon dioxide removal, which includes technologies, practices, and approaches that remove and durably store CO2 from the atmosphere.

However, these solutions cannot address the environmental impacts associated with the extraction and processing of raw materials used in electronic devices. The authors urged producers to increase the lifetime of electronic devices. Holding producers responsible for the entire lifetime of their products, they argued, may further encourage the durability of electronic devices.