Dematerialization

Explore the Mind Map to learn about Dematerialization!

One important feature of ICT regarding to sustainable development is dematerialization. The SMART 2020 report published by The Climate Group in 2008 postulates a “strong emphasis on the significant opportunities offered by dematerialisation” and states in this context: “Our study indicates that using technology to dematerialise the way we work and operate across public and private sectors could deliver a reduction of 500 MtCO2e in 2020 - the equivalent of the total ICT footprint in 2002, or just under the emissions of the UK in 2007.” [1] A graphical illustration of this estimation is given in figure 4.2.
This indicates that the potential of emissions savings through dematerialization is estimated to be quite large. It could also be a main concept to arrange further growth and development with a lower intensity of environmental impact. This implies a higher level of efficiency achieved by learning by experience and a declining consumption of goods and energy because of dematerialization [2].

Figure 4.2: The potential impact of dematerialization [1] 

When dealing with dematerialization enabled by ICT, it has to be distinguished between products and routes of transport, although the borders between these categories are not completely sharp. For example the e-initiatives of governments (e-government) could be classified by both taxa, because they dematerialize the use of paper, as well as routes of transport, since citizens save travel ways to governmental departments by using online services. In this taxonomy the approach of the e-government is classified as dematerializing routes of transport, because the paperless office is considered as a separate concept, which is obviously a product-dematerializing concept.

Although the ability to replace physical products and processes is assumed to be one of the big environmental benefits of ICT, there is some kind of uncertainty regarding to the real potential of dematerialization in the future. The success of every kind of technology strongly depends on adoption, which cannot be predicted in preposition [1]. As an example, the idea of the paperless office goes back to the age of early personal computers in the 1970’s [3], but its distribution is still in development due to difficulties in adoption. With the introduction of electronic mail the usage of paper was expected to decline, but users tended to print their mails at the office, so that paper consumption actually increased [4]. Therefore the future impact of dematerialization will among other things depend on the inertia of consumer habits and the incentives for adoption for businesses.

References

[1] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.

[2] J.H. Ausubel and P.E. Waggoner. Dematerialization: Variety, caution, and persistence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), vol. 105 no. 35:12774–12779, 2008.

[3] Business Week. The office of the future. Business Week, June 1975.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc20080526_547942.htm 
Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[4] A. J. Sellen and R. H. R. Harper. The myth of the paperless office. MIT Press, 2003.

Dematerialization by E-Products and E-Services

When it comes to emissions savings in business and industry, a significant role of ICT is achieving dematerialization, which is characterized by replacing physical high-carbon products by virtual equivalents [1]. This concept was issued before related to the transport, as well as to the buildings sector as a consequence of using ICT in these areas. In this context, concepts like videoconferencing and telecommuting where discussed. In industry, dematerialization is represented by the reduction of resource use, including raw materials and energy, at every stage of the product life-cycle. This leads to emissions and resource savings in production, reductions “of energy and material inputs” while utilization, “and of wastes at the disposal stage” [2].
When physical products are replaced by non-material substitutes the effect on resource use is obvious. This case is an example of absolute dematerialization. On the other hand there is also relative dematerialization, which is characterized by reduced material and energy usage “per unit of economic value produced” [2]. An example of relative dematerialization is a declining consumption of energy or raw-materials per Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a measure of the value of all produced products of a country within a defined time period [3]. In other words, this means producing the same value with less resources needed.
So, beside the replacement of physical goods by virtual substitutes and reductions in the usage of large physical systems or infrastructures (e.g. videoconferencing instead of traveling to meetings), dematerialization also means producing less energy and material intense products. Such products are still physical, but may be lighter or smaller, or are manufactured in a more efficient way [2].
Dematerialization is often mentioned in the context of e-commerce. Trading via electronic networks allows processing business data electronically and enables to sell virtual products. There are several examples of dematerializing products, services and processes in commerce, like e-ticketing, e-banking, e-books or digital music [2].

E-ticketing is an approach to replace paper tickets by electronic tickets. It can be applied to all kinds of tickets or reservations for events, as well as tickets for public transport or flights. E-tickets, which are completely electronic, have to be distinguished from online tickets, that are purchased via the Internet and printed by the customer. The concept of e-ticketing usually differs from traditional tickets: Customers register online to an event or a flight and get access to the service by confirming their identity locally. The advantages that e-tickets provide to users are an increased safety not to lose tickets, as well as faster access to tickets, without having to visit ticket shops physically. Threats of e-ticketing systems are the possibility of system failures and user errors, as well as ticket fraud. Due to electronic distribution ticket agencies experience higher efficiency in order processing. A main application area of e-ticketing is the airline industry. A survey by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported that in 2007 88 percent of global passengers purchased electronic tickets instead of paper tickets [2]. Airline companies realize costs reductions by selling electronic tickets, which enables them to offer tickets at lower prices. The price reduction is accompanied by increased demand for airline tickets, which also means increased emissions from airplanes. This rebound endangers potential environmental benefits from e-ticketing, like reductions of travel routes, because tickets are purchased from home or mobile devices. The dematerialization of paper tickets is also considered to help slow down deforestation.

E-banking denotes banking services, that can be accessed electronically. Banking institutions enable their customers to consult their banking accounts via the Internet, providing almost all functionalities usually offered in branches, as well as offering additional services, for example real-time share trading. Also invoicing is done electronically, including billing and payment. In 2005, between 10 and 15 percent of all retail banking transactions in Europe where done online [2]. Data of the year 2010 shows the share of Internet users, who regularly (each month) access their banking accounts online (cf. figure 1). The diagram illustrates the obvious correlation of economic development and electronic banking usage. The highest rate was determined in Canada, where about 65 percent of Internet users use online banking services each month [4]. In the USA this rate is 45 percent, which indicates, that even within Internet users, more than half of them prefer conventional offline banking, representing that e-banking is still far from dominating banking services.

Figure 1: TOP 10 Countries by Online Banking Penetration (% of Internet users, age 15+) [4]

One of the environmental benefits of e-banking are reductions of paper production and usage. This is caused paperless transactions and digital account statements, but can be offset by users printing their transaction confirmations or similar. Additional potential carbon savings could arise from reduced travel to bank branches. On the other hand the IT infrastructure needed for e-banking accounts for a certain amount of energy consumption and carbon emissions. At current state, it is unlikely, that e-banking already has positive environmental impact, but there is a certain potential of reductions in resource use. If transactions and banking services were done exclusively electronic, this would account for significant reductions in building costs, due to no longer needed branches. Today in fact, e-banking services supplement traditional services and therefore rather cause additional negative environmental impact, than reducing it [5].

Digital music is distributed as electronic music files, rather than on physical data carriers. These files can be purchased and downloaded from servers via the Internet and stored locally on hard disks or external storage (including CDs). In 2010 the global trade value of the digital music market was 4.6 billion USD, which accounts for 29 percent of the total industry revenue [6]. The music industries has therefore the second biggest share in digital distribution of all creative industries, just after the game industry (cf. figure 2). This depicts the high adoption of the Internet as distribution channel for music. In comparison to that the film industry only has a 1 percent share of revenues, and obviously still focus on conventional trade. Reasons for this may be piracy issues and the large amounts of data of video files compared to audio files. The environmental benefit arising from digital music is attributed to reductions in energy and resource use due to the lack of physical data carriers like CDs. Downloading music files cuts resource consumption by about 50 percent in comparison to conventional trade, or online shopping [2]. As no rebound effects of digital music have been identified, this form of dematerialization has still large potential for environmental improvements, keeping in mind, that the majority of music is still distributed on physical data carriers, as it is practiced by the film industry too.

Figure 2: Revenue shares of the creative industries in digital distribution [6]

E-books, e-zines and e-papers are terms for electronically published media that is conventionally printed, like newspapers, magazines or books. The possibilities provided by ICT range from web based solutions, which can be read online, to offline versions, which have to be ported to mobile devices (e.g. e-reader). Due to the proliferation of smartphones and tablet computers, the share of electronic media can be expected to grow, compared to printed media. Gartner analysts published forecasts stating, that the global sales of Media Tablets will rise from 70 million devices in 2011 to almost 300 million devices in 2015 [7]. Traditional computers and notebooks are not especially suitable for reading, due to usability and screen technology. Therefore tablet computers and e-readers are getting popular at the moment, since they provide better handling and are portable. In theory e-books save paper and the energy used in paper production, and consequently reduce deforestation. On the other hand the production of reading devices is quite energy intense and energy is needed for operation and disposal. The conclusion is that the environmental impact of e-books strongly depends on user habits. It is essential, how many printed books an e-reader replaces in it’s lifetime and how long this lifetime is, before the device gets replaced. A tablet computer or an e-reader produces about 130 to 170 kg of CO2e over its lifecycle, whereas a printed book accounts for about 4 kg [8]. Therefore a device would have to replace more than 40 printed books to reduce carbon emissions. But beside the energy needed for production also the used materials have to be considered. Paper books are made of wood, which is a renewable material. Electronic reading devices need plastics, metals and certain chemicals in production, which are materials with much more negative impact on the environment and human health than wood. Including these considerations into the calculation of the environmental impact of e-books, a state of the art electronic reading device would have to substitute more than 60 books to increase sustainability [8].

References

[1] L. Neves. Responding to the new challenge of ict-driven sustainability. Global e-SuStainability initiative (GeSI).

[2] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[3] J.H. Ausubel and P.E. Waggoner. Dematerialization: Variety, caution, and persistence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), vol. 105 no. 35:12774–12779, 2008.

[4] ComScore, Inc. Top 10 countries by online banking penetration. http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/10/top-10-countries-by-online-banking-penetration/, October 2010. Accesssed: 2013-03-06.

[5] B. Cushman-Roisin. Environmental impacts of e-commerce. http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~d30345d/courses/engs171/eCommerce.pdf, 2011. Accessed: 2013-03-06.

[6] IFPI. Digital music report 2011. http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2011.pdf, 2011. Accessed: 2013-03-06.

[7] Gartner, Inc. Forecast: Media Tablets by Open Operating System, Worldwide, 2008-2015, April 2011.

[8]  Green Press Initiative. Environmental impacts of e-books. http://www.greenpressinitiative.org/documents/ebooks.pdf. Accessed: 2013-03-06.

E-Commerce

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) can be defined as “the buying and selling of products and services over the Internet or other electronic networks” [1]. It is a term for “the paperless exchange of business information”, referring “to Internet shopping, online stock and bond transactions, the downloading and selling of ’soft merchandise’ and business-to-business transactions” [2]. In short, e-commerce means to transact business electronically. Today, in most cases the transaction channel for e-commerce is the Internet. For this reason the expansion of e-commerce can be directly linked to the growth and increased utilization of the Internet. At the beginning of the year 2000 the Internet had about 300 million users, whereas in June 2011 this number was determined to be more than 2,100 million, which is 30 percent of the world population [3].

In an environmental context the proliferation of e-commerce has positive as well as negative impact. E-commerce inheres that products are purchased online, which means that the travel routes to shopping malls and stores drop out and the physical traffic and fuel consumption decreases. This clearly results in certain emission savings. Another example for emissions reductions achieved by e-commerce are digital products (e.g. music distributed as MP3 instead of CD), which can be distributed with low carbon impact, since nothing physical has to be produced. On the other hand, products purchased via the Internet have to be packed and shipped to the customers, a process that causes additional emissions. The question is: Do the emissions savings due to dematerialization and optimized distribution overweight the emissions arising from packaging, shipping and additional IT infrastructure? This question may be impossible to answer correctly today. The interrelations associated with e-commerce are too complex to allow profound estimations. However a closer look at the impact of e-commerce should be taken, in order to know about the effects in separate.
The economic, environmental and social effects of e-commerce can be divided into three categories. There are first-order, second-order and third-order effects [4]:

• First-order effects: These effects arise due to the need for ICT infrastructure and it’s direct use. The production, utilization and disposal of electronic systems consumes energy and therefore produces carbon emissions. Additionally the chemical substances needed for the production of electronic equipment constitute a potential threat for workers and the environment. Together with an increase of e-commerce these negative effects of ICT equipment on the environment are rising. 
• Second-order effects: As second-order effects the changes in markets and business activities are described. E-commerce changes business due to a new channel of marketing and distribution, which can be noted as a change of the supply chain. Products are ordered via the Internet and some products are dematerialized. 
• The economic effects of these changes are smaller warehouses, just-in-time delivery and fewer intermediaries. There is also an increased need for communication and coordination, as well as more frequent transport. 
• The environmental impact of these effects expresses as reduced emissions from warehouse building and utilization, but also as increased emissions from transport. The higher demand for packaging has direct environmental influence too. 
• The social effects in this context arise from an increasing amount of online orders and the consumption of digitalized products. These actions are directly linked to a more intense use of computer equipment and a reduction of shopping trips to stores and malls. The changed habits can lead to a change of society and potentially inhere health effects, due to decreasing mobility (obesity) and unidirectional stress of muscles while handling computers. 
• Third-order effects: These tertiary effects arise from consecutive rebound effects. 
• The impact of e-commerce influences economy by a change in consumer information and therefore a change in competition experienced by companies. This results in a change of prices, which leads to shifting demand. It is obvious that competition increases by the expansion of e-commerce. For this reason e-commerce most likely leads to lower prices and subsequently to increasing demand. 
• A number of rebound effects influence the environment: There are changes in energy use patterns, in transportation intensity and infrastructure (freight airports, ferry ports and shipping ports) and in land use (from shopping malls to smaller more decentralized warehouses). Some of these effects result in emissions savings, while some of the emissions just arise from a different source. 
• As mentioned before the social impact of e-commerce is a change in consumer and lifestyle habits. The third-order effects in this context are characterized by substitute activities of consumers. Since there is a possibility to save time and money by buying online, it is likely that the saved time and money is invested elsewhere. This change in consumer habits has a certain influence on the environment and on economy, but it’s impact is hard to assess. 

One of the most considerable arguments supporting that e-commerce has a positive net environmental impact is the fact, that it enables a more direct way of distribution with a fewer number of retailers [5]. In conventional commerce a product passes through a significant number of trade partners on it’s way from the manufacturer to the consumer. These trade partners can be retailers, franchises, wholesalers, distributors or brokers. In contrast to this, e-commerce enables a distribution with just one, or even without any intermediary. Manufacturers can sell their goods in their own online shops and ship them directly to the consumer. In practice there is still one retailer (e.g. online warehouses) in most of the cases, that orders goods directly from the manufacturer and sells them to consumers. The more direct distribution results in higher efficiency and reduced costs. Figure 1 depicts the paradigm change from conventional marketing to electronic commerce.

Figure 1: Traditional commerce (left) and e-commerce [1] 

The electronic exchange of business data and higher efficiency in the supply chain enable the manufacturers to market their products at lower prices compared to conventional commerce (see efficiency in figure 1). Additionally the markups by intermediaries drop out at electronic commerce, due to fewer retailers. Intermediaries usually sell their goods at a higher price as they paid for them. This means that the price of a good rises with every trade partner it passes through. The result of the change in distribution due to electronic commerce are decreasing costs, lower prices and - by the rules of simple economics - increasing demand, which also means increasing consumption. Therefore the efficiency gains of e-commerce consequently result in rising emissions. This coherence was recognized by researchers already more than a

decade ago [1] and is a strong argument to question the net environmental improvement by e-commerce.
When thinking about the question, if the environmental impact of e-commerce is positive or negative in total, several aspects have to be considered, that bring changes in greenhouse gas emissions and resource usage. The effects of e-commerce that have either positive or negative influence on the environment are summarized in table 1. 

Table 1: The positive and negative impact of e-commerce on the environment

Considering the large number of negative environmental aspects of e-commerce it is doubt- ful, that e-commerce can lead to environmental improvements. Table 1 shows that every positive environmental aspect is accompanied by potentially negative impacts. E-commerce is like every kind of commerce designed to create economic growth, which is in most of the cases counterproductive to environmental goals. This statement can be confirmed by the fact that economic growth involves growing energy demand. Therefore sustainability and economic growth are contradictory [1]. However, the opinions of researchers diversify on this topic, since there is currently no telling argument to answer the question if e-commerce can substantially contribute to a low carbon economy. The SMART 2020 Report constitutes that e-commerce could account for a reduction of 3 percent of the emissions arising from shopping transport [6]. Although this would imply savings of 0.03 GtCO2e in 2020, this cannot be claimed as a huge expectation of the positive environmental impact of e-commerce.

References

[1] J. C. Yang.   Environmental impact of e-commerce and other sustainability - implications of the information economy. Working Paper of the Research Group on the Global Future, Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP), Industrial Technology Research Institute, 2000.

[2] S. Tiwari and P. Singh. Environmental impacts of e-commerce. International Proceedings of Chemical, Biological & Environmental Engineering (IPCBEE), vol.8:202–207, 2011.

[3] InternetWorldStats.com. Internet growth statistics. http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm. Accessed: 2013-03-06.

[4] B. Cushman-Roisin. Environmental impacts of e-commerce. http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~d30345d/courses/engs171/eCommerce.pdf, 2011. Accessed: 2013-03-06.

[5] L.D.D. Harvey. Energy and the new reality 1: Energy Efficiency and the Demand for Energy services. Earthscan, 2010.

[6] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.

E-Government

“E-government refers to government’s use of information and communication technologies to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses and other arms of government” and it is an approach “to make public administrations more efficient and effective” [1]. Like private enterprises, governmental institutions need to deal economically with their budget and therefore try to achieve cost reductions. One of the main benefits of e-government services is that they enable more cost efficient administrative work flows and services. This is achieved by the dematerialization of documents and by optimized administrative systems. Beside economic goals governments try to realize improvements of their services by using information technology. The Internet is used as additional delivery channel and access point, allowing fast and wide distribution of information. Users benefit from easier access to services and faster service times, without the need to travel to agencies or the expense of sending paper forms. In summary the main reasons for the implementation of electronic services by governments are cost and time efficiency, as well as an improved quality of service:

• Cost reductions can be realized by the optimization of administrative structures and processes. Governments try to achieve a higher “value for money” [2]. 
• Service quality is improved by better accessibility and usability of public services [1], together with a wide range of functionality provided on several platforms. In this context e-governmental services tempt to “meet users needs” [2]. This includes a quick and easy access to governmental information and services, achieved by a consistent look and feel of electronic services. 

E-government is characterized by the supply of public services via a variety of channels. In the past the options of accessing services where restricted to the visitation of governmental departments and mail correspondence in some chases. The current development of electronic services is focused on online and voice based services [2]. The main delivery channel of e-governmental services is the Internet. This channel is supplemented by line telephone and mobile phone networks, which experiences a current trend due to the proliferation of mobile devices [3]. There are various applications and specifications of e-government at the moment:

• E-taxation refers to the process of citizens and businesses conducting their tax related activities electronically. The most common example of e-taxation is the functionality provided to individuals to enter their account information for tax return [2].
• E-voting is an electronic service of governments, substituting traditional elections [1]. The benefits of e-voting are reductions of paper ballots and time and location flexibility of voters. 
• M-government is a subset of e-government, using mobile devices, such as mobile phones or tablet computers to access public information and governmental services anywhere and anytime [3]. In m-government data transfer is realized by wireless and mobile phone networks. Governments want to exploit the current trend of mobile technology to advance the distribution of their electronic services. 
• An electronic identification card is a type of smart card [1], usually equipped with integrated circuits, providing the ability to store user related information. The primary purpose of these cards is identification and authentication for several e-governmental services. 

An important issue in the context of e-governmental services is to ensure privacy and security [2]. Services delivered via the Internet are endangered by data theft and fraud. Since e-governmental services are often related to finances (e.g. e-tax) and always involve detailed personal data, the need for highly secure systems is all the more important. If the requirements of information security and privacy of personal data are not fulfilled, the acceptance of electronic services will suffer. This has negative economical as well as environmental impact, because the benefit of electronic services is increasing together with the amount of users. Electronic services are characterized by low marginal costs, which means that the increase of total costs by a single additional user is quite low. The fixed costs of technical equipment like servers, network infrastructure and computer systems take up the largest share of costs of electronic services. Therefore the total costs per user of electronic service decrease with increasing numbers of users, because the fixed costs are divided by user numbers. The costs of electronic services can be directly linked to energy and resource use, which means that the environmental impact develops directly proportional to the development of costs. In summary this means, that the economical and envi- ronmental benefits of electronic services rise with the number of users.

The potential environmental benefits of e-government cover reductions in paper usage due to dematerialization [3], as well as energy and emissions savings by various applications. Significant carbon emissions reductions are expected from library management systems which support e-archives, to reduce emissions and paper demand of libraries [1]. The reductions in paper usage refer to the approach of the paperless office [3]. This is a term for the dematerialization of paper forms and electronic administration. In e-government this includes administrative activities of processing service cases, which can be operated electronically instead of using paper forms, reductions in paper ballots and electronic communication. Especially e-taxation is considered to have large potential in achieving paper use reductions. Data from Europe shows, that in 2005 between 5 and 20 percent of citizens declared their income tax online and between 10 and 20 percent of business declared their value-added tax electronically [1]. It is estimated that these numbers rise to about 80 percent for citizens and almost 100 percent for businesses until 2020 [1]. All environmental improvements by e-government are endangered by low numbers of users, which could even result in a negative environmental impact in total. An example in this context is paper consumption, which is generally reduced by electronic services. This reduction will only be significant, if the majority of users access governmental services electronically. Due to the coexistence of traditional governmental service supply (higher paper demand) and electronic services (higher energy demand), low usage rates of electronic services, paired with high usage rates of traditional delivery channels would lead to a combination of high energy demand and high paper usage [3].

References

[1] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[2] Australian Government Information Management  Office. Responsive government - a new service agenda. http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/2006-e-government-strategy/docs/e-gov_strategy.pdf, March 2006. Accessed: 2013-03-05.

[3] P. Fernando and A. Okuda. Escap technical paper: Green ICT - a “cool” factor in the wake of multiple meltdowns. http://www.unescap.org/idd/working%20papers/IDD_TP_09_10_of_WP_7_2_907.pdf, December 2009. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

Renewable Sources of Energy

ICT systems allow more efficient operating and maintenance of power systems using renewable sources of energy like water, wind and sunlight. For example there are approaches in development to monitor wind turbines using a model-based method of neural networks [1]. Therefore the temperature of the generator bearings is measured to predict failures. This could avoid wind turbines standing still and help increasing the productivity of such systems.

Information technology could also improve the management of distributed renewable energy sources like home photovoltaic panels. There are approaches in research that add processors to control arrays of photovoltaic units. This enables remote management of these energy generating systems and allows creating central management platforms and the establishment of integrated networks [2]. A different approach in research shows that Fuzzy models can be used to control photovoltaic power systems including the required conversion to obtain this source of energy [3].

Another example for improved management of renewable energy generators enabled by ICT is the approach to predict the amounts of energy generated by wind turbines. Therefore short-term forecasts of wind speed and direction of several observation points have to be considered and used to calculate the resulting power output of the wind turbines located in these areas [4]. As wind energy inheres large variability such predictions would be very useful to manage the compliance of energy demands in future electricity grids. Increasing efficiency of wind turbines implies techniques to estimate wind speeds. In connection to this, approaches based on self-organizing neural networks can be found in scientific literature [5].

References

[1] J. Xiang, S. Watson, and Y. Liu. Smart monitoring of wind turbines using neural networks. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 1–8. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[2] C. Mallett. Network-enabled intelligent photovoltaic arrays. In  Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 39–47. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[3] A. Hajjaji, M. BenAmmar, J. Bosche, M. Chaabene, and A. Rabhi. Integral fuzzy control for photovoltaic power systems. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 219–228. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[4] M. Khalid and A. V. Savkin. Development of short-term prediction system for wind power generation based on multiple observation points.  In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 89–98. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

[5] G. Cirrincione and A. Marvuglia. A novel self-organizing neural technique for wind speed mapping. In Robert J. Howlett, Lakhmi C. Jain, and Shaun H. Lee, editors, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, pages 209–217. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

Dematerialization by Telework and Videoconferencing

Telework

In nearly every economic sector ICT can be used for the dematerialization of physical products or processes. Teleworking has an effect on the transport sector, since the travel ways to and from offices can be reduced by working from home. The Telework Research Network published following figures about the saving potential induced by teleworking in the United States of America [1]:

• Savings of over 280 million barrels of oil. 
• Greenhouse gas savings of 53 million tons, which would be over 21 percent of the USA’s aim of reductions by 2020. 
• Savings of about 1 billion dollar in highway maintenance, due to reductions of wear. 
• Companies could save 200 billion dollar in office buildings, including utilization and maintenance costs. 
• The resulting electricity savings from offices could power 900,000 homes per year. 
• Reductions in traffic related injuries and deaths, resulting in cost savings of 12 billion dollar a year. 
• Each employee could save up to between 1,800 and 6,800 dollar in transportation and work-related costs. 
• While 40 percent of employees in the USA have jobs that would allow teleworking, only 2 percent work from home most of the time. 

In total the extensive use of telecommuting could save more than 650 Billion Dollar a year. According to the authors of the referenced website, these figures are a result of synthesizing 250 case studies, a number of reviews and interviews with virtual employers and their employees, as well as top researchers on the topic [1].

Also The Climate Group states in it’s SMART 2020 Report that more than half of the emissions saving potential of dematerialization by ICT is made up of the proliferation of telecommuting. In numbers this would be 0.26 GtCO2e in 2020 globally [2]. Other researchers assume the potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions due to telecommuting to be 588.2 million tons just for the USA [3]. One of the major environmental benefits of telecommuting arises from reduced work-related travel. Due to the possibility for people to increasingly work from home, this “could provide help in de-coupling transport growth and economic growth” [4]. The reduction in physical traffic volume may be partly offset by additional trips in leisure time. Furthermore telecommuting could be a reason to move to rural areas, which would result in longer distance travel at days when working at the office [3]. These coherences can be termed as rebound effects. Studies approved that in some cases teleworkers undertake additional trips, that would usually be combined with traveling to and from workplace (e.g. shopping), which offset about half of the travel savings in average [4]. Taking all the considerations into account, an increase of telecommuting would have a significant positive effect on the environment.

Telework is also a concept of dematerialization in the buildings sector. Studies show that a significant number of workers working from home at three days a week could lead to energy savings of 20 to 50 percent, even when the resulting increase of energy demand in homes is considered [2]. Telecommuting or telework was enabled by the distribution of broadband networks, that allow to transfer large amounts of data. It means “working remotely via the use of ICT solutions” [2], while the remote workplace is usually represented by the private home. The energy and emissions savings are composed of reduced travel routes and the possibility for companies to build and maintain smaller offices. This requires the sharing of workplaces, which makes at least three days of teleworking a week necessary. The space in typical office buildings is utilized only about 18 percent of total time [5]. This fact shows that the improvement of utilization of existing space, could lead to reduced demand for new buildings and therefore to a significant reduction of emissions, arising from construction, utilization and maintenance of new buildings. A precondition to energy and emissions savings by telecommuting in the buildings sector is, that teleworkers give up their office spaces, or at least share them. Otherwise reductions in carbon emissions by telecommuting can be expected from reduced travel only [4]. A research work done in the USA is assuming that a home office would bring energy savings of about 3500 kWh on average compared to a commercial office. This would lead to savings of 46.6 billion kWh of electricity, or 56.8 tons of CO2e per year, at a supposed number of 13.3 million telecommuters in the USA [3].

Videoconferencing

A second example for the dematerialization of travel ways is videoconferencing. This approach replaces physical meetings by providing ICT equipment for video-telephony over the Internet. There are studies that claim that significant reductions in emissions could be achieved by reducing physical traffic by videoconferencing [6]. In this context it has to be mentioned, that approaches like videoconferencing and telecommuting have already been existing for a while and have not been adopted as widely as it could have been expected during this period [2]. In 2005 only 3,9 percent of the population of the 25 member states of the European Union regularly used the Internet for video- or audio conferencing [4]. This shows that the level of acceptance is an important issue for the adoption of ICT developments. Therefore it is essential that the ICT infrastructure allows an adequate user experience while videoconferencing for example, so that it gets a viable alternative to physical meetings [6].

A research work of 2004 from Norway on the impact of videoconferencing on business travel determined, that the substitution rate of business air travel by videoconferencing is only 2.5 to 3.5 percent [7]. The author also claimed, that videoconferencing is mainly used for intracompany communication. This fact suggests that personal contact is still the preferred way of conducting business between companies and maybe will remain dominant over virtual meetings. The main reasons for companies for the adoption of videoconferencing are time and cost savings (cf. figure 1) [7]. It can be hypothesized that a significant increase in travel costs could be a reason for companies to utilize videoconferencing technology more extensive. Several case studies showed that the potential carbon savings arising from the use of teleconferencing (audio and video), can be numbered as about 15 percent of the company’s business travel [4].

Figure 1: Reasons for videoconferencing (a higher score means more important) [7]

References

[1] teleworkresearchnetwork.com. Telework savings potential. http://www.teleworkresearchnetwork.com/cut-oil. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[2] The Climate Group. Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. Technical report, The Climate Group on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008.

[3] J.P. Fuhr and S. Pociask. Broadband and Telecommuting: Helping the U.S. Environment and the Economy. Low Carbon Economy, vol.2:41–47, 2011. 

[4] Bio Intelligence Service. Impacts of information and communication technologies on energy efficiency, final  report. ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/sustainable-growth/ict4ee-final-report_en.pdf, September 2008. Accessed: 2013-02-12.

[5] B. Tomlinson. Greening through IT - Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability. The MIT Press, 2010.

[6] P. Fernando and A. Okuda. Escap technical paper: Green ICT - a “cool” factor in the wake of multiple meltdowns. http://www.unescap.org/idd/working%20papers/IDD_TP_09_10_of_WP_7_2_907.pdf, December 2009. Accessed: 2013-02-12. 

[7] J.M. Denstadli. Impacts of videoconferencing on business travel: the norwegian experience. Journal of Air Transport Management, 10(6):371 – 376, 2004.