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.
