Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future

Abstract

In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed. First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better world. Second, several believeduntouchable hot spots are highlighted to emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii) Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products, technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.

Consideration of marginal electricity in real-time minimization of distributed data centre emissions

“…Moreover, LCA enables the comparison between different options, such as videoconferencing or face-to-face meetings (Borggren et al, 2013), and the design improvement of ICT devices by choosing materials friendlier to the environment (Meyer & Katz). However, using LCA to study ICTs presents certain challenges, such as collecting detailed data on manufacturing component and waste management or modelling the rebound and substitution effects of ICT solutions (Arushanyan et al, 2014;Farrahi Moghaddam et al, 2014;Mirabella et al, 2013).…”

The Service-Bond Paradigm—Potentials for a Sustainable, ICT-enabled Future

“…The three hours used to calculate the mean of a particular day is chosen to be prime time, i.e., those three hours associated with the maximum Netflix streaming per that ISP on that day. 14 The selection of peak hours of the Netflix prime time puts this index within the scope of an rXd distance. It is also worth mentioning that we only considered the 'time' dimension in this work for the purpose of simplicity.…”

Towards a sustainable business model for smartphones: Combining product-service systems with modularity

“…In contrast to most other fields, ICT and its implementation of software has to consider the management and intelligent use of said software as part of LCA. This is as of yet not properly represented in the results, however, further adding to the misleading nature of the results [32].…”

“…Moghaddam et al provide an example in their work based upon laptops and their energy consumption. As a whole, laptops were found to be 40% more efficient than desktop computers, while the use phase showed an increase in consumption for the particular model used for comparison [32]. From the same study there should also be focus on the impact of management on the results of LCA.…”