Impact and effects of ICT systems: approaches and results Budapest, 2003

1. Impact and effects of ICT systems: approaches and results Budapest, 2003 Yves Loerincik, Sangwon Suh, Christophe Matas, Olivier Jolliet, Jean-Marc Revaz

2. ICT systems • ICT systems: Internet, computer networks, monitoring systems etc…. • Complexity of the equipment • Influence of services • Impact or benefits of the system and indirect effects • Hidden impacts • Approaches: • Process, Input-Output and hybrid LCA

3. Challenges • To point out where are the main impacts in order to be as efficient as possible in reducing them; • To understand the impacts and the benefits linked to the use of ICT systems and the indirect effects; •  Reducing the impacts and promoting the benefits

4. The case study of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) Internet infrastructure

5. Step 1: Inventory of the necessary equipment for the Internet infrastructure at the EPFL The functional unit = Internet infrastructure during one year

6. Corresponding annual costs

7. Non-renewable embodied primary energy, comparison between use and production phase (absolute value)

8. Comparison between Input-Output and process LCA

9. Remarks • PCs are dominating (control unit (cpu) + screen) • Contribution of the switches and servers are significant • Use phase is in most of the cases dominating • The embodied energy during production is significant • IO LCA value is two times the PLCA result

10. Comparison of various case study for the non-renewable primary embodied energy of computers

11. Different levels of comprehensiveness Yellow = not normally considered in a PLCA

12. Remark • We only took into account the necessary physical equipment of the Internet infrastructure. But, if we have a closer look (see next slide), the main expenses related to a computer network come from other sectors than equipment (for example software, maintenance, management, etc…).

13. If the boundaries are extended Management Costs: Administration 34% End user downtime 35% Co-worker time 14% Application developm’t 14% Disaster prevention 5% Disaster recovery 12%

14. Annual Costs, EPFL Internet

15. Considering the other expenses and using an IO LCA TCO = Total Cost of Ownership

16. New approach • Start with the EPFL expenses • Allocation to Internet (time, value, space, …) • Input-Output LCA  first screening • Hybrid analysis  more precisions

17. EPFL expenses allocated to the Internet infrastructure hardware IT-services maintenance labor buildings electricity

18. First screening results (IO LCA) for the CO2 emission for one year

19. The monitoring system of the city of Martigny

20. The problematic • - Cities are confronted with urging problems related to evolutions and recent events. • The major part of the World’s population is living in the cities. • For urban network managers the challenge is to run a good working infrastructure with respect to the citizen needs.

21. The approach Urbistic = Urban management + Systemic The city is composed by networks, that are systems, time and space dependent : water, gas, sewage, electricity, district heating or cooling, cabled TV, telecommunication (voice, data, image), transportation and so on.

22. Monitoring the flows Measuring: the flows within the city; Understanding: the interactions and the dynamic behaviour of the whole urban system ; Reacting: Actions aiming at improving these phenomena and coordinations can be defined only if the first two steps have been taken.

23. Description of the system Martigny, Switzerland, 15'000 inhabitants. Using microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the MAN (metropolitan area network) produces every hour a total of more than 300 measures of consumption

24. Measuring station • Measurements: • Water; • Electricity; • Gas; • District heating;

25. Benefits • Examples of actions: • Analysis of the gas and district heating consuming facilities: a systematic over sizing of the equipment was detected in 90% of the studied cases; • Electricity consumption of the heating plant: the global electrical consumption has decreased in a significant way; • Inadequate watering detection, the urban utilities has defered the investments for a new reservoir and save more than 300’000 m3 a year; • dynamic tariffing;

26. Comparison: Infrastructure versus benefits

27. Comparison: Infrastructure versus benefits

28. Conclusion • Input-Output approach enables a rapid screening • Process and hybrid approach can be used to go more in details, take into account particularities (for instance regional characteristics) • Impact of services can be evaluated • Impact of indirect effects can be evaluated (provided that we know what they are)

29. Future work • To carry on with the hybrid analysis to have more precise results; • To better evaluate the impact of service; • Work together with social scientists to better evaluate the indirect effects and their corresponding environmental effect; • Forecast the environmental effect of future technologies

30. 11th SETAC LCA Case Studies Symposium • 2003 European Meeting of the International Society for Industrial Ecology • 21st Swiss LCA Discussion Forum • « Environmental Assessment in the Information Society » • 3rd – 4th december 2003, Lausanne • http://www.setaceu.org, yves.loerincik@epfl.ch