Öko-Institut e.V. (oeko.de)

Editorial

IT: environmental blessing or curse?

Editorial by Michael Sailer, CEO, Oeko-Institut

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine life without IT and telecommunications. Many of us here at the Oeko-Institut have smartphones and tablets, just like most of the people around us, who use them to upload their holiday snaps to the cloud or to play online computer games. All these mobile and stationary devices and applications consume precious resources and large amounts of energy in their production, use phase and end-of-life disposal. In our energy consumption projections back in the 1980s, we factored in an unknown variable – an economic sector with high energy consumption – without knowing precisely what that might be. Today, we see that this was a proxy for information and communication technologies (ICT) – a sector with potentially major impacts on the environment, but one which also offers a wealth of applications that could help to protect the climate and the environment;…

IT: environmental blessing or curse?

In Focus

Long live my lifestyle product!

Strategies for more sustainable electronic devices

Question: What produces almost the same quantity of carbon emissions as aviation? Answer: information and communication technologies (ICT). It’s clear, then, that we need more environmental and social sustainability in ICT – and that applies all along the value chain from production to disposal and recycling. As for the devices themselves, a longer product lifespan and service life can help to improve their environmental performance and carbon footprint and mitigate negative… more

Long live my lifestyle product!

Unregulated growth

Data centres and telecommunication networks: more climate action needed

Larger, faster, better: we’re demanding more and more from our information technology. We want higher resolution, faster transmission and added convenience. But this doesn’t just increase the demands on the information and communication technologies themselves: it also means that more and more is expected of data centres and telecommunication networks, which play a key role in ensuring that we can operate our devices. According to projections by the Oeko-Institut, these centres… more

Unregulated growth

“Intensive dialogue with ICT manufacturers is important to us”

Interview with Luis Neves, Deutsche Telekom AG

Industry has a key role to play in reducing ICT-related electricity consumption and emissions. In this interview with eco@work, Luis Neves, Group Representative for Climate Change and Sustainability Officer at Deutsche Telekom AG, describes the steps the company is taking to make its products, networks and data centres more sustainable. He outlines some of the practical measures being adopted and the challenges ahead. Luis Neves is also Chairman of the Global e-Sustainability… more

“Intensive dialogue with ICT manufacturers is important to us”