The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, through its energy consumption, represents between 1.5% and 4% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions [1], a footprint that could be twice as large as that of the air transport industry in the most pessimistic estimates. While its growth rate is still subject to discussions, the literature agrees on the fact that this share will not significantly decrease if business goes as usual. The main reason is that traffic demand is still growing, driven not only by end-users’ usual expectations of ever-higher quality video for conventional video-on-demand and more recent social-networking-driven applications; but also by the machine-to-machine traffic and by the operation of expanding cloud services. This increasing traffic demand entails an increase in energy consumption, not only in absolute terms but probably also in proportion of the global consumption.    «

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, through its energy consumption, represents between 1.5% and 4% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions [1], a footprint that could be twice as large as that of the air transport industry in the most pessimistic estimates. While its growth rate is still subject to discussions, the literature agrees on the fact that this share will not significantly decrease if business goes as usual. The main reason is that traffic demand is still gr...    »