2023-05-01 15:19:22
A wind of rebellion is blowing in computer laboratories about the environmental consequences of their activity. A handful of researchers dream of leading an entire community with them towards a different digital future. “The account is not there”was one of the leitmotifs of these rebels, repeated during the Green Days in Lyon, on March 27 and 28, a national academic conference bringing together specialists in digital and environmental issues.
The account is not there, because the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted by the digital sector increases by 6% per year. When, to respect the Paris agreements, they should be lowered annually by around 7%, recalled for example Guillaume Urvoy-Keller, professor at the University of the Côte d’Azur, graph of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on the Evolution (IPCC) in support. In its latest estimate, the Arcep-Arcom digital cluster, bringing together telecom and audiovisual regulators, estimates that the digital carbon footprint is expected to increase by 45% between 2020 and 2030 in France.
According to the co-organizer of the event, Anne-Cécile Orgerie, CNRS researcher at the Institute for Research in Informatics and Random Systems (Irisa), in Rennes, “Digital is part of the problem, not just part of the solution.” What to reframe the triumphalist speeches of the promoters of digital technologies called to revolutionize health, transport, agriculture, the environment…
Anne-Laure Ligozat, professor at the National School of Computing for Industry and Business, in Essonne, also referring to the graphs of the IPCC, went a step further by mocking the optimistic reports of consulting firms. In one, directed by Accenture, on behalf of the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative, which brings together industrialists, is for example written “that the information and communication technology sector can ultimately decouple economic growth from emissions growth [de gaz à effet de serre] ». Even in 2015, the date of the report, the irrationality of this sentence was patent.
New mindset
“The answer to environmental questions is not only technological. It must be more global and systemic”observes Laurent Lefèvre, researcher at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria), in Lyon, pioneer of this new state of mind and co-organizer of these eleventh Green Days.
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