2.8. Future trends in ICT carbon emissions footprint

Forecasting future ICT emissions is fraught with uncertainty. Emissions projection estimates rely on the extrapolation of figures from past trends, using historical ICT data. However, the speed of ICT technological advancement and gains in energy efficiency usually outpace these estimates, rendering assumptions outdated. As mentioned previously, Andrae & Edler (2015) paper’s projected worst case scenario has had to be revised in Andrae et al. (2017), Andrae (2019), and in Andrae (2020) in order to account for this ever-changing environment. Therefore, the accuracy of ICT future emissions projections is the subject of uncertainty and scrutiny.

It is difficult to project far into the future of the ICT sector, due to the rapid nature of technology advancements and improvements in energy efficiency. There is debate about whether this trend will continue to hold. Some studies suggest that computing efficiencies may reach their technological limits (Waldrop, 2016), however, to date, this has yet to be proven. While, other studies posit that energy efficiency trends will eventually peak, and beyond this point, the energy impacts of increasing data traffic and connected devices will no longer be negated by increased energy efficiency.

Emerging trends in ICT, beyond 2020, add to the uncertainty of forecasting future emissions. These trends include machine learning, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, IoT and 5G mobile networks (IEA, 2020a). The wider impacts of these trends on energy demand are unclear. They will contribute substantially to data centre workloads and internet data traffic but also present opportunities for technology efficiency gains. For example, energy improvements are predicted for future mobile networks, as more efficient 4G networks begin to dominate the market. This trend could accelerate further by 2025, as 5G networks emerge (Cisco, 2020), with leading operators suggesting 5G could be between ten to 20-fold more energy efficient per byte than 4G (Huawei, 2019). Whether energy efficiency improvements will outpace increases in data traffic is unclear – a number of mobile network operators expect that the roll out of 5G will increase their total energy consumption.

Even if there are overall increases in energy consumption, the total emissions of the ICT sector are likely to fall significantly, as larger numbers of network and data centre operators move to using 100% renewable electricity, and the national electricity grids continue to decarbonise.

To relate this back to the subject of this white paper – video streaming has touchpoints with ICT along the video delivery process, and is therefore dependent on ICT. However, video streaming is only one of the services that relies on the ICT infrastructure, and has different demands and trends from other rapidly developing areas such as IoT and automation.