Infrastructure of the information society and its energy demand

Laetitia Souchon, Ph.D Candidate INT/ETOS - France Telecom R&D, France
Bernard Aebischer, ETH Zurich, Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE), Switzerland
Jacques Roturier, Professor Emeritus (retired from University of Bordeaux), France
Fabrice Flipo, INT/ETOS, France

Keywords

ICTs, telecommunications, internet, energy demand, digital divide, sustainable development, use substitution, dematerialisation

Abstract

Energy demand of ICT end-use equipment, like personal computers, is considered a potentially important topic for almost 20 years. Policy measures, like the Energy Star Label and worldwide campaigns for low standby consumptions, are now successfully implemented in order that the energy demand of ICT end-use equipment is not growing uncontrolled.

But what about energy demand of the infrastructure needed to make use of the ICT end-use equipment? Some previous work will be reported in the field of voice centric telecommunication indicating that energy demand of the infrastructure is growing much faster than energy demand of the phone and reaches for mobile communication up to 90 % of total energy demand. Regarding the infrastructure for internet, a much more complex issue, the energy demand data, as found in the literature, are rather uncertain and partially contradictory. The fraction of energy demand for the infrastructure is probably today of the order of 30 % while mobile communication and other trends being expected to steadily increase then installing the infrastructure as the most important element of future energy demand of ICT.

In the present paper, a brief survey of several analyses of the energy demand of the infrastructure for ICT is given in section 1. In section 2, preliminary results of ongoing research presently performed by one of us (LS) in the framework of a France Telecom R&D Programme are presented. Finally, section 3 broadens the problematic to the interaction between ICT and contemporary societal and ecological contexts, as they are interlinked.