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Blog - September 2015

ICT industry tackles growth in CO2 emissions

September 9th, 2015

ICT industry tackles growth in CO2 emissions
By Jaafar Elmirghani, Co-Chair, IEEE Green ICT Initiative

The rise of information and communications technology (ICT) and its astonishing growth has created an urgent challenge to our industry’s energy consumption and resulting emissions.
Recent studies show that the ICT industry today is generating approximately 2 percent of global CO2 emissions, comparable to the worldwide aviation industry. This snapshot alone should be a wake-up call. But the sharp growth curve forecast for ICT-based emissions is truly alarming and far outpaces aviation. ICT is forecast to account for about 4 percent of global CO2 emissions in just five years.