The last decade saw the acceleration of new technologies adoption, shaping the digital landscape in terms of speed, quality and connectivity for multimedia contents and communication tools. While many activities have been able to benefit from the numerous innovations (4.0 industry, e-commerce, telecommunications, etc.) to develop, this growth has always been coupled with a significant increase of pressures on the environment and natural resources.
The French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME) has proposed four scenarios for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 in its study “Transition 2050, Choisir maintenant, Agir pour le Climat”. They aim to link the technical and economic dimensions with thoughts on the transformations in society that they imply or that they give rise to.
This is the context for the study entitled “Assessment of the environmental impact of digital technology in France and prospective analysis”. The present report on the “prospective analysis for 2030 and 2050 and medium- and long-term courses of action”, is a continuation of Task 1 on the “state of play and courses of action” and Task 2 on the “environmental assessment of digital services in France”.
Specifically, Task 3 aims to assess the environmental impact of the digital sector in France for the 2030 and 2050 timeframes according to a trend scenario and different scenarios for the mitigation of this impact. Like Task 2, it consists of an evaluation of the impacts using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. This methodology focuses on the three thirds of the digital world: user terminals, networks and data centers.
The results are presented at the France-wide scale and are detailed under several levels of analysis in order to get a more acute interpretation and a better comprehension of direct environmental stakes related to digital technologies in France.