- Home
- Main Research Areas
- Technology for Estimating Environmental Impact in ICT Society
Main Research Areas
Technology for Estimating Environmental Impact in ICT Society
(ICT:Information and Communications Technology.)
Environmental Impact of advances
With the increase in the volume of information downloaded in Japan, the power, which is consumed by user terminals and network devices, has been increased. This increase has led to an increase in the emission of carbon dioxide. This is a negative effect of the use of ICT on the environment.
However, the use of ICT has a positive effect on the environment as well. Advances in ICT can reduce the movements of people and improve the efficiency of physical distribution and industry in general.
Calculation of the effect of ICT services on reducing environmental impact
The figure shows both the negative and positive effects of ICT services macroscopically.
The upper part of the chart shows an estimate of the energy consumed by the use of ICT compared to 2000. The power consumption of ICT devices, such as PCs, servers and routers, and the network facilities of carriers, was calculated.
The lower part of the chart shows the estimates of the energy consumption saved by the use of ICT compared to 2000. The use of ICT can reduce energy consumption because it improves the efficiency of business and reduces human movements. The estimates show that the energy saved accounted for 1.6% of Japan's total energy consumption in 2005. The percentage increased to 3.1 in 2008.
In this way, the energy saved by the use of ICT is greater than the energy it consumes.
Effect of ubiquitous broadband service on reducing environmenatl impact
The NTT Group's main ubiquitous broadband services is called FLET'S, and the 3G mobile phone service is called FOMA. We have quantitatively evaluated how great a reduction in environmental impact these services bring, taking their lifecycle into consideration.
We calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emission resulting from the use of 19 types of ICT services, such as Web browsing, music download and email, available as some of the FLET'S and FOMA services. We also considered conventional alternatives to these 19 ICT services, and calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emission resulting from these conventional alternatives. For example, the alternative to Web browsing is the purchase of journals in bookstores, the alternative to music download is the purchase of CDs in CD stores, and the alternative to email is sending letters by post. We compared the amount of carbon dioxide emission resulting from the use of the ICT services and that from the use of conventional means.
These bar charts compare the annual amount of carbon dioxide emission resulting from the use of the FLET'S service and the FOMA service, respectively, per subscriber line under average conditions of usage, with those when the conventional alternatives are used, to see how the use of the ICT services can reduce the environmental impact.
The charts show that the use of the FLET'S service and the FOMA service can reduce the annual environmental impact per line by 93kg-CO2 and 120kg-CO2, respectively. (These are equivalent to the amount of CO2 absorbed annually by 7 healthy cedar trees and 9 healthy cedar trees, respectively.)