Laboratory of ecosystem management Impact and effects of ICT systems: approaches and results Budapest, 2003 Yves Loerincik, Sangwon Suh, Christophe Matas, Olivier Jolliet, Jean-Marc Revaz

Laboratory of ecosystem management ICT systems ICT systems: Internet, computer networks, monitoring systems etc…. - Complexity of the equipment - Influence of services - Impact or benefits of the system and indirect effects - Hidden impacts Approaches: Process, Input-Output and hybrid LCA

Laboratory of ecosystem management Challenges - To point out where are the main impacts in order to be as efficient as possible in reducing them; - To understand the impacts and the benefits linked to the use of ICT systems and the indirect effects;  Reducing the impacts and promoting the benefits

Laboratory of ecosystem management The case study of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) Internet infrastructure

Laboratory of ecosystem management Step 1: Inventory of the necessary equipment for the Internet infrastructure at the EPFL The functional unit = Internet infrastructure during one year

Laboratory of ecosystem management Corresponding annual costs

Laboratory of ecosystem management Non-renewable embodied primary energy, comparison between use and production phase (absolute value)

Laboratory of ecosystem management Comparison between Input-Output and process LCA

Laboratory of ecosystem management Remarks 1.PCs are dominating (control unit (cpu) + screen) 2.Contribution of the switches and servers are significant 3.Use phase is in most of the cases dominating 4.The embodied energy during production is significant 5.IO LCA value is two times the PLCA result

Laboratory of ecosystem management Comparison of various case study for the non- renewable primary embodied energy of computers

Laboratory of ecosystem management Different levels of comprehensiveness Yellow = not normally considered in a PLCA

Laboratory of ecosystem management Remark We only took into account the necessary physical equipment of the Internet infrastructure. But, if we have a closer look (see next slide), the main expenses related to a computer network come from other sectors than equipment (for example software, maintenance, management, etc…).

Laboratory of ecosystem management Management Costs: Administration 34% End user downtime 35% Co-worker time 14% Application developm’t14% Disaster prevention 5% Disaster recovery 12% If the boundaries are extended

Laboratory of ecosystem management Annual Costs, EPFL Internet

Laboratory of ecosystem management Considering the other expenses and using an IO LCA TCO = Total Cost of Ownership

Laboratory of ecosystem management New approach 1.Start with the EPFL expenses 2.Allocation to Internet (time, value, space, …) 3.Input-Output LCA  first screening 4.Hybrid analysis  more precisions

Laboratory of ecosystem management EPFL expenses allocated to the Internet infrastructure buildings electricity IT-services hardware labor maintenance

Laboratory of ecosystem management First screening results (IO LCA) for the CO2 emission for one year

Laboratory of ecosystem management The monitoring system of the city of Martigny

Laboratory of ecosystem management The problematic - Cities are confronted with urging problems related to evolutions and recent events. - The major part of the World’s population is living in the cities. - For urban network managers the challenge is to run a good working infrastructure with respect to the citizen needs.

Laboratory of ecosystem management The approach Urbistic = Urban management + Systemic The city is composed by networks, that are systems, time and space dependent : water, gas, sewage, electricity, district heating or cooling, cabled TV, telecommunication (voice, data, image), transportation and so on.

Laboratory of ecosystem management Monitoring the flows M easuring: the flows within the city; U nderstanding: the interactions and the dynamic behaviour of the whole urban system ; R eacting: Actions aiming at improving these phenomena and coordinations can be defined only if the first two steps have been taken.

Laboratory of ecosystem management Description of the system Martigny, Switzerland, 15'000 inhabitants. Using microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the MAN (metropolitan area network) produces every hour a total of more than 300 measures of consumption

Laboratory of ecosystem management Measuring station Measurements: -Water; -Electricity; -Gas; -District heating;

Laboratory of ecosystem management Benefits Examples of actions: -Analysis of the gas and district heating consuming facilities: a systematic over sizing of the equipment was detected in 90% of the studied cases; -Electricity consumption of the heating plant: the global electrical consumption has decreased in a significant way; -Inadequate watering detection, the urban utilities has defered the investments for a new reservoir and save more than 300’000 m 3 a year; -dynamic tariffing;

Laboratory of ecosystem management Comparison: Infrastructure versus benefits

Laboratory of ecosystem management Comparison: Infrastructure versus benefits

Laboratory of ecosystem management - Input-Output approach enables a rapid screening - Process and hybrid approach can be used to go more in details, take into account particularities (for instance regional characteristics) - Impact of services can be evaluated - Impact of indirect effects can be evaluated (provided that we know what they are) Conclusion

Laboratory of ecosystem management - To carry on with the hybrid analysis to have more precise results; - To better evaluate the impact of service; - Work together with social scientists to better evaluate the indirect effects and their corresponding environmental effect; - Forecast the environmental effect of future technologies Future work

Laboratory of ecosystem management - 11th SETAC LCA Case Studies Symposium European Meeting of the International Society for Industrial Ecology -21 st Swiss LCA Discussion Forum « Environmental Assessment in the Information Society » 3 rd – 4 th december 2003, Lausanne