THE drive towards a digital economy comes at an environmental cost, the United Nations (UN) warned, with big data centers consuming vast amounts of water and energy.
While digitalization fuels global economic growth, its environmental repercussions are becoming “increasingly severe”, the UN trade and development agency UNCTAD said in a report.
The agency called for sustainable strategies to counter the growing environmental toll, particularly in developing countries.
“Digitalization continues to move at warp speed, transforming lives and livelihoods. At the same time, unregulated digitalization risks leaving people behind and exacerbating environmental and climate challenges,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in the report on Wednesday, July 10.
He cautioned that increased reliance on digital tools was directly impacting the environment, from depleting raw materials, consuming water and energy, spewing air pollution, and generating waste.
“These are accentuated by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence,” he said.
Data remains sketchy on how rapidly-evolving AI is affecting the environment.
UNCTAD chief Rebeca Grynspan called on the world’s biggest tech companies to lead the way by producing standardised data.
Google recently reported a 48-percent-increase in its greenhouse gas emissions over the five years to 2023, attributed to powering data centres that support AI operations.
7Similarly, Microsoft’s latest sustainability report showed a 29-percent-increase in greenhouse gas emissions last year compared to 202e.
US investment bank Goldman Sachs last month said the promise of generative AI technology was leading tech giants to spend an estimated $1 trillion on capital expenditure in the coming years, including investments in data centers, chips and other infrastructure.
In its Digital Economy Report 2024, UNCTAD gave a few examples of digital economy impacts on the environment.
The report said the information and communications technology sector emitted between 0.69 and 1.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020.
That represents 1.5 to 3.2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – about the same as air transport or shipping.
Producing a two-kilogramme computer requires approximately 800 kilos of raw materials, it said.
Demand for critical minerals like graphite, lithium, and cobalt could surge by 500 percent by 2050, said UNCTAD. (Agence France-Presse)
