JISC Greening ICT Keynote Presentation

Here are the slides I used for JISC’s Greening ICT Programme Meeting. There are 25 slides with lots of notes and references from slide 26 onwards.

‘Green ICT’ : More efficiently unsustainable?

My slides for the Digital 2020 GreenICT mini-conference:

There are quite extensive notes which can be read from slide 21 onwards.

UPDATE

In retrospect, I think these slides are pretty incoherent. I tried to make up for this by adding notes and references and figured that when I gave the presentation, I’d smooth all the joins. Alas, I didn’t really get time to do that, either.

During the presentation, the slides which seemed to have the most impact were 2 & 3, which introduce the Jevons Paradox of ‘efficiencies’ and then the actual increase in global energy use. I should also add that despite efficiencies and taking population increases into account, per capita energy use is still increasing globally. You can see how individual countries compare here: http://j.mp/51IIId

The slide (16) where I ask ‘Why be Green?’ and say ‘Resilience’ is meant to refer to Green being about dematerialisation, energy efficiency, and a zero or planned negative growth economy. Each of these ‘green factors’ could contribute to reduce the impacts of energy depletion and climate change and therefore contribute to resilience. I don’t think they would mitigate the impacts, but individuals and organisations that understand the principles of ‘being green’, would be better placed and more resilient against those impacts.