Did you know: the amount of power used to generate a singular AI image could be used to fully charge a smartphone? ...
In this episode, Millie Cave interviews Ishmael Burdeau, Sustainability Business Architect at DWP, to explore the environmental impacts of digital technology.
Millie and Ishmael discuss the considerations in balancing the costs and benefits in this important and growing sector. In particular there are considerable energy and raw material costs associated with the production and use of devices and these can be exacerbated by behaviours. There is also a growing demand for larger networks and data centers to support the digital sector – especially important is the growing use of AI which is highly energy and water intensive.
Below are a range of links to tools and resources discussed in the interview. These include the UN report on the digital economy, resources for workshops and tools for calculating our carbon footprint:
My Impact carbon footprint tool - https://myimpact.isit-europe.org/
GDSA - https://sustainableict.blog.gov.uk/welcome-to-the-government-digital-sustainability-alliance/
UN Report on the digital economy - https://unctad.org/publication/digital-economy-report-2024
Climate Fresk/Digital Collage workshops - https://climatefresk.org/world/ and https://digitalcollage.org/
GreenIT.fr – lots of interesting articles and findings on ‘digital sobriety’ - https://www.greenit.fr/
If you're a civil servant, you can view more content and join the Civil Service Climate + Environment Network by signing up at: https://www.civilserviceenvironmentnetwork.org/
