Can Digital decarbonization clean our environment?

Data the new oil

Data the new oil, why you ask? Well oil has made human lives comfortable on one side but has also wreaked havoc in the environment and climate on the other side. Similarly, data in digital or material format has an equally devastating relationship on our environment.

The production, consumption, storage and processing of digitized data requires a fair amount of energy. Conventional means of producing energy has led to greenhouse gas emissions. In effect this has caused a debilitating effect on the environment especially when producing energy is not done in a judicious manner. Data centers, servers, cooling systems, radio stations, internet terminals, routers air conditioners and fans demand lots of energy. No digital operation is possible without electricity. The electricity requirement is directly proportional to the volume of data. Thus, digital data has an indirect relation to greenhouse gas emissions in particular CO2 emissions. Not just the electricity but also the heat generated by these servers and warehouses have grave consequences.

Data… data… data… everywhere

Everyone and everything consume data in some form or another, from panchayats to parliament, schools to colleges, street vendors to multinational companies. Data can be processed and consumed in digital formats at incredible speeds thanks to technology. Here is a small glimpse to support what I am referring to. Orion, the new spacecraft launched recently, has a memory capacity 1,28,000 times that of Apollo, launched five decades ago. It is no secret that these businesses have expanded in both size and capability by leaps and bounds. They also produce and consume information every day as part of their day-to-day activities. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were produced in a single day in the year 2021, according to estimates. Data is ubiquitous. Today, nearly everyone owns some sort of digital device, whether it’s a smartphone, a laptop, or a pager. This digital device handles data in the form of texts, calls, images, videos, audio or any other format of storage. It’s virtually impossible to imagine our everyday lives without digitization. With information flowing from every corner of the globe, our lives have been simplified to a great extent. In this new age of science and technology, digitization is the driving force behind development. In order to appreciate the pros and act on the cons, we must be aware of what the cons are.

Data has become a pre-requisite almost everywhere. You name it, and it needs data. IT firms, banking firms, insurance companies, government offices, supply chain management, transportation, and infrastructure industries. However not all data is necessary and useful, and this is where digital decarbonization comes into the picture.

Understanding Dark Data

Decarbonization means reduction of carbon footprint. The concept of digital decarbonization refers to reducing the carbon footprint in the digital sphere through the use of sustainable and judicious digital practices. This will enable us to minimize the environmental impact of digital space.

Besides useful data, the digital space is also cluttered with redundant, duplicate, and malignant data. This data is called ‘dark data’ because it is no longer useful and resides in servers and data warehouses that consume a large amount of energy. This type of data is abundant in our systems. Data duplicated on cloud platforms or simple text files stored on multiple servers can be an example of this. Similarly, email advertisements and newsletters we no longer open constitute dark data. The same holds true for outdated information or data that isn’t being used in any way. This dark data is linked to the real world by the energy it consumes. Every bit of digital data contributes to a significant amount of carbon footprint. Approximately 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to digitization, while data centers have a greater carbon footprint than airlines.

What can we do to help?

In order to combat the exponential increase in dark data, digital decarbonization is essential. A few things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint are listed below.

• The first step is to remove dark data from your email. Open your email inbox on your mobile or laptop. Search and review historical UNREAD emails older than a year. Most likely you will never read them or need them if you haven’t read them in a year. You should go ahead and delete these emails especially the ones with images, audios and videos
• Next step, delete all spam emails
• Unsubscribe from all the newsletters you no longer need and never read
• Upload only files that do not already exist on one cloud platform. Examples are Apple Cloud, Google Cloud, or OneDrive. Ensure that you do not store duplicate copies
• Remove account data from platforms where we no longer participate
• Minimize streaming movies and videos on individual devices. Whether it’s with family, friends, or a group of loved ones, watch movies together
• Instead of using individual databases and servers for data that is commonly used, companies and firms should use decentralized databases
• Organizations must utilize advanced software and technologies such as AI and Machine Learning tools to automate the process of reusing, refining, and processing data
• Companies that handle data should be forced to adopt carbon offset practices like planting trees
• Keeping a digital discipline and vigilance will help individuals and businesses reduce their carbon footprints significantly

A lifestyle for a clean environment

It has been proven in surveys and research statistics all over the world that deleting emails and changing how we interact with digital space can reduce our carbon footprint. Roughly 39,035 Metric Tonnes of CO2 emissions could be reduced if every email user on the planet on average deleted 10 unwanted emails. What if all the dark data all over the world could be destroyed in one fell swoop? If even deleting unwanted emails reduces emissions significantly, imagine what would happen if all the dark data was destroyed.

Although digitization has brought many benefits, it is a double-edged sword. While digitization itself doesn’t have any environmental consequences, it is the way we handle this data that poses a serious threat. As a society, we must become more digitally disciplined and incorporate it into our daily lives and behaviors. These small behavior changes can have a significant impact on environmental and climate change.

It is time we got involved in pushing decarbonization. A few mouse clicks and a few minutes are all it takes to improve our environment. Take charge of your digital devices, clean off the dark data on them, and become a DIGITAL WARRIOR. Sometimes just a push is all we need to be able to achieve a large changeover.