Several reports warn of the collapse in raw materials and energy sources caused by the technological race
If the electronic world were grouped into a single imaginary country, the population would far exceed the world's current population and the pollution capacity would be the equivalent of two times Canada or five times France. This unique nation would be made up of 20 billion connected devices (2.5 more than people), but if you add to mobile phones, computers and tablets bicycles and scooters, household appliances and the rest of the digital gadgets that fill homes, businesses and organisations, the number of gadgets rises to 30.5 billion. A study by the sustainability association Green IT believes that the reserves of materials and energy needed for their manufacture and use are approaching collapse. Three reports from consultancies agree, but experts differ on the solutions. Some advocate alternative materials and sources and others, like Green IT, advocate digital sobriety.
The conclusion of the various studies is clear and compelling: there are not enough materials or energy for so many devices and traffic on the Internet. But the solutions planned are still far from being effective: finding new sources of energy, new materials and making current ones more efficient.
The contribution of the digital world, both in its manufacturing and use phases, to resource depletion and global warming has surpassed all other parameters and is, according to Green IT, “among the indicators that carry the most weight”.
In addition, it hoards finite and essential materials on which other sectors such as health, energy infrastructure and defence also depend, jeopardising their availability for future generations and the energy transition.
“The rapid growth in demand for these resources, their geographic distribution, the lack of adequate and affordable substitutes, and their importance to the global economy make them elements of dependency between nations, geopolitical tension, and tools of trade war,” warns the report on critical materials and raw materials from the Office of Science and Technology of Congress.
And if the impact of connected equipment, televisions, smartphones and objects were not enough, now, according to Green IT research, there is “the meteoric rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI). In a short period of time, it is already noticeable. Servers configured for AI alone account for between 1% and 5% of the impacts of the digital world based on indicators (4% of greenhouse gas emissions).
Dan Karpati, head of AI at the multinational cybersecurity company Check Point, believes that “the adoption of this technology is accelerating at an unprecedented rate.” ChatGPT reached 100 million users just 60 days after its launch and now has more than 3 billion monthly visits. It has been joined by the Chinese company Deepseek and, before it, Claude, Gemini or Midjourney, among other applications. 92% of large companies have already integrated it into their workflows, a business that, by 2033, will reach 141 billion dollars.
Karpati admits that this race is driving a huge increase in resources and the energy needed to support it. “The magnitude of AI-driven pressure on natural resources will be felt by 2025,” he warns.
Computing centers have doubled in just ten years, according to McKinsey , and forecasts, as warned by the Check Point researcher following the Deloitte projects energy consumption , indicate that in the next 10 years, the energy needed to keep them running ( ) will be equivalent to that required by India, the most populous country in the world. Goldman Sachs Research adds that energy demand for data centers will grow by 160% by 2030 and that AI will account for approximately 19% in just three years from now.
The AI manager points to innovation as a solution, such as underwater data centres to reduce thermal needs, or nuclear energy, as he points out when pointing out the search for power plants of these characteristics by large multinationals.
“Humans are smart at adapting, so if there is an anomaly, they will find other creative solutions. We will get efficient chips [processors], we will move workloads to where they consume less, we will optimize training algorithms…”, he argues.
Pablo Gámez Cersosimo, head of Naturally Digital , an organization specializing in sustainability, human behavior, ethics, and digital well-being, thinks quite the opposite. For the author of Depredadores digitales (Círculo Rojo, 2021), this way of thinking is “digital magical thinking,” which consists of the naivety of continuing with the problem in the hope of finding a solution, “with blind faith in technology.”
Gámez Cersosimo is aligned with the solutions proposed by Green IT, aimed at all layers of the chain (from manufacturers to users) and which are summarized in the concept of digital sobriety: moderating uses, reducing equipment and making it last longer.
“New forms of technology, characterised by high energy consumption and a huge water and pollution footprint, are systems that are leading us to a digital morphology that requires finite resources to exist and function. This is happening in the context of the climate crisis and the struggle for digital supremacy,” explains the researcher, referring to investments of more than 700 billion euros in AI programmes in the United States (Stargate) and Europe alone.
Gámez warns of the “voracity” of devices, which demand more and more resources and generate a larger footprint, and of the rebound effects, which include the generation of packaging, electronic waste or planned obsolescence, the fixed death of the device from its conception due to outdatedness, inefficiency or expiration of components.
Efficiency is a race that major companies are involved in as part of the solution. A recent example is Ericsson, which has introduced innovations for high-performance programmable networks that improve efficiency while reducing energy consumption by up to 30% and the embodied carbon footprint by up to 50%.
However, Gámez is wary of this solution and recalls the curse posed by William Stanley Jevons two centuries ago: as the efficiency of the use of a resource improves, its consumption increases instead of decreasing. “We are moving into an unknown dimension,” he concludes.
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