ICT ENSURE, Club of Rome - ESC workshop in Stockholm

	Stockholm: ICT and Climate Change November 16th, 2009: The EU project ICT-ENSURE and The Club of Rome - European Support Centre invited during the Swedish EU Presidency to a workshop on ICT and Climate Change. The event was hosted by Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications The following information is available for download: programme abstracts background workshop report
	WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION Anders Hektor Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications Introduction Anders Hektor welcomed the participants on behalf of the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications. He outlined the work of the Ministry during the Swedish EU Presidency and presented the report "A Green Knowledge Society". Lisa Maurer TU Graz Welcome Lisa Maurer, Manager of the ICT-ENSURE project, introduced the project and outlined the scientific and network building activities within the 7th framework programme of the EC. She referred to earlier workshops of the project and gave an outlook about future events. Thomas Schauer The Club of Rome - European Support Centre Welcome Thomas Schauer, Director of The Club of Rome - European Support Centre, outlined the work of the Club of Rome, which made use of information and communication technologies since its beginnings: Limits to Growth by Donnella Meadows, Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers was built on secenarios calculated by a computer model of global resource consumption. KEYNOTE Anders Wijkman Vice President of the Club of Rome Copenhagen is not the End In the keynote speech, Anders Wijkman outlined that there is presently an interconnected set of crises: the financial crisis, the climate crisis, The ecosystem crisis – the overutilization of major ecosystems in the world and peak oil.... Science calls for a radical reform of the human-nature relationship: Today the assumption is that there are limitless resources in Nature and an infinite capacity to absorb waste products. Indefinite physical expansion of the economy on a finite planet is impossible. The conventional growth model has to change; Today growth is equal to increased use of energy and materials. This will not work in a world of 8 or 9 billion people. We are already borrowing from future generations. Resource use is at the core of the challenge – Resource productivity a primary priority. The presentation is available for download. ICT AND TRAVEL SUBSTITUTION David Wortley Serious Games Institute Climate Change and Technology Enhanced Collaboration and Networking David Wortley's presentation examined the positive and negative impacts of collaboration and networking technologies on the environment and explored the development trends in virtual meeting spaces and how they are likely to influence the future travel and transport related climate changes. Technologies such as video conferencing, virtual classroom and immersive 3D virtual world environments have all been heralded as tools which can substantially reduce the need for face to face meetings and their associated travel costs and carbon footprint but the potential positive impact of all these technologies has yet to be properly realised. This presentation looked at the reasons behind this and explored the kind of global strategic measures that might be needed to ensure that these uses of technology produce maximum environmental benefits. The presentation is available for download. Peter Arnfalk Lund University Implementation of Virtual Meetings in Swedish Organisations For nearly three year the Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket) have led a project called "Resfri" (or approx. "Travel Free" in English). The objective has been to develop an independent information and support service for Swedish organisations on Virtual Meetings, i.e. audio-, web-, and videoconferencing. The reason is that despite the technical advancement and availability of tools for collaboration and communication at a distance, lack of knowledge and routines and incentives to use these still prevail. An increased use of virtual meetings in an organisation leads to reduction in business travel, which in turns, reduced environmental impacts. The presentation is available for download. ELECTRONIC VERSUS PAPER BASED COMMUNICATION Göran Finnveden, Åsa Moberg KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm Green Media? Mr. Göran Finnveden gave the speech on behalf of Ms. Åsa Moberg. At the Centre for Sustainable Communications, Media and Sustainabiltiy is one of the research areas. The possibilities for new media solutions to facilitate sustainable development are being studied. Recently, an environmental assessment of paper books and e-books was performed. Using a life-cycle perspective, a literary hardback book was compared to an e-book read from an e-book reader. This study indicate that the environmental preference for electronic media is not always the case. To justify the environmental impacts of the production of an e-book reader, in comparison to paper books, a number of e-books need to be read. Thus, user habits will affect the results. The comparison differed between different impact categories, and there is need for further research e.g. into toxicological impacts when electronic devices are studied. Anders Christian Schmidt FORCE Technology Environmental Impacts from Digital Solutions as an Alternative to Conventional Paper-Based Solutions The study presented examines the environmental consequences of changing from conventional distribution of automatically generated documents by ordinary mail to electronic distribution using the e-Boks system. The method used in the study is a consequential Life Cycle Assessment, examining the processes affected by a change of way of distribution for the whole life cycle of the documents. The calculations concern all 98.5 million documents distributed in the e-Boks system in 2008. The study focuses on global (climate change) and regional (e.g. acidification and smog formation) environmental impacts, together with consumption of fossil and renewable energy. The results show that the contribution to the examined impacts is smaller in the e-Boks system. With the given preconditions there is an unambiguous benefit for the environment with a change to e-Boks distribution of automatically generated documents. The contribution to global warming is reduced with more than 1650 tons CO2-equivalents, corresponding to the annual emissions of more than 170 Danes, and a similar picture is seen also for other types of impacts. The presentation is available for download. ENERGY EFFICIENCY, LOW CARBON ICT Marc Banks Deutsche Bank AG 8 Commitments to an Eco-Efficient IT Marc Banks, Global Lead Eco-Efficient IT, gave an introduction to Deutsche Bank, including its climate strategy and an overview of its IT infrastructure. In his presentation he focused on Deutsche Bank's "8 Commitments to an Eco-Efficient IT", one of the Bank's key energy efficiency initiatives which will contribute to the overall target of reducing the company's global CO2 emissions by 20 percent annually compared with the 2007 reference year and putting all business operations on a climate-neutral footing from 2013 onwards. He outlined how Deutsche Bank is formalising and structuring the programme of work and is addressing some of these commitments - an overview of the CO2 neutral commitment, Eco-Supplier and Eco-Recycling initiatives, and a focus on Data Centre and End User technologies. Marc then laid out some of the challenges in providing an Eco-Efficient IT - organisational, standards and technical, and made suggestions for further research. The presentation is available for download. Christoph Derndorfer Club of Rome - European Support Centre, One Laptop per Child (Austria) Energy Consumption of Desktop and Notebook Computers According to some estimates the IT industry is said to be responsible for approximately 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Also in Austria desktop PCs and notebooks today account for roughly 2.2 percent of an average household's energy consumption. It is therefore obvious that personal computers are a significant contributor to climate change. Within this context one of the most ambitious projects working on lowering a computer's energy consumption is One Laptop per Child which designs laptops to be used as educational tools for children around the world. Given that the XO-1 laptop (more widely known as the 100 dollar laptop) is often used in rural areas where electricity isn't readily and reliably available reducing the machine's power consumption was a major concern during its design. As a result the XO-1 only consumes 6W during average use and as little as 3W when reading electronic books. Therefore the contribution to climate change is significantly less than it would be if regular desktop or laptops were handed out to the 1,000,000 million children who currently use an XO-1. The presentation is available for download. Waldo Vanderhaeghen The Carbon Balance of the ICT-Sector In 2009 the European Policy Centre ran a Task Force on ICT-based innovation for a smarter, greener economy. The contribution presented conclusions of the Task Force’s work. It provided recommendations for policy- and business-led initiatives which include initiatives on the roll-out of for software tools for carbon accounting, more efficient logistics, wider deployment of Smart Grids and buildings, and for integrating innovations at the city and regional levels. However, most importantly, the Task Force has identified the need for an integrated approach at the EU-level, in which synergies between initiatives can be exploited. Crucially, the Task Force identifies what needs to come next if we want to achieve our ambitious climate change goals. If we do not act now to provide the framework and infrastructure which is needed, such as carbon accounting and smart grids, we can not achieve the EU’s targets. The presentation is available for download. EDUCATION, NETWORKING AND CAMPAIGNING RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE Björn Bertoft Global Marshall Plan Initiative - Plant for the Planet Stop Talking - Start Planting. Children Mobilizing on Internet Mobilizing the internet crowds for different issues is the buzz of today. President Obama used it, all kinds of NGO’s are using it, smashing-guitar-airlines has to give up for it and a large number of players still seems to believe that top-down is in power. 11 year old Felix Finkbeiner’s dream to save his own future by planting one million trees in each country of the world with the help of other children around the world is moving on. While the grown-ups keep talking, Felix and his friends are actually planting trees. They are also mobilizing on internet so that more children can adopt the ideas of Felix and use them where they live, and start planting on their own soil. Stop Talking – Start Planting is a tool box with a planting- and education package made by children for children. It covers children's discussions, seminars on climate justice and planting sessions. With a little help from grown-ups the tool box is easily transformed into pure action. The presentation is available for download. Matti Penttilä VTT ICT Web-communities as carriers of attitude change ICT has a pivotal role in climate change. ICT improves efficiency in production, which is eaten up by re-bound effect. ICT encourages citizens towards more virtual consumption patterns, which is eaten up by increased consumption. ICT enables better monitoring and control of emissions, but the direction and force of control has to be decided by policy makers. The effect of ICT on sustainable trends in general and on climate change especially has been mixed with all other factors the way that the resulting of ICT's effect is contradictory. The Internet has been lately, rapidly auto-structured as network of communities. These communities have challenged commercial and political structures, even authorities. They are capable to promote new practises, new patterns and new trends globally in weeks. "Limits to growth" had its role but limited effect in 35 years - networked societies can bring the effect in 35 days. The presentation is available for download. Helga Veigl Committee on Futures Research Hungarian Academy of Sciences IT Applications in Educating Sustainable Development In the last 10 years with the appearance of information technologies the education tools has been changed: there are certain programs that are used with university students (such as Fish Bank, futures workshop techniques for building consensus in regional foresights, online Delphi researches on selective collection of waste, online modelling tools for climate change, World in Figures database, weak signal research etc.). In elementary and secondary school also there are new tools upcoming to get climate change closer to students. In the presentation we show how these tools are used, and what are the main lessons drawn from that. The presentation is available for download. Karin Ulbrich Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ Transforming the ALARM Project into Educational Software The project PRONAS - Projections of Nature for Schools (www.pronas.ufz.de) – addresses the interface between science and education. Results of biodiversity research – in particular of the Integrated Project ALARM (www.alarmproject.net) have been made available for school students in educational software which is freely accessible via the Internet. The program brings into focus the topics Climate change, Pollinators, Invasive species and Environmental chemicals. Projections of potential habitats of hundreds of species living in Europe are presented and explained for the three basis scenarios SEDG (Sustainable European Development Goal), BAMBU (Business As Might Be Usual) and GRAS (GRowth Applied Strategy). These projections have been calculated for the time period until 2100. The educational software includes user interfaces for scenarios and habitat modelling. The presentation is available for download.

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