Assessing GHG Benefits Induced by ICT Services in Practice: A Case Study and Resulting Challenges
- DOI
- 10.2991/ict4s-16.2016.4How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- ICT enablement; enabling effect; abatement potential; avoided emissions; ICT as part of the solution; ICT for sustainability; gas leakage discovery; ontological uncertainty
- Abstract
High expectations are placed on the ability of ICT to play an important role in reducing GHG emissions, now and in the future. Several calculations of such benefits were put forward over the last years, usually performed by the industry. Their methods and assumptions, however, remained often unspecified, and the assessments frequently led to hardly plausible claims. In this paper, we present the results of applying a stricter approach to one specific service - the detection of gas leakages in the US through gas sensors installed on Google street view cars, together with an advanced algorithm for translating the collected data to useful information on the location and magnitude of gas leakages. We further discuss a new set of four practical challenges for such assessments that were identified during this exercise, and which are new compared to previous theoretical work: the allocation between ICT and non-ICT sectors, practical challenges in defining the baseline, the usually polluted indirect data at hand, and issues of the generalisation to society-wide potentials. We then discuss to which extent these challenges can be addressed, and which of them are of a more fundamental nature.
- Copyright
- © 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Vlad Coroama AU - Mattias Höjer PY - 2016/08 DA - 2016/08 TI - Assessing GHG Benefits Induced by ICT Services in Practice: A Case Study and Resulting Challenges BT - Proceedings of ICT for Sustainability 2016 PB - Atlantis Press SP - 29 EP - 35 SN - 2352-538X UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/ict4s-16.2016.4 DO - 10.2991/ict4s-16.2016.4 ID - Coroama2016/08 ER -