Title: Pr
1Impact and effects of ICT systems approaches and
results Budapest, 2003 Yves Loerincik, Sangwon
Suh, Christophe Matas, Olivier Jolliet, Jean-Marc
Revaz
2ICT systems
- ICT systems Internet, computer networks,
monitoring systems etc. - Complexity of the equipment
- Influence of services
- Impact or benefits of the system and indirect
effects - Hidden impacts
- Approaches
- Process, Input-Output and hybrid LCA
3Challenges
- To point out where are the main impacts in order
to be as efficient as possible in reducing them - To understand the impacts and the benefits
linked to the use of ICT systems and the indirect
effects - ? Reducing the impacts and promoting the benefits
4- The case study of the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (EPFL) Internet infrastructure
5Step 1 Inventory of the necessary equipment for
the Internet infrastructure at the EPFL
The functional unit Internet infrastructure
during one year
6Corresponding annual costs
7Non-renewable embodied primary energy, comparison
between use and production phase (absolute value)
8Comparison between Input-Output and process LCA
9Remarks
- PCs are dominating (control unit (cpu) screen)
- Contribution of the switches and servers are
significant - Use phase is in most of the cases dominating
- The embodied energy during production is
significant - IO LCA value is two times the PLCA result
10Comparison of various case study for the
non-renewable primary embodied energy of computers
11Different levels of comprehensiveness
Yellow not normally considered in a PLCA
12Remark
- We only took into account the necessary physical
equipment of the Internet infrastructure. But, if
we have a closer look (see next slide), the main
expenses related to a computer network come from
other sectors than equipment (for example
software, maintenance, management, etc).
13If the boundaries are extended
Management Costs Administration 34 End user
downtime 35 Co-worker time
14 Application developmt 14 Disaster
prevention 5 Disaster recovery 12
14Annual Costs, EPFL Internet
15Considering the other expenses and using an IO LCA
TCO Total Cost of Ownership
16New approach
- Start with the EPFL expenses
- Allocation to Internet (time, value, space, )
- Input-Output LCA ? first screening
- Hybrid analysis ? more precisions
17EPFL expenses allocated to the Internet
infrastructure
hardware
IT-services
maintenance
labor
buildings
electricity
18First screening results (IO LCA) for the CO2
emission for one year
19- The monitoring system of the city of Martigny
20The problematic
- - Cities are confronted with urging problems
related to evolutions and recent events. - The major part of the Worlds population is
living in the cities. - For urban network managers the challenge is to
run a good working infrastructure with respect to
the citizen needs.
21The approach
Urbistic Urban management Systemic The city
is composed by networks, that are systems, time
and space dependent water, gas, sewage,
electricity, district heating or cooling, cabled
TV, telecommunication (voice, data, image),
transportation and so on.
22Monitoring the flows
Measuring the flows within the
city Understanding the interactions and the
dynamic behaviour of the whole urban system
Reacting Actions aiming at improving these
phenomena and coordinations can be defined only
if the first two steps have been taken.
23Description of the system
Martigny, Switzerland, 15'000 inhabitants. Using
microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the MAN
(metropolitan area network) produces every hour a
total of more than 300 measures of consumption
24Measuring station
- Measurements
- Water
- Electricity
- Gas
- District heating
25Benefits
- Examples of actions
- Analysis of the gas and district heating
consuming facilities a systematic over sizing of
the equipment was detected in 90 of the studied
cases - Electricity consumption of the heating plant the
global electrical consumption has decreased in a
significant way - Inadequate watering detection, the urban
utilities has defered the investments for a new
reservoir and save more than 300000 m3 a year - dynamic tariffing
26Comparison Infrastructure versus benefits
27Comparison Infrastructure versus benefits
28Conclusion
- Input-Output approach enables a rapid screening
- Process and hybrid approach can be used to go
more in details, take into account
particularities (for instance regional
characteristics) - Impact of services can be evaluated
- Impact of indirect effects can be evaluated
(provided that we know what they are)
29Future work
- To carry on with the hybrid analysis to have
more precise results - To better evaluate the impact of service
- Work together with social scientists to better
evaluate the indirect effects and their
corresponding environmental effect - Forecast the environmental effect of future
technologies
30- 11th SETAC LCA Case Studies Symposium
- 2003 European Meeting of the International
Society for Industrial Ecology - 21st Swiss LCA Discussion Forum
- Environmental Assessment in the Information
Society - 3rd 4th december 2003, Lausanne
- http//www.setaceu.org, yves.loerincik_at_epfl.ch