Environmental Impacts of ICT: Present and Future

........................................................................................................................................... i Sammanfattning .............................................................................................................................. ii Preface ............................................................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv List of papers ................................................................................................................................... v List of figures ................................................................................................................................ viii List of tables ................................................................................................................................. viii List of abbreviations ....................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 1.1 Research background .................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Aim .............................................................................................................................. 2 1.3 Scope ........................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Outline of the thesis .................................................................................................... 4 Scientific context ..................................................................................................................... 5 2 2.1 Sustainability and environmental assessment ............................................................ 5 2.2 ICT for Sustainability .................................................................................................... 6 2.3 Futures studies ............................................................................................................ 7 Methods ................................................................................................................................ 10 3 3.1 LCA ............................................................................................................................. 10 3.1.1 Scope ......................................................................................................................... 11 3.1.2 Functional unit........................................................................................................... 11 3.1.3 Allocation ................................................................................................................... 11 3.1.4 Impact assessment .................................................................................................... 12 3.2 Literature review ....................................................................................................... 12 3.3 Workshops ................................................................................................................. 14 3.3.1 SAFS development ..................................................................................................... 15 3.3.2 Assessment ................................................................................................................ 16 Results and discussion ........................................................................................................... 17 4 4.1 What are the environmental impacts of current ICT solutions in a life cycle perspective? .............................................................................................................................. 17 4.2 How can environmental impacts of future ICT societies be assessed? .................... 25 4.3 What are the environmental risks and opportunities of future ICT societies? ........ 28