EAGER: CAS-Climate: Research Coordination Network on the Indirect Environmental/Energy Impacts of Digitalization

Environmental Law Institute

Investigators

Abstract

This project is designed to build a community of researchers with a focus on improving society's understanding of the indirect energy and environmental (E&E) impacts of the digital economy. There is a slowly increasing body of research that seeks to understand and quantify the direct E&E impacts of digitalization, including the increase or reduction of energy use, emissions arising from the use of devices (and/or their supporting infrastructure), and environmental impacts from operating infrastructure such as data centers. However, far more complicated are estimates of digitalization's indirect E&E impacts. Indirect impacts may include those associated with the substitution of digital for physical products, or rebound effects that occur if savings (in time or money) from digitally-mediated behaviors induce energy-intensive activities (like short term rental platforms increasing long distance travel). Ensuring the long-term sustainability of digital infrastructure and the human behaviors it enables will require greater research efforts at the intersection of multiple and often disparate disciplines along with increased scientific cooperation across national borders. This RCN seeks to close disciplinary and knowledge gaps, increase the quality and quantity of research, and begin to grow a new field. Project goals are to: increase needed multi-disciplinary interactions, especially between the physical and behavioral sciences; facilitate greater collaboration between U.S. and European researchers; identify knowledge gaps and high-value research; improve scholarly impact; and advance work to secure greater research support. By fostering collaboration between disciplines and providing a better sense of research priorities, a research coordination network can be instrumental in leveraging funds from existing and new sources to grow support of research in the topic area. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.