New study by Digital Realty on digitalization, sustainability and data centers

Industry 4.0 has long since begun and the link between economic growth and the influence of digitalization is becoming increasingly clear. Through its contribution to the decarbonization of the economy, digitalization has become a necessary prerequisite in recent years in order to operate more sustainably and reduce CO2 emissions. This study sheds light on the resulting interrelationships.

It shows that a country's level of digitalization has an inverse U-shaped relationship with per capita CO2 emissions. As soon as a certain level of digitalization is reached, the trend reverses and the economies' emissions begin to fall. The study calculates this level of digitalization, at which increasing digitalization reduces annual emissions per capita.

This underlines both the importance of investing in digitalization for countries that want to reduce their emissions and a key message of this study that digitalization in combination with CO2 reduction can be a possible answer to climate change. From a Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI index) of 65.2, the quadratic influence is so great that the CO2 emissions per capita caused by digitalization are negative. In other words, digital progress offsets CO2 emissions from other sources. In 2022, the last published DESI index, Switzerland had not yet reached this threshold for reducing emissions through digitalization with a value of 59.5.

Increasing productivity and efficiency with more environmentally friendly alternatives

One day of working from home per week could reduce annual CO2 emissions across Switzerland by over 260,000 tons. A debit card transaction saves 0.8 grams of CO2 emissions compared to paying with cash. If all payments were made by debit card, this would improve the global warming potential by around 30 % compared to cash payments. Switching from in-person meetings and conferences to virtual events can reduce the carbon footprint by 94 % and energy consumption by 90 %. Transportation or the distance traveled is the most critical aspect from an environmental perspective.

"Digitalization is not only a driver of economic growth, but also a prerequisite for sustainable business. Thanks to high-performance data center infrastructures, the economy is increasingly able to make use of services that have a smaller ecological footprint and cause fewer opportunity costs," says Yves Zischek, Managing Director Digital Realty Switzerland.

The key findings of the study summarized:

• Advancing digitalization leads to falling CO2 emissions
• Data centers are essential for successful digitalization
• Only with an optimal data center infrastructure can digitalization be successfully shaped and digitally driven sustainability succeed

Source: ch.digitalrealty.com