Bern University of Applied Sciences creates professorship for digitalization and sustainability

Home offices reduce climate-damaging commuting, streaming platforms replace the production and transport of physical media, and artificial intelligence increases energy efficiency in industry. Digital technologies offer numerous opportunities for a more sustainable society. The Global e-Sustainability Initiative estimated that digital technologies could avoid up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030. "But these potentials do not materialize by themselves," warns Jan Bieser. "Despite the rapid pace of digitalization, further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise."

The reason for this is, for example, the great hunger for data and computing power, which will increase even further with the breakthrough of artificial intelligence. Video streaming alone is also estimated to cause over 300 megatons of CO2 per year, more than the country of Spain. In addition, digitalization could also lead to an increase in climate-damaging consumption, Bieser elaborates. "Digital products and services are convenient and accessible around the clock."

Reconciling digitization and sustainable development 

At the institute Public Sector Transformation at BFH, Prof. Dr. Jan Bieser will explore the question of how digitization and sustainable development can be reconciled. There he strengthens the Digital Sustainability Lab in the area of research and services and teaches, among other things, in the interdisciplinary BFH master's program Circular Innovation and Sustainability.

For more than nine years, Jan Bieser has been working at the intersection of digitalization and sustainability in science and business. Before joining BFH, he researched and taught at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Zurich, where he also earned his doctorate.

Jan Bieser is a member of the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich and was a Fellow of the Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow of the World Economic Forum WEF. Numerous research reports have been published by him, among others in cooperation with the business association Swico, with Swisscom, Swisscleantech, WWF or Bitkom. He was also lead author of the University of Zurich's first sustainability report. Previously, Bieser worked in the area of IT and sustainability at Detecon Consulting and at IBM. For him, it is clear: "The potential of digitization must be systematically exploited if we want to achieve the goal of sustainable development. Together with the public sector and business, we therefore want to find out how this can be achieved."

"An important, strategic step"

For BFH, which has committed itself to sustainable development and a humane digital transformation in its Strategy 2023-26, the new professorship is a strategically important step, explains Prof. Dr. Matthias Stürmer, Head of the Institute Public Sector Transformation: "In the Digital Sustainability Lab, we already have a high level of expertise in the area of digital sustainability - i.e. in accessing and using digital knowledge. With Jan Bieser, we can now also cover the topic of sustainable digitization and, for example, deepen research questions around artificial intelligence and sustainability."

Source: BFH