One of the main priorities of the European Commission is the implementation of the digital strategy which aims to change people’s lives through digital technology, while helping to achieve its target of a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. The Commission encourages, in parallel, the data strategy and the European green deal in order to make sure that new technologies respect environmental protection.

Two days ago, the European Commission presented the White Paper for AI and the European Data Strategy. These initiatives are in line with the need to put people first in developing technology and deploy technology in the real economy.

How the Data strategy will support the European Green Deal?

It is true that digital technologies are a crucial support for the Green Deal. For example, they can increase energy efficiency by tracking when and where electricity is most needed. The ICT sector needs to undergo its own green transformation. Data centres and telecommunications need to become more energy efficient, use more renewable sources and should become climate neutral by 2030.According to the European Commission the total electrical consumption of data centres and telecommunication networks is increased to 3.8% in 2020, compared to 2.6% in 2011. It is predicted that by 2020, data centres will amount to ICT’s largest share of global electricity production at 33 %, Their growing energy consumption has generated calls for the European Commission to shift its focus from ICT products towards regulating the energy consumption and GHG emissions of data centres and telecommunication equipment.

Considering these facts, there is a need to reduce the carbon footprint of the ICT sector, eventually making the ICT sector carbon-neutral. This can only be achieved by adopting the circular economy model in the full ICT product life cycle and by developing measures to monitor the ICT carbon footprint.

That’s why the EU is examining how the sustainable finance can contribute in order to mobilise finance for sustainable growth. Sustainable finance is the provision of finance to investments taking into account environmental, social and governance considerations.

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