DPhil the Future: Carbon footprints and communications technologies – adjusting to the ‘new normal’

Carolyn Ten Holter, Doctoral Student and Research Assistant, looks at the way we work, the research that we do, and the resources we use can help to mitigate the climate crisis.  

The climate crisis is now a fixture on the agendas of national and local governments, industry, and research institutions. Its critical importance is reflected in the priorities of funders and researchers, and in numerous initiatives across the University and at a college level.  

At University level there is now an Environmental Sustainability Subcommittee (ESS) of the Planning and Resource Allocation Committee (PRAC), chaired by David Prout, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Planning and Resources. The ESS has representatives from across the University and student body and set targets in March 2021 for the University to achieve net-zero carbon, and biodiversity net gain, by 2035. These new objectives show the importance the climate question has come to assume in the priorities of institutions across the globe.  

As well as ensuring we examine our own impact on climate, these issues have also contributed to a new research agenda across many of the University’s divisions. In 2020 the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) began to highlight the importance of research into digital sustainability. A community of ICT researchers proposed an additional theme for an EPSRC call for proposals for Digital Economy Sustainability. EPSRC developed these priority areas, one of which - ‘Sustainable Digital Society’, was completely new for EPSRC.  

Within the Department we were delighted to receive funding for a project proposal within this Sustainable Digital Society priority, co-led by Professor Marina Jirotka and the University of Lancaster. The PARIS-DE project, which will be located at the new Responsible Technology Institute focuses on the carbon emissions of ICT technology with the goal of ensuring alignment with Paris targets to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The carbon emissions of ICT, as the most optimistic estimates suggest, will at best flatten out, so a profound change of course is necessary in order to reduce ICT emissions in a meaningful way.  

This project is looking at ways to ensure that future innovations in the digital economy are Paris-compliant by design. It aims to achieve this through a systemic approach to developing a digital sustainability framework featuring consideration of evidence and reflections around responsible innovation. The framework will be instantiated in the cloud as a virtual design ‘lab’, featuring reusable digital tools for assessing carbon impacts in balance with social impacts for digital economy projects. The project will build on the rich heritage of socio-technical design and extend it to embed sustainability and consideration of planetary boundaries.  

Additionally, as part of its own sustainability effort, the PARIS-DE project will be the first to our knowledge that will measure its own carbon footprint. Within the project there are funds allocated to work with a climate-impact measurement company that will assess the project in terms of its carbon mitigation efforts (such as reducing flights, cutting down on purchase of hardware, travel and conference attendance).

Although these items can be difficult to measure, and there is not a consensus around, for example, how and where to measure ‘embedded’ carbon, the project will document its procedures and processes in order to provide a benchmark and potentially a framework for other projects to use. These sustainability concerns and records will form one of the project’s outputs as well as the outcomes of the research effort.   DPhil student Carolyn Ten Holter

The PARIS-DE project is the latest development in the work of Marina’s research group, which is focussed on the application of responsible innovation principles in numerous disciplines and research fields. Marina was part of the Advisory Board responsible for the inclusion of sustainability within the Digital Economy theme at EPSRC and has been invited to give numerous conference keynotes over the last two years that focus on sustainability questions. Some of this reflects the work carried out for the 100+ Brilliant Women conference in 2019, which remains Oxford’s only certified carbon-neutral conference. This event not only highlighted the importance of not creating carbon in the first place (as opposed to seeking to offset it), but also the disproportionate impact of flights on the carbon footprint. The organisers gathered details during the registration process of every attendee’s starting location, mode of travel, class of flight, and accommodation. The 26 flights that participants took to attend the conference generated 96% of the conference’s total carbon, highlighting how crucial this issue is for academic conferences.  

Going forward we are also looking at how our ways of working can change. During the last year and a half, as conferences have been forced to move to online delivery, the academic community has had the opportunity to experiment with new modes of operation, giving keynotes and panels from home, participating in workshops virtually, and delivering papers over online platforms. Any attendee of one of these virtual conferences will know that they have advantages and disadvantages. Learning a new platform or spending an entire day on these online platforms can be draining and unrewarding, and despite the best efforts of platform developers, it is nearly impossible to replicate the social and ‘serendipitous encounter’ elements of in-person conferences. On the other hand, it is possible to listen to a keynote speaker giving a talk many miles away while, for instance, fitting this around day-to-day activities, such as caring responsibilities or other meetings crucial to the operation of projects.  

These factors, combined with carbon and budget savings, may make the availability of ‘virtual’ conference attendance likely for the foreseeable future. With improved data becoming available on digital tools and services such as streaming, from projects like PARIS-DE, we will also be better able to judge the relative impacts of virtual versus in-person conference carbon creation, and to factor this in as part of a wider understanding of the research community’s responsibility towards sustainability goals. Ultimately, objectives such as the University’s targets for carbon reduction and biodiversity gain are dependent on the availability of good data, agreed standards, and collective endeavour.

Through these initiatives, and many others, we are looking at how the way we work, the research that we do, and the resources we use can help to mitigate the climate crisis.