Workshop: Bridging Sustainable Consumption and ICT

This workshop is part of the ICT4S (ICT for Sustainability) conference in Stockholm, 24-28 June 2024.

Summary

Consumption patterns are increasingly influenced by the ubiquitous presence of ICT in our daily lives. As digital services are considered less carbon-intensive that most other consumption categories, increased usage of ICT can mean increased dematerialization of consumption, and thus overall lower carbon emissions, and lower resource use. However, ICT-adoption also has the potential to make activities cheaper, less time consuming, and easier. It has been suggested that on balance, increased ICT use leads to increased energy use, due to increased economic activity.

This workshop aims to bring together academics and professionals in the fields of Sustainable Consumption and Information and Communication Technologies. The primary objective is to foster community building and stimulate passionate discussions about emerging topics related to ICT and consumption. An additional aim is to plan for a follow-up workshop at an international conference on sustainable consumption in Lund, April 8-10, 2025, preferably in the form of a special session on ICT4S.

We invite abstracts relevant to sustainable consumption and ICT from those who would wish to present ongoing research or research ideas. Participants are welcome to join also without submitting an abstract to participate in the workshop.

Come and help shape the future of integrating ICT- and sustainable consumption research.

Submit your abstract

We invite abstracts relevant to sustainable consumption and ICT from those who would wish to present ongoing research or research ideas. We want to highlight that this session focuses on ongoing and planned research, so no results are needed to present. Instead, we want to encourage presentations that give insights into current and future research.

Please submit your abstract as word- or pdf-document, no longer than 500 words, to matthias [dot] lehner [at] iiiee [dot] lu [dot] se (matthias[dot]lehner[at]iiiee[dot]lu[dot]se) 

DEADLINE: June 1, 2024

(Only ICT4S conference participants can take part in this workshop.)

Workshop set-up

Short introduction

Lightning talks - short presentations on ongoing research

Discussion session - focused on identifying research gaps

Drafting session - develop session(s) for the SCORAI 2025 conference in Lund

Conclusion

Organizers

Matthias Lehner, IIIEE - Matthias is an Associate Professor at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University. His research focuses on Sustainable Consumption and Sustainable Business Models. He is currently conducting research into the lifestyle impact of increasing digitalization of day-to-day life. Matthias is active in both Mistra Sustainable Consumption and the EU 1.5°C lifestyle project. Since January 2023, Matthias has led the effort to host the 2025 SCORAI Europe conference in Lund. Contact: matthias [dot] lehner [at] iiiee [dot] lu [dot] se (matthias[dot]lehner[at]iiiee[dot]lu[dot]se) 

Göran Finnveden, KTH – Göran is a professor in Environmental Strategic Analysis at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and the program director of the Mistra Sustainable Consumption program. He is also leading projects on environmental impacts of digitalization. Contact: goran [dot] finnveden [at] abe [dot] kth [dot] se (goran[dot]finnveden[at]abe[dot]kth[dot]se) 
 

Background

Current consumption patterns are clearly unsustainable. In order to reach the Paris agreement on climate change and other sustainability targets, technology development is necessary but not enough, also consumption patterns must change (e.g. Akenji et al, 2021, Fauré et al, 2019, Morfelt et al, 2023). Emissions associated with consumption are significantly disproportionally distributed with richer people causing significantly higher emissions (Oxfam & IEEP, 2021). At the same time poorer people in many countries need to increase their consumption in order to reach sustainability goals associated with good health, access to food, water and energy.
Sustainable Consumption is a growing research area. It addresses among others questions regarding how consumption levels and patterns can be adjusted to the pressing needs emerging from climate change, and what a lifestyle compatible with a 1.5-degree target can look like. Large research programs are currently ongoing on both national and European levels (e.g. Mistra Sustainable Consumption, or the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project). Some are specifically focused on digitalization and sustainable consumption (e.g. DISCo).
Consumption patterns are increasingly influenced by the ubiquitous presence of ICT in our daily lives. From e-commerce, to marketing on social networks, and new digital services that result in new consumption experiences and replace existing ones, ICT continues to have a disruptive impact on consumption patterns. With its profound impact on all aspects of modern life, ICT is rapidly turning into a major shaping force of consumption, and its impact on overall consumption patterns is crucial to understand to achieve sustainable consumption.
Increased digitalization of our lives has resulted in spending power and time being redirected towards digital services; a trend that appears certain to continue. However, the impact of this behavior change remains rather poorly understood. The impact of increased usage of ICT on an individual’s life can either result in financial and/or time savings or increased spending/time usage (Buhl et al., 2017). 
Increased usage of ICT can mean increased dematerialization of consumption, and thus overall lower carbon emissions, and lower resource use. Several existing trends in consumption point in this direction, most notably digitally connected products, servitization, and virtualization. Digitalization can enable service-based business models or product service systems that increasingly de-emphasize the material product component in a business model. Virtualization can go even further and replace physical products with virtual ones. Even in cases where consumption is not first and foremost digital, it can play a significant role to reduce the materiality of consumption. (Lehner et al., 2023). Digital services as a consumption category are considered less carbon-intensive than most other consumption categories (Bieser & Hilty, 2020) and increased spending on ICT products and decreased spending on other products can therefore lead to decreased overall impacts (Joyce et al, 2019). Malmodin & Bergmark (2015) find that the increased adoption of ICT services in society can achieve significant overall societal carbon emission reductions, with minimal increased direct emissions from growing adoption of ICT (Malmodin & Lundén, 2018).
However, ICT-adoption also has the potential to make activities cheaper, less time consuming, and easier. It is well-documented that financial savings often lead to significant rebound effects (e.g. Font Vivanco et al., 2022). Besides the economic rebound effects, increased ICT use can also lead to a number of other indirect effects (Börjesson Rivera et al 2014). Despite the evidence for lower direct emissions as a consequence of ICT-adoption, it is therefore less clear to what degree ICT-adoption helps to decrease the overall carbon footprint of lifestyles. It has been suggested that on balance, increased ICT use leads to increased energy use (Lange et al, 2022). From a climate change perspective this is crucial, as ultimately only total carbon emissions are of relevance to achieving the Paris goal of limiting climate change to 1.5 °C warming.
ICT might also reinforce existing trends for efficiency gains to be redirected into the economy and thus contributing to an overall increase in carbon emissions. Bieser & Hilty (2020) discuss this possibility in terms of increased pace of life due to increased usage of ICT. Some studies indicate, for example, that increased usage of ICT results in both more and longer travels (Caldarola & Sorrell, 2022; Cerqueira et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2020). This then would mean that financial and time savings from ICT usage most likely will not result in reduced lifestyle carbon emissions, but simply more productive individuals, with increased economic activity and increased carbon emissions as a consequence.
This workshop aims to bring together academics and professionals in the fields of Sustainable Consumption and Information and Communication Technologies. The primary objective is to foster community building and stimulate passionate discussions about emerging topics related to ICT and consumption. An additional aim is to plan for a follow-up workshop at an international conference on sustainable consumption in Lund, April 8-10, 2025, preferably in the form of a special session on ICT4S. This conference is jointly organized by SCORAI Europe (Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative Europe), IIIEE (International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics) at Lund University, the research program Mistra Sustainable Consumption and the EU 1.5o-degree Lifestyles project.

References

Akenji,L., Bengtsson,M., Toivio,V.,Lettenmeier, M., Fawcett,T., Parag, Y., Saheb,Y., Coote,A., Spangenberg,J.H., Capstick, S.,Gore, T., Coscieme,L.,Wackernagel,M., Kenner, D. (2021).1.5-Degree Lifestyles: Towards A Fair Consumption Space for All. Hot or Cool Institute, Berlin
Bieser, J. C. T., & Hilty, L. M. (2020). Conceptualizing the impact of information and communication technology on individual time and energy use. Telematics and Informatics, 49, 101375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101375
Buhl, J., Geibler, J. von, Echternacht, L., & Linder, M. (2017). Rebound effects in Living Labs: Opportunities for monitoring and mitigating re-spending and time use effects in user integrated innovation design. Journal of Cleaner Production, 151, 592–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.001
Börjesson Rivera, M., Håkansson, C., Svenfelt, Å. and Finnveden, G. (2014): Including second order effects in environmental assessments of ICT. Environmental Modelling and Software. 56, 105-115.
Caldarola, B., & Sorrell, S. (2022). Do teleworkers travel less? Evidence from the English National Travel Survey. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 159, 282–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2022.03.026
Cerqueira, E. D. V., Motte-Baumvol, B., Chevallier, L. B., & Bonin, O. (2020). Does working from home reduce CO2 emissions? An analysis of travel patterns as dictated by workplaces. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 83, 102338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2020.102338
Fauré, E., Finnveden, G. and Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2019): Four low-carbon futures for a Swedish society beyond GDP-growth. Journal of Cleaner Production, 236, 117595.
Font Vivanco, D., Freire-González, J., Galvin, R., Santarius, T., Walnum, H. J., Makov, T., & Sala, S. (2022). Rebound effect and sustainability science: A review. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 26(4), 1543–1563. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13295
Kim, S., Filimonau, V., & Dickinson, J. E. (2020). The technology-evoked time use rebound effect and its impact on pro-environmental consumer behaviour in tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 28(2), 164–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1643870
Joyce, P.J., Finnveden, G., Håkansson, C. and Wood, R. (2019): A multi-impact analysis of changing ICT consumption patterns for Sweden and the EU: Indirect rebound effects and evidence of decoupling. Journal of Cleaner Production, 211, 1154-1161.
Lehner, M., Luth Richter, J., & Mont, O. (2023). Digitalization: a potential tool for sustainable consumption? In: Egan-Wyer, C., Bäckström, K., & Samsioe, E. (eds). The Future of Consumption - How Technology, Sustainability and AI will Revolutionize Retail. Palgrave Macmillan
Malmodin, J., & Bergmark, P. (2015). Exploring the effect of ICT solutions on GHG emissions in 2030: EnviroInfo and ICT for Sustainability 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark. https://doi.org/10.2991/ict4s-env-15.2015.5
Malmodin, J., & Lundén, D. (2018). The Energy and Carbon Footprint of the Global ICT and E&M Sectors 2010–2015. Sustainability, 10(9), Article 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093027
Morfeldt, J., Larsson, J., Andersson, D., Johansson, D.J.A, Rootzén, J., Hult, C., Karlsson, I. (2023): Emission pathways and mitigation options for achieving consumption-based climate targets in Sweden. Communications Earth & Environment, 4, 342.   
Oxfam International and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (2021). Carbon Inequality in 2030 – Per capita consumption emissions and the 1.5°C goal.