EU Strategic Foresight Report: green ICT as a major topic

On 9 September, the European Commission presented its first-ever Strategic Foresight Report. The Vice-President of the Commission, Maroš Šefčovič, in charge of interinstitutional relations and foresight, was responsible for this Communication. The objective of this report is to set a long-term vision for all EU policies, meaning that all policies need to take emerging issues, future trends, scenarios and challenges into account. The green and the digital twin transitions are at the heart of this document, including the topic of green ICT. The ultimate goal is to increase Europe’s resilience (and sovereignty) in all policy areas.

Four dimensions are explored in this report:

-the social and economic dimension

-the geopolitical dimension

-the green dimension

-the digital dimension

Please find below the link to the full report and the key points relating to the digital sector.

Critical raw materials

The report underlines that “the COVID-19 crisis has revealed Europe’s overreliance on non-EU suppliers for critical raw materials”. An Action Plan on this issue was recently published (see previous briefing here). The Action Plan aims to improve Europe’s resilience by diversifying sources, recycling, and exploiting Europe’s own mineral resources. The future European Raw Materials Alliance -bringing together investors, public institutions and industrial partners- is seen as a key opportunity to achieve these goals.

Europe’s sovereignty

The EU’s openness to foreign investment needs to be balanced by the appropriate tools (investment screening etc.). Otherwise, EU strategic industries will be subject to hostile foreign takeovers, especially in the health, defence and space supply chains, as well as for critical infrastructures.

In addition, the report highlights that “the rapidly escalating US-China technological confrontation is disrupting global supply chains. It will have a direct impact on the single market and reinforce the need for the EU to pursue its technological sovereignty agenda and strengthen its key digital capacities”.

Green ICT

There was a rise in internet traffic estimated at between 10% and 30% worldwide due to the COVID-19 crisis. Interestingly, such figures remained even as countries relaxed confinement measures. This constitutes an opportunity for the development of the digital sector.

However, the need for a green ICT sector is strongly underlined in the report, which states that attention needs to be paid to the energy consumption of data technologies and the short life span of digital devices.

E-waste, including critical raw materials, is the fastest growing waste category. According to the report, material efficiency might have an even larger environmental impact than energy efficiency.

The report states that “energy consumption of computing is growing at an unsustainable rate”. Among other trends, the development of 5G is expected to lead to a growth of energy consumption due to denser networks and the rising of connected devices -at least in the first years of deployment.

The development of interoperable European cloud and edge infrastructure is crucial. For instance, transferring and storing one gigabyte of data through the internet uses between 3,1 kWh and 7 kWh, instead of 0,000005 kWh if done locally.

Next steps:

The overarching Strategic Foresight agenda will chart EU political priorities and key initiatives in Commission Work Programmes, as well as major cross-cutting issues.

If you have any questions on these issues, do not hesitate to contact Camille Dornier, Policy Manager: camille.dornier@eurosmart.com