• News
• Borderstep at the ICT4S in Toronto

Borderstep is invited to give a presentation on innovation alliances for sustainable ICT at the ICT4S conference in Toronto (Canada).

The ICT4S conferences bring together leading researchers in ICT for Sustainability with government and industry representatives, including decision-makers with an interest in using ICT for sustainability, researchers focusing on ICT effects on sustainability and developers of sustainable ICT systems or applications.

Dr. Ralph Hintemann, Senior Researcher at Borderstep, and Simon Hinterholzer, Researcher at Borderstep, prepared and submitted the presentation. Simon Hinterholzer will present it in Toronto. The paper will be published after the conference.

Abstract:

Digitalization is driving the increasing energy and resource needs of ICT. In Germany, ICT accounts for eight percent of electricity consumption. Data centers alone currently consume 2.3 % of the electricity in Germany, with an upward trend. Although the ICT sector is generally considered to be very innovative and new solutions are often implemented very quickly, deployment of energy- and resource-efficient innovations is frequently confronted with considerable obstacles and barriers. Innovation alliances of companies are a promising instrument of governmental support for new environmental technologies in the fast-paced ICT sector. In the past ten years, several initiatives of this kind have been launched, e.g., the consortium GreenIT Amsterdam, the Innovationsallianz Rechenzentren (Innovation Alliance Data Centers) in Hesse, Germany, and the Netzwerk energieeffiziente Rechenzentren (Network Energy-Efficient Data Centers). Some of these initiatives have achieved remarkable successes. The present paper analyzes such innovation alliances using the example of energy efficiency in data centers as the field of application. Three good-practice examples from Germany are presented. The paper shows what these innovation alliances can achieve and analyzes the factors contributing to their successful implementation. It concludes with concrete recommendations for practical implementation of such initiatives.

You can find more information about the program here.