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ICTs for Sustainability: understanding and protecting Europe's environment

Sustainable development is critical to Europe's quality of life. The Information Society will play an important role: reducing the environmental impact of industry and society, and helping us understand our environment so that we can better protect it for future generations.

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Overview ¦ Example Projects

The Information Society represents a shift from an energy intensive, highly polluting, goods-intensive economy to a more dematerialised, knowledge-based economy. While the environmental benefits of 'going digital' have been trumpeted since the 'paperless office' of the 1970s, recent ICT-driven innovations as diverse as voicemail and teleworking have now begun reducing humanity's environmental footprint.

Much more, however, remains to be done. Environmental damage does not respect national borders, so the countries, companies and scientists of Europe must work closely together to ensure Europe achieves Sustainable Development.

“The review puts an increased emphasis on intelligent transport systems ..." - mid-term review, European Transport Policy

EU-funded research is rising to the challenge, helping pool Europe's scientific and industrial resources to create and demonstrate new ICTs which can reduce the environmental impact of everything from manufacturing and transport systems to our own homes.

The economies of scale of the Single Internal Market are often crucial for these technologies to be economically viable, so European policies in sectors as diverse as transport and energy are all promoting advanced ICTs to reduce these sectors' environmental impact.

The ICT industry itself also has an environmental impact - again, action is needed at the European level to ensure progress is made, and problems are not simply transferred from one country to another.

Further Details and Quicklinks

Policies
Research
Other Activities
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Relevant Policies

The ICT for Sustainable Growth site deals with EU policy in the field of environment, risk and disaster & energy efficiency
i2010: one of the i2010's three pillars is to foster Inclusion, better public services and quality of life through ICTs.
- As a result, an i2010 Flagship on ICTs for Sustainable Growth is currently under preparation
Two EU Directives ensure Member State legislation on the collection, reuse, recycling and disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment;
Wider Context:
- Sustainable Development became a Treaty obligation - the strongest commitment the EU can make to a goal - in 1999;
- Energy Policy: the Action plan for Energy efficiency, unveiled in October 2006, calls for "special attention to be paid to the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies (ICT)";
- Transport Policy: "Sustainable mobility for our continent": adopted 22 June 2006, is the mid-term review of the "European Transport Policy for 2010". It incorporates many ICT-related initiatives, such as Galileo, smart charging and a major programme to roll out intelligent infrastructure for road transport. See also: the Economy & Work > Transport theme

Research

See the Research & Innovation theme for an introduction, browse some relevant Example Projects, or jump straight to the following relevant research sites:

Mobility, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency: one of the seven main challenges for ICT research from 2006-2013;
ICTs for Environmental risk management (FP6 research, 2002-2006);
Co-operative systems for road transport: using ICTs to make transport more environmentally friendly (FP6 research, 2002-2006);
Grids (FP6 research, 2002-2006): advanced computer systems offering the best way to capture, process, analyse and model the massive amounts of environmental data produced by Galileo, GMES and other systems (see Other Activities);
Products and services engineering 2010: this IST Strategic Objective (FP6 research, 2002-2006) focuses on product and process design and new product/service concepts which will - among other things - improve the resource efficiency of both manufacturing systems and products;
Other FP6 IST Strategic Objectives (2002-2006) include Embedded System and Micro and nano systems. Both technologies can also make products smarter, lighter and more energy-efficient, helping to reduce their environmental impact both during and after use;
logistics research for surface transport is also using advanced ICTs to reduce the environmental impact of the transport sector (FP6 research, 2002-2006).

Other

Other EU activities focusing on developing and using the Information Society for environmental reasons include:

Galileo satellite navigation system: when launched by the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2006-2008, Galileo will have a substantial impact on:
- our understanding of the environment;
- making transport more environmentally friendly through the development of Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (see some pilot projects)
- Agriculture and Fisheries: from reducing the use of agricultural chemicals to surveying restrictive fishing areas to protect sensitive habitats.
Global Monitoring Environment and Security (GMES): another Commission-ESA joint initiative, GMES is strengthening the EU's ability to acquire and integrate high-quality environmental data with geographical and socio-economic information to improve policymaking from local to global level.
INSPIRE - INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe: ensuring cross border compatibility of environmental and other spatial data, essential to understanding the complex interactions between human activities and the environment;
EnviroWindows: an information marketplace for businesses, local authorities and their stakeholders from the European Environment Agency
One of the three action lines of the Marco Polo programme aims to help shift international cargo traffic from Europe's roads to other modes, is "Stimulating co-operative behaviour in the freight logistics market";
CIVITAS supports cities pioneering urban transport development, funding measures such as innovative mobility management, logistics and information technology schemes;
Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment: one of the key actions outlined in the Commission's Sixth Community Environment Action Programme, this has four priority themes, including urban environmental management and urban transport, both of which will benefit from ICTs.

More

From the Environment Newsroom and Library:

Looking for new ways to benefit from Galileo (8 December 2006)
Take-back systems for e-waste to be in place under EU Directive (11 August 2005)
For the latest relevant news, publications and more from the Newsroom & Library, see right hand column, or select Quality of Life when you subscribe to the Portal Newsroom Update;

In addition:

ICTs designed to protect people from disasters will also protect the environment - see the Safety theme
ICTs are an important part of today's efforts to reduce the environmental impact of the transport sector - see the Transport theme

Last Updated March 2007