Method for Calculating the Avoided Impact of Specific Information and

Communication Technology Services

ANDERS S.G. ANDRAE

Huawei Technologies Sweden AB

Skalholtsgatan 9, 16494 Kista

SWEDEN

and recently the emerging handprint ALCA estimating so-called positive environmental impacts. Moreover,

Consequential LCA (CLCA) can be used to capture market effects. The third conceptual approach is Input-

Output LCA. The purpose is to propose and test a new method based on some of the existing ones. The existing

concepts are compared and a synthesis is made to create a practical but still useful method. The new method is

applied to two illustrative cases in the ICT domain; the introduction of a 5G enabled drone for pipe inspection

and the 5G enabled health consultation. Compared to simplified ALCA, the difference between the absolute

scores for the baseline system and the target system changes around 10% when the proposed simplified CLCA

(SCLCA) method is used. The results show that SCLCA, when combined with analytical methods for

expressing digital ICT services’ own impact, is a fruitful approach which is both practical and feasible. The

new method includes formulae for calculating the total lifetime environmental impact of a specific ICT

1 Introduction

For several years there have been attempts to

estimate the potentially avoided, reduced, offset and

enabled environmental impact thanks to replacing

products/systems/solutions/services with others,

mostly using subtracting one attributional LCA

(ALCA) [1] from another. ALCA asks the question:

What are the absolute environmental impacts of the

existing solution and the new solution? Especially

digital Information and Communication Technology

Fig. 1. Categorization for estimation of avoided

impact of ICT and the focus of the present research.

Most research in this domain uses simplified ALCA

(SALCA) [4-8] of product or service systems to

draw conclusions about avoided impact. So far

when using ALCA it is clear that comparisons

between smart ICT and “physical” is always

beneficial for the former. ICT Services have an

increasing economic effect on other sectors, in a

very intricate and knotted way [9]. That said, more

proof is required to show avoided impact in society

as a result of using the innovations. Especially

knowing the consequences of digital solutions [2,8]

replacing each other will be useful. Moreover, the

larger systems.

The existing methods, mainly ALCA, may be able

to prove the impact avoidance more or less

convincingly and efficiently.

Some macro-perspective studies of societal savings

show no [10] or a rather small [9,11] avoidance

potential thanks to the introduction of ICT Services

while others show very large reduction [12,13]. In

this context, the idea of the internet’s handprint is

based on a top-down macro view of how much

asks which is the reduction potential of smart

facilitation of renewable electricity compared to

traditional facilitation of renewable electricity.

Another example is the fraction of global travel

impact that could be addressed by 5G Health

Consultation and what is the reduction potential of

5G Virtual Health compared to face-to-face

meetings. However, the macro internet handprint

approach [13] for societal savings does not account

for market and rebound effects.

Service, 4) estimate the material and energy savings

per quantifiable metric of the ICT Service, and 5)

estimate the expected rebound effect.

Still, existing ALCA approaches lack the

identification of marginal consumers and

complementary production and use.

Advanced ALCA (AALCA) [2], handprint ALCA

(HALCA) [15] and consequential LCA (CLCA)

[16] are methodological concepts which may help

articulate the calculation rationale further beyond

just subtracting one ALCA from another.

Nevertheless, AALCA can primarily be used [2] if

the global sales of relevant sub-materials and sub-

parts are available. Hence, AALCA seems only

applicable for comparable systems with minor

complexity.

The goal of HALCA calculations is to assess the

simplified) CLCA methodologies are used

extensively compared to SALCA for estimating

impact reductions. Input-Output LCA (IOLCA) is

used but mainly so far for top-down reduction

studies [9,12,17,18]. HALCA seems clearer than

AALCA and CLCA as far as data availability and

uncertainty. Anyway, HALCA wants to position

itself as a positive footprint referring to the

beneficial impacts that organizations can achieve by

providing products/services/solutions that reduce the

System. More or less electricity consumption and/or

transportation are very common for ICT services. 2)

identify the consumers of products made available

by the change. In this sense the goal of CLCA is

noticeably different from the HALCA calculation.

CLCA should be used when significant changes in

surrounding markets can be assumed to occur as a

result of changing technologies. CLCA seems a

good fit for those ICT services which have caused,

or will cause, relatively large market effects when

uncertainty is also large and habitually not assessed.

Even so, the role of CLCA is useful in adding some

more detail into various rebound effect [19]

calculations. In summary avoided impact

calculations should contain the impact of the

innovation, the rebound effects and the enabling

effect. Any reliable methodology for calculating

avoided impact needs to be based on bottom-up

analysis with immediate and quantifiable aspects

having strong statistical and causal relations to the

functions and studied systems

It is somewhat possible to identify the exact unit

processes which are affected by the introduced

change in the system such as virtual meeting.

The main hotspot in an LCA of a physical meeting

is travel. Only the immediate travels will be affected

hypothesis proposed in the present research is that

simplified CLCA (SCLCA) can be combined with

bottom-up cloud-service LCA estimation methods

to estimate the avoided impact. Table 1 shows the

main advantages and disadvantages of existing

approaches compared to the proposed.

Table 1. Comparison of methodological approaches

for quantifying avoided impact of ICT Services.

(environmental impact/kWh)

A more detailed approach for estimating the energy

consumption () of the use phase for an ICT

Service is provided in [23]. The scope consists of

the Data transmission (in the Wi-Fi Router&Access

Equipment and in the Metro&Core Networks) and

the Data processing/storage in the Data Centers.

Equations (7) - (10) give the individual electricity

use per ICT Service, and Equation (11) gives  in a

more precise manner than Equation (5). Wireless

Access network equipment energy consumption is

󰇛󰇜 



 

󰇛󰇜   

 󰇛󰇜 

󰇛󰇜 







 

 (14)

󰇛󰇜 

󰇛󰇜 

󰇛󰇜 (15)

where

󰇛󰇜

consumption of supporting functions for Equipment

type j.

󰇛󰇜

= Electricity consumption of the Metro and Core

and Wireless Access networks {kJ per ICT

Service}.

functional unit for the ICT service at hand {GB}.

= throughput rate of Equipment j [GB/s, Gb/s

divided by 8].

= Total Global Data Center IP Traffic

{GB/year}.

Centers {kW}.

= Total Electricity consumption of Global Data

Centers {kWh}.

 and  estimates can be obtained from [25].

 can be used to estimate  if  data are not

available.

= Consumption of hardware k in Equipment

type j {kg}.

= Lifetime of Equipment type j {hours}.

󰇛󰇜  Hardware consumption of

the Data Centers {kg per ICT service}.

 = Studied ICT Service Hardware usage {kg per

ICT service}.

The fraction of idle time per day has been removed

from Equation (7) compared to [23] (Eq. 1) due to

difficulties for a designer to quantify this parameter.

been removed from Equation (8) compared to [23]

(Eq. 2) due to problematic quantifications compared

to their relevance for driving

As far as data center hardware consumption, [23]

(Eq. 6) has here been changed from using material

usage per data volume to hardware consumption per

lifetime. This is done to mimic the other equipment

collection.

IOLCA

If the cost of delivering the ICT Service at hand is

known, the bottom-up results from Equation (11)

may be compared to the IOLCA scores in 2009 for

EU27, 0.264 kg CO2e/USD for “Computer and

avoided impacts have occurred and are expected.

The comparable product systems are then decided

from the existing baseline system and target system

(new innovation). The function to be delivered by

both systems is identified and then the functional

unit for both. Then Equations (1) to (15) are applied

as appropriate.

2.2 Cooling of base stations – use of marginal

electricity and heat production technologies

waste heat that is recoverable through the cooling

liquid for various heating purposes [15].

The identified function is: providing cooling of base

stations.

The functional unit is: “A subsystem providing the

cooling to be suited for the needs of one 0.695kW

base station in Finland for one year”.

Figure 2 shows the CLCA for the baseline system

(air cooling).

Fig. 2. Scope of baseline system with proposed

simplified CLCA method for cooling of base

Figure 3 shows the scope of the target system for

cooling of base stations.

The numbers in Table 2 for power and heat are

based on [15]. The most sensitive process is the

most competitive in a situation with an increasing or

constant market trend, while it is the least

competitive in a situation with a decreasing market

trend [28]. Nuclear power is assumed to be the most

competitive baseload power production method in

Finland and district heat is assumed to be the most

competitive heat generation technology for

marginal heat production technology.

emissions) is subtractive simplified ALCA for the

use stage: Baseline System - Target System. The

parameters used for the calculation are shown in

Table 2.

Table 2. Parameters used in [15] for simplified

ALCA baseline and target system for cooling of

base stations.

Table 4. Present proposed methodology applied to

pipe inspection in China.