This page provides links to interesting news stories and reports on aspects of the interface between digital technologies and the environment (listed in reverse chronological order), and is regularly updated by members of the coalition.
Return to Digital-Environment System Coalition
Climate change: construction companies told to stop knocking down buildings, BBC News, 24 September 2021
Bitcoin mining produces tonnes of waste, BBC News, 20th September 2021
Tesla co-founder tackles EV’s biggest problem, Financial Times, 15 September 2021
Computer emissions ‘twice the level caused by airlines’, The Times, 11 September 2021; original paper by Freitag et al. here
WHC is proud to partner with IBM for the Chicago Metro IBM EdTech Youth Challenge (Registration by 1 October 2021)
Tech’s modular future, Chris Nuttall, Financial Times, 2 September 2021
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate the Energy Transition, World Economic Forum, 1 September 2021
Ten years for electric car to pay for itself in fuel savings, Emma Yeomans, The Times, 2 August 2021
Judges reject Viasat’s plea to stop SpaceX Starlink satellite launches, Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica, 22 July 2021
The environmental impact of electric cars, Graeme Paton, The Times, 22 July 2021
Climate change: technology boosts efforts to curb tree loss in Amazon, BBC News, 13 July 2021
Apple founder Steve Wozniak backs right-to-repair movement, BBC News, 8 July 2021
Offshore wind farms ‘should pay compensation to communities’, Ben Webster, The Times, 8 July 2021
Deep sea mining may be step closer to reality, David Shukman, BBC News, 2 July 2021
Here are some of the most exciting green Technology Pioneers of 2021, Sean Fleming, World Economic Forum, 15 June 2021
The environmental impact of our devices: revealing what many companies hide, The Restart Project, 10 June 2021
G7: ‘Mount Recyclemore’ of leaders made from electronic waste in Cornwall, BBC News, 9 June 2021
Air pollution from reentering megaconstellation satellites could cause ozone hole 2.0, Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, 7 June 2021
How to protect birds and bats from wind turbines, Chris Baraniuk, BBC News, 4 June 2021
UK National circular economy research programme launches, UKRI, 28 May 2021
Carbon Prices now Apply to Over a Fifth of Global Greenhouse Gases, World Bank, 25 May 2021
Move to net zero ‘inevitably means more mining’, by Jonathan Amos, BBC News, 25 May 2021
Bitcoin Miners Are Giving New Life to Old Fossil-Fuel Power Plants, by Biran Spegele and Caitlin Ostroff, Wall Street Journal, 21 May 2021
Wall Street Journal Energy Report, material from November 2019 and May 2021
The big space clean-up – and why it matters, World Economic Forum, 20 May 2021, by Katharine Rooney
Höghastighetsbanor ger ingen positiv klimateffekt, Dagens Nyheter, 13 May 2021
(High speed railways don’t have a positive climate effect)
Electric cars: What will happen to all the dead batteries?, BBC News, 27 April 2021
Space junk map tracks 200 ‘ticking time bombs’, BBC News, Science and Environment, 26 April 2021
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Facebook and Microsoft grant free patent access for low-carbon innovators, 22 April 2021
Do We Need To Worry That Zoom Calls Use Too Much Energy?, Peter Suciu in Forbes, 16 April 2021
Space Junk Removal Is Not Going Smoothly, Leonard David in Scientific American, 14 April 2021
Bitcoin mining in China will exceed energy consumption of 181 countries by 2024, study warns, Independent, 6 April 2021
Africa Data Centres to build 10MW Lagos facility, TechCentral, 6 April 2021, aiming to use solar energy
Companies back moratorium on deep sea mining, BBC News, 4 April 2021 – significant impact of mining the ocean floor for rare earth minerals to support digital technology and renewable energy
Astroscale, the British company on a mission to tidy up space, Ben Spencer in The Sunday Times, 14 March 2021
India Targets Climate Activists With the Help of Big Tech, Naomi Klein in The Intercept, 27 February 2021
Why should developing countries implement carbon pricing when even advanced economies fall woefully short?, OECD, 17 February 2021
The environmental idiocy of Tesla’s bitcoin bet, Financial Times, 14 February 2021
How Much Data is Consumed for 1-Hour of Video Conferencing on Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Hangouts?, 12 February 2021
Bitcoin consumes ‘more electricity than Argentina‘, BBC News, 10 February 2021
Turn off that camera during virtual meetings, 14 January 2021
Thanks for polluting the planet: emails blamed for climate change, Financial Times, 18 November 2020.
Sweden launches its ‘first’ wooden wind power tower, 1 May 2020
