Incorporation of software in the life cycle assessment of an ICT service: A case study of an ICT service for energy efficiency in the transport sector

Abstract

Information communication and technology (ICT) services and solutions can improve resource efficiency in a variety of sector, but also result in direct environmental impacts. This study assesses the direct environmental impacts of an ICT service that improves vehicle fuel efficiency using a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA). This is one of the first studies to examine the entire life cycle of an ICT service from development to use and maintenance, with a focus on software—an aspect that is typically neglected in previous studies. The results suggest that software development and maintenance and the use of in-vehicle communicators for data transmission have the largest environmental impacts across multiple categories. Deployed across a fleet of 150,000 vehicles over 5 years, we estimate that the ICT service is responsible for 174 tCO₂e. However, this is negligible compared with the total emissions of the fleet and the potential savings from the service, given a single diesel vehicle in this fleet emits around 130 tCO₂e over the same period. We explore several scenarios to reduce the footprint of the ICT service. The largest potential reduction of around one-third is achieved by replacing in-house servers with cloud computing in a data center located in a region with low-carbon electricity. The study demonstrates how LCA can be used to assess the environmental impacts of ICT services and the importance of considering software in these assessments.