SUMMARY
ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency) takes stock of the positive and negative impacts of the digital sector on the environment, including the impact of datacenters located abroad. In France, the digital sector's carbon footprint is 29.5 Mt CO2 eq (i.e. 4.4% of the national carbon footprint) and electricity consumption 51.5 TWh (i.e. 11% of national electricity consumption). These figures show a doubling of the impact of digital usage compared to 2017, and a greater responsibility for datacenters.
The Agency recommends a number of courses of action to move towards greater sobriety: extending the useful life of equipment, eco-design of digital equipment and services, controlling our uses, improving the energy performance of datacenters, supporting open source and energy transition solutions, but also, greater transparency on resource consumption (in particular that of generative AI).
