Digitalization and Sustainability: A Call for a Digital Green Deal

TLDR

Digitalization’s impact on sustainability is unclear, offering potential to curb planetary boundary transgression yet demanding significant resources, and currently lacks comprehensive regulation. The article calls for a Digital Green Deal that establishes cross‑sectoral green digitalization policies at all governance levels. The proposed Digital Green Deal would align digital and environmental policies, integrating environmental objectives into digital initiatives and addressing digital risks to drive sustainability transformations.

Abstract

The relation between digitalization and environmental sustainability is ambiguous. There is potential of various digital technologies to slow down the transgression of planetary boundaries. Yet resource and energy demand for digital hardware production and use of data-intensive applications is of substantial size. The world over, there is no comprehensive regulation that addresses opportunities and risks of digital technology for sustainability. In this perspective article, we call for a Digital Green Deal that includes strong, cross-sectoral green digitalization policies on all levels of governance. We argue that a Digital Green Deal should first and foremost aim at greater policy coherence: Current digital policy initiatives should include measures that service environmental goals, and environmental policies must address risks and advance opportunities of digital technologies to spur sustainability transformations.