Environmental practice questions.

By 2023 data centres in Ireland accounted for around a fifth of all metered electricity consumption, and the transmission system operator had stopped accepting new data centre connections in the Dublin area. Which environmental implication of digital infrastructure does that refusal illustrate most directly?

• Competition for a fixed generation and grid capacity that other users also need
• The disposal of servers at the end of their working life
• The volume of drinking water drawn from the public supply by evaporative cooling
• The carbon released when the concrete for the buildings is produced

Answer: Competition for a fixed generation and grid capacity that other users also need

A connection moratorium is a grid-capacity decision: electricity is a shared and bounded resource, so a new facility competes with housing and industry rather than simply paying for its own supply. E-waste, water and embodied carbon are real impacts of the same buildings, but none of them is what a refusal to connect responds to.

Used electronic equipment shipped from high-income countries has been dismantled by informal workers at sites such as the scrapyard at Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, where cable insulation was burned off to recover copper. Which consequence for the surrounding community is an implication rather than an immediate impact?

• Workers breathe in the fumes that are released while the insulation is burned off cables
• Soil and water contamination constrains what the land can be used for decades later
• Copper and aluminium are recovered and sold on to local scrap dealers
• Household appliances are repaired and resold at prices local buyers can afford

Answer: Soil and water contamination constrains what the land can be used for decades later

Fumes, injuries and income are the direct effects felt during the work itself, whereas long-lived contamination of soil and groundwater changes what the site can ever be used for and by whom. Digital Society reserves the word implication for exactly that second-order, largely unintended consequence.

In September 2022 the Ethereum blockchain replaced its proof-of-work consensus mechanism with proof-of-stake. What was the principal environmental effect of that change?

• The electronic waste from earlier mining hardware was collected and recycled
• The network's transactions became carbon negative because fewer are processed
• The electricity required to secure the network fell by more than 99 per cent
• Records already stored on the chain were deleted to reduce storage demand

Answer: The electricity required to secure the network fell by more than 99 per cent

Proof-of-work pays for security with competitive computation, so removing it removes the electricity demand; independent estimates put the reduction above 99 per cent. It did not make the network carbon negative, and the graphics hardware bought for mining still had to go somewhere.

From 28 December 2024 the European Union has required most small portable devices sold in the EU to charge through a USB-C port. Which stage of the device life cycle is this rule aimed at?

• Extraction, by reducing the cobalt needed for each battery cell
• Manufacture, by setting a maximum permitted energy use per device
• Use and disposal, by cutting the number of chargers bought and thrown away
• Recovery, by requiring every retailer to take back the chargers it has sold

Answer: Use and disposal, by cutting the number of chargers bought and thrown away

The measure is an interoperability standard, so its environmental payoff comes from the chargers buyers no longer need, and then no longer throw away, rather than from how the device itself is mined or made. It sets no energy limit for devices and no take-back duty for retailers.

A city replaces its street lighting with networked LED lamps that draw far less power each, then uses the saving to light paths and underpasses that were previously dark. Total lighting electricity ends up almost unchanged. Which effect does this illustrate?

• Planned obsolescence, where products are designed to fail after a set period
• Embodied carbon, the emissions released while a product is being manufactured
• A feedback loop, where the output of a system is fed back in as its next input
• The rebound effect, where efficiency gains are absorbed by increased use

Answer: The rebound effect, where efficiency gains are absorbed by increased use

Efficiency lowers the cost of a unit of service, and cheaper service is generally consumed in greater quantity, so a saving per lamp need not become a saving overall. This is why claims that digital infrastructure is greener are tested against total consumption rather than per-unit figures.

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research has operated DETER, a system that issues near-real-time satellite alerts of forest clearing in the Amazon, since 2004. Which condition has to be met before such alerts can reduce clearing?

• The satellite images must be released to the public without any charge
• Enforcement agencies must have the resources and mandate to act on the alerts
• The alerts must be able to identify the individual operating each machine
• The images must be recorded at a resolution fine enough to count individual trees

Answer: Enforcement agencies must have the resources and mandate to act on the alerts

Monitoring produces information, not enforcement: an alert changes behaviour only if an agency with inspectors and legal powers responds to it. Treating better data as a solution in itself is the standard error when an intervention is assessed.