Data Points: Infotech’s Outsized Role in Cutting Carbon

Innovations created by the information and communications technology (ICT) sector have enabled vast improvements in global productivity, in everything from manufacturing to supply chain management. A new report by Booz & Company and the World Economic Forum suggests that the sector can play a similar role in reducing carbon emissions. With equipment, hardware, software, and services that let companies more effectively monitor and decrease energy use — such as utilities’ smart grids, more efficient industrial motors, and improvements in teleconferencing — ICT products could enable carbon reductions five times as great as the sector’s own footprint, a significant share of total potential carbon abatement.