Life Cycle Assesment and ICT

I'm pretty sure that you can't wait to know more about sustainability and ICT, so let's talk about the LIFE CYCLE ASSESMENT (LCA) applied to ICT.

The purpose is getting to know how much energy, water, resources, land and emissions are related to the production of a economical good. 

LCA is a well known technic of study in many areas, nevertheless, it is not so developed when it comes to energy consumption and carbon footprint associated to ICT. 

Here you can see some data about energy and emissions related to different forms of ICT in Sweden. The paper written for the Journal of Industrial Ecology by Malmodin et al "Life Cycle Assesment of ICT. Carbon Footprint and Operational Electricity Use from the Operator, National, and Subscriber Perspective in Sweden"(you can read it here) is quite interesting. It focuses on how important is the energy consumption in this kind of activities and the great dependence on energy generation sources. I mean, if energy is used in Sweaden where barely no fossil fuels are used for electric generation, this technologies are not that hazarous. If instead, you produce and use this technologies in a country like Saudi Arabie, where mostly the whole generation comes from fossil fuel, those intensive energy consumer technologies are really pollutant.

As it can be seen most energy intensive technologies are user PC's and Data centers (two of the most spreaded technologies) while Operator activities and IP core network involve less energy in its operation.

Next images, shows the carbon footprint of 3G devices and other kinds of ICT:

As we pointed out before, carbon footprint changes when energy sources changes. As some devices have important footprints, it isn't enough thinking that, if energy generation in the country of use is clean, our producto won't be so harmful. We need to develop clearner and more efficiente technologies, so they can be sustainable in every part of the world. 

After looking at these data, do you still think that ICT are harmless? Would it be enought with enabling, by the use of ICT, less intensive energy and material proceses or do we still need to count on cleaner and more environmentaly sustainable ICT?