the Green-Digital Nexus and its future opportunities


It was during the COP26 in 2021 that Commissioner Thierry Breton discussed the relevance of a green-digital nexus.

According to Brenton, the advance of digital technologies represent a driving force in the fight against climate change, in the sense that it allows a direct and sustainable impact on the reduction of CO2 and boosts circularity by improving the resources efficiency (Brenton 2021).

As Breton shareed during his speech, teleworking would be able to reduce the CO2 emissions from commuting by 18% in Germany in the case where 40% of the workforce would be working remotely (Brenton 2021).

Digital technologies allows as well information to be shared more efficiently creating a more informed network of stakeholders. It can also optimise the usage of renewable energy in order to make it more efficient and thus create a less fossil fuels' dependent resource system (Brenton 2021).


Digital technology can be as well a source of innovation for projects in the infrastructure as well as agricultural sectors which would consequently support in the achievement of climate goals (Cox 2022). 

"Europe alone registered 76% more patents combining both green and digital technologies than the US" (EIB 2021).


It is the responsibility of governments and institutions to apply in the upcoming years a focus of the fundings as incentive for development of innovative digital and green technologies (Cox 2022).


Korea is a forerunner in this field, starting its greening of the ITC sector in 2008. It is the Korean government itself taking the lead in this progress through the Ministry of Science and Technology which identifies its strategy with linking technological innovation and the concept of zero-carbon. Moreover, Korea plans to evolve the ITC towards greener resource adoption by introducing green data centres which reduce their power consumption by 20% (Zaki Khoury 2022).


The introduction in the literature of the concept of green IC (Intellectual Capital) in 2010 by Lopez-Gamero represents as well an indicator of the increasing interest from the businesses to integrate environmental interests into their strategy (Lopez Gamero 2010). The definition of green IC as presented in the paper is "the sum of all knowledge that an organization is able to leverage in the process of conducting environmental management to gain competitive advantage” (Lopez Gamero 2010). Connected with the findings of Muafi and Sulistio in 2022 the research supports a significant positive nexus among green intellectual capital with digital supply chain, supply chain integration, and supply chain agility resulting in a positive impact on business performance (Muafi 2022).


Many challenges are still to be faced in order to create an overall net climate impact coming from digital technologies.

Starting from making our energy resource more renewable to creating a more circular economy for electronic devices, the battles as well as the opportunity are just in front of us.



References:

Thierry Breton, (2021), Digital technology, the positive force for climate action, COP26

Bill Cox, (2022), Europe leads in the green-digital nexus, IJ Global

Zaki Badie et al, (2022), Greening Digital in Korea : Korea Case Study for Greening the ICT Sector, Innovation and Technology Note Series (6), World Bank Group

Lopez Gamero, (2010), Sustainable development and intangibles: building sustainable intellectual capital, Business Strategy and Environment 20 (1)

Muafi M. and Sulistio J., (2022), A nexus between green intelectual capital, supply chain integration, digital supply chain, supply chain agility, and business performance. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 15(2)


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