ICT for Sustainability Beyond Efficiency: Pushing Cleantech and the Circular Economy

Sustainability necessitates reform of resource production and consumption to reduce environmental harms. The main way that ICT can address these resource impacts is through digital optimization. Spreng found that optimization of an industrial process either increases resource efficiency by reducing energy inputs (“save impacts”) or reduces production and consumption times to increase resource outputs (“push impacts”). It was assumed that a difficult choice then exists between save impacts that progress sustainability and push impacts that meet market demand. Based on a new typology of enabling impacts, this paper argues that there are two important cases in which push impacts can be just as valuable for sustainability as save impacts: 1) when the process drives the production and adoption of an environmentally beneficial product i.e. “cleantech” e.g. a solar panel or 2) when the process is specific to the Circular Economy, such as recycling, maintenance/refurbishment, and sharing/reuse e.g. carsharing, ride-sharing and tool-sharing in the Sharing Economy. The opportunities for ICT4S optimization are thus threefold: "saving" resources with efficiency, “pushing” the adoption of cleantech, and “pushing” the circulation of resources.