Fiona McDermott 

ICT, datafication and AI are increasingly framed as part of the solution to address climate change challenges, both in the context of enabling renewable energy provision, and in providing tools for monitoring, modelling and predicting environmental changes. Despite the benefits of ICT in enhancing renewable energy production processes and optimising resource efficiency, its role is not always purely enabling. Recent research also highlights the growing detrimental environmental impacts of ICT proliferation with rising energy consumption, water usage, and emissions from devices, networks, and data centres, which exacerbates regional and social inequalities. While the political and socio-economic challenges of digitalisation such as monopolies, power asymmetries and the appropriation of public goods are beginning to be well known, existing EU, UN, and national policy initiatives also disregard the broader implications of digitalisation for environmental sustainability and social justice. Moreover, the extractive and polluting economies of the accompanying ‘green transition’ meant to power the digital turn, further compound the problem of environmental harm. In the dual contexts of increased pressure for more ICT networked systems, and increasing global resource scarcity from energy, raw materials and ecosystems survival, there is an ever greater need to critically engage with the complex and often contradictory relationship between the ICT industry, energy demands and the climate crisis. 

Ireland and its Unfolding Climate Contradictions

These contradictions are particularly pronounced in Ireland where big tech industry and a pro-industry government seek access to ever more resources for sustaining and expanding the tech economy, all the while failing to meet national emissions targets. With a growing population, a booming economy, a maxed out energy grid and a legacy of poor infrastructural provision, the growth of large scale ICT infrastructural developments is set to transform landscapes, urban areas and villages across the country. Today in Ireland, data centres account for more than a fifth of the electricity usage and that share is growing fast; in 2015 it was just 5%; in 2030, it’s projected to be 30%. Such huge increases in electricity demand from data centres all fly in the face of supposed efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as set out in the national climate action plan. Even with the recent growth in wind energy production over the past decade in Ireland, it is quickly outpaced by the electricity demands from data centre developments, leading to decarbonising efforts that are akin to what Prof Hannah Daly describes as “running up a down-moving escalator.”

Narratives and Counter Narratives in ICT Developments

While the ICT sector is among the few sectors of the global economy where emissions are rising, it nevertheless holds the positive promise of twin digital and green transitions. Emerging ICT developments are entangled with promises of increased economic returns and pathways towards green energy, as well as the proposed benefits of data-enabling new utility efficiencies. For example, proposals for new ‘eco energy parks’ on ex-Bord Na Mona sites in the Irish midlands posit new synergies between data centres and sites of renewable energy generation, while district heating systems connected to data centres promise to recover waste heat for reuse in other buildings. The industry has to date successfully shaped public discourse, by obfuscating the material reality and associating new developments with ‘inevitable’ progress, all the while facing growing issues of acute cost-of-living challenges, uneven development and societal pushback. Yet in shaping a strong public narrative of technological prosperity around the proposed economic and environmental gains of future developments, there exists a notable absence of both counter-narratives on their material resource usage and monopoly driven business models, as well as alternative strategies for dealing with developments and their climate-impacting emissions. As a means of challenging these narratives, we take an engaged research approach inspired by feminist science and technology studies, to bring attention to the new logics, lived experiences, and emerging frictions brought about by these new ICT infrastructural arrangements. We offer forms of counter data as a means to displace the dominant narrative of infrastructural change as put forward by those with vested interests. Importantly, the intention is not that of blunt antagonism but to refocus attention and support for the untold social and ecological costs of ICT technologies.  

Missing Data

In examining asymmetric power dynamics and foregrounding on-the-ground perspectives, we take up the concept of ‘missing data’, as set out by feminist technology scholars, de Alemeida, D’Ignazio and Klein. They define ‘missing data’ as information that is socially and politically applicable, but that which is unaccounted for or unavailable. This includes, entirely absent or insufficient datasets, as well as data that is purposely hidden or removed, difficult to access, and/or underreported. For example, missing data in the context of ICT infrastructural developments may include those relating to energy & water usage, supply chains and interdependencies, environmental data, governance structures, local politics and modes of public participation. Working with community-based organisations, activists and practitioners, the objective of this project is to uncover ‘missing data’ to fill the data gaps on critical social and environmental issues between different actors, such as marginalised groups, NGOs, government, semi-state bodies and other public institutions. We examine ICT developments in practice, place and policy to understand how they function, including what are the prescribed logics and assumptions at play, which futures are taken into account and which are omitted, and how they are shaped by strategy and regulation (or lack thereof). Through this work, we seek to challenge, subvert and rethink dominant socio-economic, spatial and technological models. We identify on-the-ground needs and empirical insights, offer policy recommendations and help build community in addressing the material politics of contemporary ICT developments.

As a group of critical humanities researchers situated in an engineering department, the Counter Data Lab is also interested in the question of how to cultivate an environment that can make room for technological R&D in modes of both critique and offering alternative models. As with the recent political and societal pushback on climate action across Europe, it is evident that social sciences and the humanities are not used enough in the policy making process. While policies in the ICT / sustainability realms have tended to rely very heavily on cost benefit analysis and technological solutions, we strive for meaningful integration of critical humanities into ICT research, development, and policy-making.