The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Hello and welcome to you, our guests. Thank you to our online guests joining us. A warm welcome to Sustainable Digital Growth - Net Negative, Net Zero, or Net Positive.
I'm Natalie Becker-AAkervik and I'll be your moderator for this session. It's so lovely to have you here this morning.
This session will explore net digital growth. It should not reduce harm, but actively deliver environmental and societal outcomes, redefining how we measure and manage a truly sustainable digital transformation.
So digital infrastructure and services are transforming our societies as we know from data centers to mobile networks, they are the key drivers of innovation and sustainability and they have a growing environmental impact that requires really a more responsible approach.
Data centers are particularly important in this conversation, and in this transformation. Their power consumption has increased sharply, and is expected to continue rising.
Driven by the large AI models and also global demands that we see for connectivity. By aligning infrastructure and governance and accountability with our shared global goals, this session invites really a cross-sectoral dialogue on how digital transformation can become a force for sustainability and for justice.
Now, the guiding question, what kind of governance is need to ensure digitation dives net positive sustainability will be a core guiding question that we will try and answer during this session. And through keynotes and a panel discussion, we will try and do this.
However, what I would like to do first is introduce the people who are going to be framing this session, who are really going to be setting the tone for us and laying the foundation for the conversations that are coming in our panel discussions.
I would like to welcome John-Eivind and he is a leader at NCOM, he's responsible for digital security, artificial intelligence, and the regulation of electronic communication in Norway.
He will share the stage with Nikoli who is the assistant director for digital sustainability at NCOM and he will be introducing Nikoli who has 20 years of experience as strategy consultant at the intersection of technology and innovation and sustainability.
And John Eivind and Nikoli will present the case of Norway, highlighting Norway's journey for a data driven dashboard for sustainable digital governance. Please join me in welcoming John-Eivind to the stage.
The floor is yours.
>> JOHN-EIVIND VELURE: Thank you. Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, and friends, good morning and welcome again to Day 0 of the Internet Governance Forum here.
It is my honour to open a session that asks a bold, yet responsible question. How can we make sure that will digital wave we are riding becomes a net positive force for people and the planet.
First of all, let me try to frame it. So where we stand today, the ICT sector alone already accounts for about 2% to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And that share is likely to grow.
Science-based targets require us to cut absolute ICT emission business 45% between 2020 and 2030. To stay at the 1.5 degree pathway.
So although energy efficiency keeps improving, our absolute footprint still rises. Driven in particular by data-hungry AI.
So we need digital infrastructure and new technology, of course, because this is powering health, it's powering education, security, and business growth. But as a society, we must also answer how do we strengthen that footprint while scaling the handprint? The positive effects that digitization can deliver.
So, what does net positive mean?
Allow me to try to frame digital sustainability with a simple illustration. Showing on the screen on the left block, the footprint, that is of course the negative impact of digital infrastructure and devices. Its energy consumption is carbon emitted. Its material used and biodiversity lost.
Handprint on the other side, the right block, that is the positive impact. Its emissions and resources avoided when other sectors use digital services.
Smart grids, telemedicine, physician farming naming a few.
We have the rebound effect, which things get more efficient, cheap, we use more of it which reduces the positive handprint effect.
So if you add the handprint, subtract the footprint and adjust for the rebound effect, only then can we know if we achieve a net positive result worth celebrating.
So governance in this, that is, of course, everything we do to steer the balance. That are the rules, the incentives, the standards, it's the open data, of course inside companies, between companies within nations, across borders.
So the guiding question for today is, what kind of governance is needed to ensure that digitalization drives net positive sustainability, innovation, and value creation.
Of course, to solve this is not a solo project. We need to work together. It spans public and private sector, regulators and innovators from the north to the south.
And that is, of course, precisely the spirit of the Internet governance forum. It's a multi-stakeholder arena where we can test ideas and build common rule sets.
Norway has begun to walk the talk by measuring our national digital footprint and developing April open data-driven dashboard. To share that journey, I'm pleased to pass the floor to my colleague and assistant director within digital sustainability Nikoli who will take us from concepts to concrete action.
Nikoli, the stage is yours.
>> NIKOLI: Thanks a lot.
So the government of Norway gave us a task. We want you to reduce the footprint and increase the handprint. And while doing so, you should also drive innovation and value creation.
Is that possible? Yes, of course it is.
We will have a knowledge-based approach to this. And there's a strong link between sustainability, innovation, and value creation.
So how did we start on this task?
Well, the first thing we did was to start saying, we have to understand the footprint. So we did a full lifecycle analysis of the entire digital infrastructure of Norway. We also did scenario analysis towards 2030, 2050.
We included CO2 emission, energy consumption, use of materials, and also nature.
The report is not published yet, but if you're super curious, let's see maybe the -- there's a small QR Code down there, so if you are able to catch it from where you're sitting or look at the presentations afterwards, you can already now download a version because we have asked for feedback. It's super important for us that we agree that this is actually where we stand. So there's -- so this can become a common reference in Norway.
This is also the place I think I want -- anyone from France here?
We want to send a tribute to France because you guys were the first ones doing something like this. So we more or less did a copy morph of you.
So going to the findings. The total emission from the digital infrastructure of Norway is pretty much the same as the direct emission from domestic air travel. Another interesting finding was that the digital devices, they account for 75% of the footprint today.
But moving forward, we expect the data center segment to grow fastest. And have the highest growth on footprint. That's mainly caused by AI and energy, but I have to also add that in Norway, a special case maybe, it's also because we're an attractive country because we have access to renewable energy.
It was a lot of work to do that analysis. We can't do that every year. It will be too costly. Both for us as a public institution, but also for companies that we're sharing the data. So we need to do this more efficiently.
So moving forward, we will design, build, and test a data-driven, open-source dashboard or index. Dashboard maybe more correct.
So we will basically move towards a framework for governing the net biosphere impact from digitalization. So let me talk about the most important design principles of this. It should maybe have started with saying it has to add value. For us and for all the stakeholders. So especially the companies.
First of all, we will gather data as digital as possible. It will be design based, transparent. It will be, of course, fully aligned with international metrics like EU and standards of ITU and stuff that moves a few [?]. It will be open course and we will consider to publish it as digital public good.
We will, as the next step, so what we'll do as the next step? Well, on footprint it's quite straightforward. In close collaboration with companies and industry associations, we will simply build this meta version. On the handprint is a bit more of a challenge. Since the nature of how you measure it is quite different. That's where true and certainty stuff comes in.
But we will do a stab and look at how can we measure it and make sure we can discuss this in a meaningful way. Because of course we can do that in a better way than we do today.
So I'm going to end by saying we will first build this for Norway, but it's designed to share. So even if we're a small team, we really would like to collaborate internationally, especially with the doers.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Okay. Thank you, Nikoli Luvdel and thank you John-Eivind for sharing those wonderful perspectives and setting the tone and conversations so well for the conversations following this session.
Now our keynote speakers are up next, and they're going to share their points of view on net positive sustainable or rather net positive digital sustainability. They will share those with us in individual presentations, and then we're going to be moving into a panel discussion as well, Ladies and Gentlemen.
So first off, I would like to introduce our first keynote speaker, Kenneth has spent all of his 25-year career in the ICT industry, having worked both European, American, and Chinese suppliers. The last few years he's been at Huawei technologies. He's currently the senior Vice President of Huawei, Europe Region and the subsidiary director for the Nordic and Baltic cluster as well. He's going to share their point of view on net positive sustainability and they have a special focus on the development of green indices for ICT as outlined in their green management white paper.
So without further ado, I'd like to give a warm round of applause to Kenneth Fredriksen, the senior Vice President for Europe Region for Huawei. Please join us on stage. The floor is yours. A warm round of applause. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> KENNETH FREDRIKSEN: Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone, Ladies and Gentlemen, and distinguished guests. Both offline and online.
As mentioned, I'm basically probably going to outline this topic more from an infrastructure perspective. Huawei is a relatively large infrastructure provider doing an end-to-end portfolio of all kinds of digital infrastructures.
And as part of our work, we have done a green management white paper which is basically addressing how to govern, execute, and plan ICT organizations, green targets, and ambitions.
And one important component of this white paper is, as already mentioned, the green indices. Trying to address the different impact of the different layers of digital infrastructure. Both from a footprint perspective, but also from a handprint perspective.
And I'll briefly go through these different layers which we basically have categorized into five layers of infrastructure and also the final and maybe most important one, which is related to the handprint of ICT infrastructure.
So if we look at -- basically you can address this from a bottom-up approach, but also from a top-down approach.
But if we start at the bottom, which is basically the basic equipment layer, here you have the impact of the different equipment product components individually. The facility layer is more than the combined site or data center layer of all these different technologies being at site level. Where you also measure the overall site energy efficient level.
Then you go one step further which is the network layer, which is basically the measuring the overall energy efficiency of the whole network.
And then you measure the output of the network in terms of performance and quality.
Well, at the operational level, you look at the cross-network impact. Where basically you measure the impact of data across networks from A to B. And then at the enablement layer, the fifth layer, you look at the impact of introducing ICT technologies into other verticals.
So going into a bit more detail, I mean, at the site level, a typical site or a data center can look very different or basically it looks unique for every setup.
So in order to address the impact of a site or a data center facility, you need to go into the details of the equipment in the site, and you need to analyse both from an energy perspective, what kind of energy is being used, but also how to better optimize the performance of the different components together as a -- as a unit.
There's also different features, of course you can introduce in order to optimize and to improve energy consumption.
At the network level, you have the energy efficiency index, which is basically measuring the energy being used in order to provide a certain number of data traffic. And this has been a very typical way of measuring energy or network efficiency. But now it's also very important to include the quality and the performance part into this.
Because by only focusing on efficiency, you might compromise quality and performance of the network, such as coverage, speed of the network. Which then may have an overall negative impact of the total emission or performance of the network.
So you need to look at both. You cannot just look at the only the energy consumption part on the data traffic, but you need to look at how these measures then impact the quality and the user experience of the network.
And then at the operational level, you look at the end-to-end traffic of data from basically the consumer back to the data center and vice-versa. And as an operator of such facilities, you have two main areas to focus on.
To improve the energy efficiency, which is basically you're looking at how to optimize the performance of the network, the site, the data center level, and the different components involved. And you can look at how to reduce the emission factors. Which is basically then for the operators to make sure that you try to use as green energy as possible either from purchasing it or developing your own energy production facilities.
And also very importantly is, of course, the Vertical Enablement Index, which is basically the handprint part. How to enable new verticals, new industries, to be more green, more sustainable by introducing ICT technologies.
This is a simple example of how ICT technologies have been introduced in the mine industry -- mining industry. And basically what we see as a more kind of a general finding is that introducing ICT technologies into new verticals have a potential of up to ten times improvement in those industries compared to the emission created at the ICT industry level.
Which means that in this case, as you can see, it has an 8.4 times factor positive net factor of introducing ICT technologies. And in order to achieve this, at least Huawei very much encourage continuous dialogues at industry level, among the suppliers, of course, but the industry standard organizations, government authorities. We need to work together in furthering and improving the standardization of these ICT solutions and their requirements of it.
But also trying to work together to create ecosystems to increase the handprint potential of ICT technologies.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, Kenneth, for your presentation there.
Introducing our next keynote speaker, Anton heads Google's government affairs and public policy for Switzerland, Australia where are and international organizations in Europe. With over 20 years of experience in technology, innovation, and sustainability, Anton's focus is on building collaborations, a keyword here in the conversations, not only for today, but in the coming weeks, collaborations and partnerships across various sectors whether it's economy, politics, Civil Society, or even academia.
He's also a strong advocate for using artificial intelligence for achieving sustainability goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and he advises rainforest.global which is a nonprofit focused on forests, biodiversity, and climate action. Please join me in welcoming Anton Ashwandon. The floor is yours.
(Applause)
>> ANTON: Hello. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
So technology and AI are probably among the most powerful tools we have to tackle climate change and building a sustainable future.
And yet we know that the challenge is really big. They know we know that there's a big challenge on energy questions. And I think addressing this duality is a key task we are doing together. No one can do it alone, not a single company, not a single sector. That's why we're glad to be here at IGF. We're a strong supporter of the IGF for years and we're looking forward to the debates this week.
Thanks for the -- to the Norwegians as well to bringing us together. And this really this commitment to sustainability begins at our own operations we're doing that globally but also locally to manage our operations really in a sustainable way.
Some of you, I don't know if there are Norwegians in the crowd. We about to deepen our roots here in Norway by building a data center in the capital of the telemark county, so it's roughly 100 kilometers from here. So it's a key priority for us to really be sustainable across the globe, but also locally.
To reduce emissions, and this really a key work, we're working on this it's like we match 100% of our global and electricity every year since 2017. And our ambition is big and even bigger because we're working to operate 24/7 carbon free energy and achieve net-zero across our entire value chain by 2030.
What does that mean? That means every Google search, YouTube video you'll watch will be run big clean energy.
And we're making progress. You see on the slide ten of our regions achieving 90% clean energy carbon free. But very hard to admit as well this is a challenging task. You see on the very map above me as well that some regions are still behind. So we need deepen collaboration, work on technical progress, work together, collaborative spirit as we have here at IGF.
So let's address the elephant in the room, the energy footprint of AI. We tackle this by really a relentless obsession on efficiency. And this goes on several levels. The first level being our data centers.
They are now already like a factor 1.8 times more efficient than average. And we are delivering four times more compute power for the same electricity as we did five years ago. And then like the next layer is like the breakthroughs on the hardware. I don't know if you heard about the latest TPUs, the processing units, the latest AI chips, and it's real incredible the progress that has been made over the last years. They're now like 30 times more efficient than the first generation.
Then the element of level are the AI models. There we see the same kind of efficiency now cutting the level to train AI model by factor of 100. This will be more important than ever, this AI efficiency.
So let's come to the handprint after the footprint, and we really see many, many tools where AI can play a key role. We've done a study with BCG that AI can help mitigate 5% to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We're doing that with tools that empower people.
You see one illustration from the transport field eco routing in Google maps. We saved 2.7 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 alone which is taking 130,000 cars per year.
Another illustration from the transport field is our Project Greenlight, where we can cut emissions together with cities at intersection by up to 10%. Or taking an illustration from the energy field, our solar API which supports rooftop solar deployment now availability for a billion buildings across 40 markets.
Let me end with an illustration on climate adaption.
For years, predicting floods was only possible. You only had a warning phase of one or two days and sometimes only a few hours, and now with improved -- with improved prediction models, we now manage to warn people up to seven days in advance.
So this is -- if you imagine real impressive, 100 countries, 700 million people, and instead of only like giving a warning of a few hours before, together with partners like the UN NGOs, we are able now to warn people up to seven days in advance. That's not only saving lives, but livelihoods.
So those were just a few illustrations, and I think the crucial point I'm making is digitization can be a powerful force for sustainable planet. I ask you to pass our booth, we're going to highlight the projects I just mentioned and I'm look forward to the discussion with my copanelists today and to your questions.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: I hope you enjoyed that presentation. Our next presenter is the CEO of Bulk Infrastructure. It's a leading provider of infrastructure right here in Norway. He's a strong believer in building something bigger that ourselves and that Norway can play a key role in the digital and green brain. Now he will share the company's point of view with a special focus on how large data centers can support the energy grid with flexibility and how data centers could act as a cornerstone business with local support and value creation. I'd like to you to join me in giving a very warm welcome to Jon Gravrak.
(Applause)
>> JON GRAVRAK: Thank you.
Hello, everyone. Good to see you. Good morning. So I'm representing Bulk Infrastructure wand we're a developer and we also build fibre networks.
I wanted to talk a bit about this today. Our planet. We're definitely going into the digital society, to the data age, but it's still the humble beginning and we still have an opportunity to make our digital society a truly sustainable one. That's all about our mission in Bulk. How can we make our digital society sustainable.
And our governing thought looking at this planet is that we have to think differently. We have to choose the locations of the digital foundation, the data centers carefully. They should be located next to surplus of renewable energy, because data centers are consuming energy, and we need to be careful where we put them.
We think we need to look up north. We have abundance of renewable power both on the European side and on the American side if you look up north. It's actually shorter fibre distances to cross the continents the further north you get. The climate is colder, it does reduce the power consumption of our data centers, and it can scale for the future, which is important for those GPUs.
In Bulk, we try to think like an industrial company. What does it mean to bring an industrial mindset into this digital infrastructure world?
Well, first of all, we think you need to think long term. You have to do things today that will have an effect ten, 20 were 30, maybe 50 years ahead of time. And what we're doing today, that's based on decisions that were made ten, 15 years ago. So you need to keep that long-term logic with you.
Secondly, we think you need to really think about industrial scale. So you cannot only solve digital problems locally, you have to find a bigger role, a bigger scale to make it be industrial. In Bulk we think what we do in Norway making use of the power resource here should benefit all of Europe.
So sometimes we talk about building the European engine room for the digital society.
Thirdly, an industrial mindset requires you to think about people and capabilities. Yes, these are the machines that we're catering for, but it's still a people business. You need to bring in those young people, teach them capability of the future that can benefit all of us.
And I wanted to touch upon two sustainability aspects of what we're doing. The first one, definitely linking to the electricity or energy system. If you look at this picture, there's a data center in the foreground. That's our latest data center. And it's tailored to fit with generative AI and it's already housing the GB 200s, for the ones interested, which is the latest and greatest GPU technology.
And in the ground of this picture, you see another interesting thing, which is transformer station. This is Norway's transformer station. It handles the surplus power production in our part of the world.
And I think about sustainability is about seeing this energy system in the background together with the digital system in the foreground. We actually talk about digital energy.
And there's so many synergies to explore here, I already touched upon the first one which is that location of the data centers matters a lot. It's easier to transport data through fibre networks than it is to transport power through electric grids. And it's much more efficient.
So you have to think carefully about where you put these large data centers over the future. Secondly, there's simple things, which you'll have to understand on a local level. How can the data centers, you know, play in sync with the grid.
And in Norway it is really cold, and especially in the wintertime. So we spend by far the most energy in the winter. As a society.
But the data centers, they actually consume most power in the summer because that's when we need to cool down those servers. So seeing those snow synergies and using them to optimize the grid, that's one example of a synergy.
Another one is as we unfortunately saw in Spain and Portugal in summer, or this spring, I should say, as we bring more and more distributed power generation, solar, wind, into the grid system, we create new problems for ourselves. Those relate to the frequencies of how the power is distributed.
And you need to constantly rebalance those frequencies in the grid. And again, data centers with our batteries can contribute to that frequency balancing. It's another synergy.
I don't think it's all about electricity. I also think we need to talk about -- sorry, too many slides. We need to talk about building cornerstone businesses.
So as data centers, we're often just flying in, consuming the power and never meeting anyone locally. We think you have to build these data centers together with the local communities. You have to build the future cornerstone businesses.
Like the old industries did before. And on this picture is one example of that, it's to engage on sustainability initiatives together with the local municipality. This is in the south of Norway. And another example I wanted to show is this.
We have to take care of our youth. So this is Christopher, our supervisor on connectivity and fibre in the data center business, and he's teaching these 17-year-old kids that's studying to become electrical engineers how to think about connectivity in the data centers.
And for the ones that didn't know, the newest AI setups requires tens if not hundreds of thousands of independent fibre connections just to work. So we need that youth to come in. But it's also part of building a cornerstone business that you give the local youth an opportunity to take part in something which is bigger than themselves.
And finally, just to summarize, what I say, we need to build an industry around this. We need to have the long-term thinking and the scalable thinking. We need to think about the digital industry as an integrated one with the energy industry.
We need to think about digital energy. And that's Jensen Huang here says for countries and regions that have surplus renewable power, we really need to think about exporting intelligence and not just the raw material from power.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Jon, thank you. We're really looking forward to having all of our keynote speakers in the panel discussion so we can engage and take a deeper dive into this very important conversation. And great to see you, our audience, and acknowledging the audience watching online, so nice to have you here at this presentation.
So up next, our next speaker leads the World Economic Forum's work on trustworthy technology and trust is a word that's coming up a lot in this forum. So important in our day and age that we in. Including the digital trust initiative, the global coalition for digital safety and connected future initiative.
He's also an attorney and educator, Daniel teaches at Columbia University and his work has been featured business review and other publications that I'm sure you're familiar with. So he will present the view on net positive sustainability, the core concept and core of this conversation with a special request to explore the role of digital trust of the handprint potential of emerging technologies, really. He's going to be focusing on that.
And the handprint of emerging technologies with a positive impact in shaping a more sustainable digital future.
So we're going to hear from Daniel now and I'm going to ask you to give another warm round of applause, our audience, to Daniel Dobrygowski, head of governance and trust at the World Economic Forum. Let's hear it.
(Applause)
Daniel.
>> DANIEL DOBRYGOWSKI: Thank you very much for that warm introduction and appreciate the government of Norway and IGF inviting us out and giving us the opportunity to have this discussion.
This is an excellent way to start the IGF. In many ways, this theme of sustainability, governance, innovation, trust, highlights some of the key themes of our IGF meeting this week. Digital trust and resilience, sustainable and responsible innovation, universal access, and digital rights and digital cooperation.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about the section between those different themes and how innovation, sustainability, governance, and trust are absolutely vital when we're thinking about new and emerging technologies.
So first, let's talk a little bit about innovation. One of the key innovations we think about, AI, is likely to introduce enormous benefits to individuals and to society as a whole. We stand to become more effective and more efficient in almost every human endeavor. From medicine to communications to provision of government services.
But without clear and effective guardrails for that innovation, there's a chance that all of this will come at tremendous cost to individuals, to society, and to the planet.
Those guardrails and the choices that we make in setting them are what we mean when we talk about good governance. And this is where the forms work on digital trust comes in.
In order to be trustworthy in the development and deployment of new and emerging technologies, we need to decide collectively about what those guardrails guiding our decisions around technology should look like.
What we found is that the base expectation for individuals in determining whether they trust these technologies is whether the development and use of those technologies meets people's expectations and represents their values.
Some values and expectations are, of course, dependent on cultural, national, and other contexts. But some are more widely held, like those set on the University of declaration of human rights and some are more basic than that. People don't want or expect technology that does them harm.
People don't expect or want technologies that degrade the environment that supports our lives.
And looking at those reasons and more, I think we can see that AI doesn't seem to be measuring up in terms of trust, at least not yet.
Here we have research from the Ettelman in the trust barometer and it shows that only 44% trust AI. We can innovate over the long term if we lose trust. That means we need to do better about how we ensure that people's expectations guide our decisions around technology.
This is governance in its most basic sense. Developing rules or principles for how we decide how to develop these technologies.
And making good decisions is fundamentally a multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary effort. Again, here's where we want to talk about digital trust. It's multi-stakeholder because it takes all actors, nations, companies, Civil Society, and individuals working together in order to identify what our expectations are in terms of new technologies.
And also to define the guardrails for those technologies which we will accept. And it's interdisciplinary because there's no one source of trust. It's systemic and interconnected.
And here's what I mean by that. Looking at the forums digital trust model, you can see that we need to protect a variety of different issues. We need to have intersections between a variety of different disciplines in order to build trust. All of these areas must interact in order to have trustworthy technology development.
And here I'll highlight one of the areas that we talked about, sustainability. As we've discussed today, we need to ensure that technologies are developed and deployed in a sustainable way. This is a basic expectation that people have of technologies.
And as digital technologies increasingly consume resources such as energy, water, a trustworthy technology company or a government that wants to incentivize trustworthy technology must consider sustainability as part of its obligations. So here briefly you've heard a lot about AI footprint/handprint. Here's how we found that that works.
Data centers are a vital component of AI infrastructure. AI's rapid expansion is increasing the demand we place on these centers. And this is likely to increase significantly every year for the near future. Our estimate from January is a 50% annual increase through 2030.
And so that gets us to the handprint. If AI is significantly increasing our energy use, we can use AI to potentially offset that. And there's two ways we can do that. One, I think as Anton mentioned, we can make AI more efficient. We can have it use energy more efficiently through more efficient hardware, through more efficient models, by making better data centers. And we can also use AI to make other energy uses more efficient.
That's the sustainability handprint that we talked about for AI. What we found in our work is that through grid optimization, energy management, renewals forecasting and energy storage, we can use AI to bolster the tools that we've already developed to support sustainability.
So as I mentioned earlier, this is based on choices we have to make, and this is what brings together the themes of the week. If our innovations have caused a problem and severe environmental toll is certainly a problem, then it may be possible for us to innovate our way out of that problem, but only if we decide to do that. Only if we decide that digital trust is important. And only if we decide that good governance is worth pursuing and cooperate in defining what that looks like so we can have both innovation and sustainability and thereby build trust.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERIVK: Thank you so much, Daniel, for that very interesting and in depth presentation on trust and such an important part of this conversation as well.
Now, I'm going to introduce our next speaker before we engage in a panel discussion with the great speakers and diving deeper, as I said, into the topics that they've touched on in their presentations.
So while focusing now on the financial sector sustainability impact as a research leader, Pernilla was the research on ICT sustainability. And that is the sustainability impact at Erickson where she conducted her research and led research on topics such as climate and other environmental topics. And as a standardizer, she's been very active in bodies such as ITU and other codevelopers for smart sustainable cities and net-zero and decarbonization strategies as well. Without further ado, I'll leave it up to her to talk more about this subject.
She's going to be sharing the World Benchmarking Alliance's point of view on net positive sustainability and also discussing approaches for greening digital companies and advancing handprint frameworks to measure and enhance their impact.
Please join me in welcoming Pernilla to the stage. Pernilla Bergmark who is the research lead financial systems transformation for the World Benchmarking Alliance. And again, a warm round of applause, Ladies and Gentlemen. Pernilla.
(Applause)
>> PERNILLA BERGMARK: Thank you so much, Natalie, and thank you Norway and IGF for inviting me.
As you can hear, my voice is not perfect today, so I hope it will last for this presentation.
I represent an organization called WBA, World Benchmarking Alliance. We provide benchmarks and data and insights to policymakers, Civil Society, and to the industries to help understand how they are delivering on social, environmental impacts.
We do that across 2,000 companies across industries and 200 of them are from the tech sector. And that I will refer to today.
As we have heard today already, we have -- we can divide impacts from digital into three categories. We have the first order impact, which is also the foot print which has been preferred to earlier.
We have the second order impacts, which is the avoided but also added emissions when ICT is used or digital solutions are used in different sectors.
And we have the higher order effect called rebound. By that, I challenge the previous speakers for saying that the handprint is not only about avoiding emissions in other sectors, but it can also be adding emissions in other sectors. So that's an important thing to remember.
If you -- as you heard also from the first speaker, there is a trajectory which tells us how much the ICT sector should reduce its emissions between 2020 and 2030 by 45%. That is based on the normative framework which was developed by ITU and SBTi and so forth, GSMA.
This is not really what we are seeing happening yet. Based on research in 2020, we can see that the footprint has really not started to decline, but is stable while it should decline by 7%, basically, a year.
So as WBA, we are working with the ITU. We have a report that we publish on an annual basis called the Green Digital Report.
In this report, we are looking at the first footprint of the sector. And we are also rating companies in relation to their commitments, in relation to their performance, and also in relation to how transparent they are.
And we can see also there that we are not really on the right track. So in comparison with 2020, we can see that telecom operators have reduced operational emissions some what, but at the same time we can see that AI-driven companies have increased their operational emissions with up to 150%.
And also we can see that while these companies are investing quite heavily in renewables, it's not always renewables which leads to additionality, but it's something that's good. But we can see there's a concentration of emissions. So only 10 out of 164 companies that reported are only providing half the emissions.
We can see when it comes to targets that it's below 20% of the assessed emissions which are in the target which is where companies are on the track with meeting the target. And we can also see that over half the companies have targets, we can see that only 33% of emissions are under the target.
So that remains a lot to do. And especially when we come to what's called scope free, the value chain emissions, there are just 50 companies. I should speed up a bit.
Let's go to the second order effects. Whether this is net positive, net negative, or net zero, this isn't a new discussion. In 2008 there was a report called the smart 2020 that looked into the handprint and the proposed solutions that could help reduce emissions globally.
It came out with a conclusion that 15% of overall global emission could be used by the ICT sector, by the digital sector. However, if we look at recent data from our work in data, we can see if we look at all the sectors where ICT is supposed to reduce this handprint, we can see that they are not reducing by 15%.
Then you can maybe say that ICTs, without the ICT sector, it would have been even worse. We cannot know that, but we are definitely not seeing this delivered as of yet.
What can we say about more recent development?
Of course, if you compare with 2008, we are highly digital society, which we were not at that point. But we can also see that the claims that are made today are very similar to the claims made in 2008. But we are adding new buzzwords to describe them.
We have the methodology development and standardization has developed a lot around the [?] of this handprint. It's much deeper today, but many of the studies which are presented are quite limited in scope or they are still quite crude.
So it's very hard to know where the [?]
We see in those studies that there is often a cherry picking, that means that you have chosen solutions which are delivering the positive effects rather than looking at all solutions. There's also double accounting and also over generous extrapolation from small studies to wider effect.
So there is definitely need for in-depth studies. And also these higher order effects rebound are often omitted while they have substantial impact in reality.
So there are a lot of key questions that remains to be answered. So I'm looking forward to discuss that with my fellow panelists. Thank you for listening.
(Applause)
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for that presentation. I'm going to ask you to kindly have a seat over here, thank you so much.
We are going to be heading into our panel discussion, so we're going to invite our speakers who along with Pernilla have also contributed here with their presentations.
So thank you so much, Pernilla. I would like to invite back on to stage please join me in giving a warm round of applause our audience and you at home can too, our global audience who are watching from online, please join me in welcoming again Jon Gravrak. Please join us on stage.
(Applause)
I do appreciate it.
Anton from Google. Go ahead, yes.
Anton.
(Applause)
Kenneth.
(Applause)
It keeps everybody's energy up. Please join us, Kenneth.
And then we have John-Eivind.
(Applause)
And Daniel, please join us on stage.
(Applause)
And we have joining us also in this panel discussion, leaning, we have Karianne Tung who serves as our Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance and she has been a leader of innovation in Norway. Last year she presented the government's new national digital strategy, a roadmap really guiding Norway's digital development towards 2030.
With the goal of becoming the most digitalized country in the world. Please join me in welcoming Karianne Tung, our Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance.
(Applause)
All right. Let's get started.
So you've all had a wonderful opportunity to hear from our various speakers. Their take on -- well, their take on the guiding question of how to obtain net positive result, not just do no harm, but actually how do we positively turn this around. And that is what we're going to be diving into here.
Without further ado, I want to just also say thank you to our panel for your wonderful contributions and looking now at how we together can move forward towards net positive. Right.
Where do we start? There's so much to talk about and so many interesting points that you've all raised, but we have to start somewhere. So let's start here.
I'm going to direct the first question to you. How -- what kind of governance do you believe is needed to ensure that digitization really drives net positive sustainability, innovation, and value creation?
>> KARIANNE TUNG: Thank you, moderator, for the question.
I believe that digitalization is the tool that we need to solve huge societal challenges, but also to chase down the possibilities that comes with the digitalization. That is also why I set the goal of being the most digitalized country in the world by 2030.
Norway's already quite digitized society, but we still have a way to go and a continuous way to go.
One year ago in Norway, we then established a new Ministry for Digitalisation and Public Governance. We did that because we saw the need for better coordination and steering of digitalization across sectors, but also working across borders internationally so that we could find the positive sides of digitization.
Because we really need to cooperation across borders to be able to find the pathway both public sector, but also the business sector to work together to be able to do this in a sustainable way in an energy-efficient way as well.
Because we know we can use digitization as a positive tool, but also with the digitization we see emissions, we see challenges. And to be able to tackle these challenges we have to work together as well.
So cooperation, standardization, and clear goals is the way I'm working with the digitization.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for answering that question, minister. John, over to you. What's your take on that?
>> JOHN-EIVIND VELURE: Thank you, Natalie. Of course I'd like to add to what the Minister Tung said. And of course we as the Norwegian regulator and as a regulator, of course, but in our mandate it's very clear that we have a mandate to drive sustainability, innovation, and value creation also across the sector.
That is also related equipment and services and now also of course the data centers.
So we find it helpful to view the green and digital transitions as one continuous innovation journey. So that is why also digital sustainability and innovation is one of our core strategic pillars.
So first of all, I think -- and it might be obvious, but governance must be knowledge based. That is core.
So also as we've informed about today, we began by commissioning a full lifecycle analysis of the footprint of the Norway networks, data centers and devices. So we have a shared reference point that we can -- that we can start talking around. We have a common language that is very important.
Second, the governance was also stimulating innovation and business growth. So we see and research shows that sustainability drives competitive advantage, so regulate a need to understand emerging technologies and even co-create solutions.
And at the outcome, we try to cooperate also with industry, with telecom industry. And I have one example of that, we are also -- we have the companies where we learn how to tower site batteries may be used to stabilize the power grid. That's one example.
So and a third, we also must strengthen partnership as also Karianne Tung said, and international cooperation. We have a strong tradition of working with industry and NRAs, but we also must use the multi-stakeholder model to increase this.
So knowledge, innovation, and collaboration I think are great works.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Three great keywords to take forward in this conversation.
Kenneth, over to you.
>> KENNETH FREDRIKSEN: I think from our perspective, it's not only sustainability for society, it's about making sure we can sustain a sustainable industry for our self. I mean, unless we are able to continue to innovate and drive down the energy efficiency of our equipment, our industry itself is also going to be sustainable. But as I said in presentation, it's important to create ecosystems to maximize the potential of the handprint of ICT technology.
I think also awareness of the energy use of such technologies is extremely important, among a broader audience. I always use a very, you know, it's starting to become an old fun fact, but back in 2017 we did an assessment on, you know, trying to find examples to understand better how much energy is actually used.
And for those who remember the gang man style video on YouTube, that video by 2017 had consumed equal CO2 emission to the taxi industry in Germany in one year. And that puts things into perspective and was kind of a wakeup call, I think, also for the industry to understand that we have to continue to innovate if we are doing to be able to meet the data explosion.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much.
That really does paint a picture very clearly for us of the challenge and task ahead of why these conversations are so important.
Coming to you, Anton.
>> ANTON: I'd like to bring in another thought when talking about sustainable, digital development. Obviously it's an ecological aspect, but it's also social aspect. And we are today super privileged to be here in Norway where you're one of the leading digital nations. But it's also reality that 2.6 billion people on this planet earth are still offline.
So I think this is -- when talking about, like, sustainable digital development, we also need to think on how we can assure that this current digital divide is filled with sustainable infrastructure, obviously.
But that we also make sure that this digital divide doesn't suddenly become an AI divide. And those are current topics we're working on.
So speaking about infrastructure, I think it's key not only think about, like, the northern hemisphere, so to say, but also this morning there was a debate about sub-C cables in the other room that we think of how we connect people.
As Google this is one of the priorities we're having, like connecting the African Continent as an illustration, but then also building sub-C cables where they do not exist right now for example, between the southern American continent and Africa directly going over to the Pacific region without going over the north.
So I think this is really key that we not only think about, like, ecological questions, but also like about investments. We need obviously in a sustainable way. And skilling was already mentioned.
I think in this age when talking to people working at Google they ask me what should I do, this AI thing. I just say, take the basic classes. Take -- there are offerings from Google, classes, AI essentials, but there are many, many offerings. Go out, try it out, do the upskilling. I think this is my -- my key message here that we really have the sustainable development in a global sense.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Anton, thank you for your contribution. I'd like to come over to you, Daniel, who raised interesting points in your talk as well. How would you answer this question. What kind of governance is needed to ensure that digitalization drives net positive sustainability innovation and value creation?
>> DANIEL DOBRYGOWSKI: That's a great question. It's a question of measurement and decision-making. I think as sometimes global cooperation is difficult. Right? Sometimes it's easy like on this panel. We all sort of agree on where we want to see the world in the future. We all sort of agree on how important sustainability is.
But the real question is, how do you get there?
And that's a question of decisions we make. We're unlikely to slow the pace of innovation, right?
But as Ms. Tung said, we can still steer it. It's better steering. We need better reference points among all the stakeholders who are developing these technologies, who are making decisions about these technologies. And one of those reference points are accurate measurements about how new technologies are impacting our sustainability goals, how much the footprint costs, how much the handprint can alleviate. This is fundamentally the question that we all need to work together to figure out what good looks like and then how do we measure whether we're achieving that or not.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, Daniel, for your contribution.
Pernilla, World Benchmarking Alliance, what do you say to that question?
>> PERNILLA BERGMARK: So I agree very much with what has been said, that the digital divide is -- and of course there has to be access to digital technologies for all, not only for the wealthy part of the world.
But at the same time, I think companies need to come to especially the handprint side, not so much from a marketing perspective, but rather to look into what are the opportunities, but what are also the risks which are the solutions we should use and how can we make sure to maximize those.
And also which are the solutions or not -- solutions maybe the wrong word, but what are the services that we should avoid.
So there is one infrastructure layer, but there is also the service layer on top that we immediate to be careful of.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, Pernilla from the World Benchmarking Alliance for that response.
And then I'd like to go over to Jon, Bulk Infrastructure, how would you answer that question?
>> JON GRAVRAK: I think there's many questions being addressed here, but I'm coming back to our digital society having to be linked with the energy system. I think they're so closely interlinked to begin with that we have to see them almost as one.
And I think as we've learned through I think generations, the energy system is not a local one. It works best when you can think about it at least in continental terms or at least maybe even global terms. And I think that's some of the thinking we need to apply now that we integrate the digital system into that as well.
Sitting here in Norway, I think our role in Europe is very important, and I think we are fortunate enough to have, you know, renewable energy in this part of the world and we're fortunate enough to be quite close to continent of Europe but also with the coastline where our next neighbor is actually North America if you cross the Atlantic. And if you even go, let's say, across the Arctic, then you actually hit Asia.
I think there's something here that I think there's a need for bold leadership to see how this digital system could evolve not tomorrow, but actually to serve, you know, our planet for generations ahead.
And then I think we need to think about how to build those power-consuming data centers where they can piggyback on what nature's offered us and build new energy and then fuel digital needs by fibre networks in a slightly different way.
I think that has to be seen in side by side by sovereignty issues, which is another part of this. But I think we need to overcome both, right?
We need to build local solutions with the right robustness for our local societies. But we also need to work together to find a truly sustainable solutions in between countries and even in between continents.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for that answer, Jon. Now our next question is diving deeper in this. I'm going to give the word again to our Minister Tung to answer the question, then I'm going to ask our panelists if they would like to answer that question. But we have a number of deeper questions that are potentially more specific to your industry that I'm also going to pose so you'll have an option.
Minister Tung, also the next question I'd like to ask you is how can we reduce the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint? And its positive contributions to society and sustainability.
>> KARIANNE TUNG: Thank you.
Well, you see, it's hard. Because as minister or as a politician you then have to be able to have two thoughts in your head at the same time. And that can be hard enough sometimes.
You have to have the thought that you're going to reduce emissions directly from the digital infrastructure and from digitalization.
And then you have the thought that you have to use digitization as a tool for making the green and digital transformation possible.
And being a politician, being re-elected, you have also to get the people on board to be able to have these two thoughts at the same time. So easy to say, maybe a little bit harder to do in practice as well.
But a foundation for doing this exercise about two thoughts is knowledge. And I think my colleague here mentioned it earlier as well. Knowledge is crucial for being able to develop good policies and good plans, good strategies and have now made the lifecycle analysis of emissions from digitalization in Norway. We are the second country in the world.
So using that knowledge, the benchmark and the measurements that Anton has mentioned, it's crucial for being able to do both at the same time. Because we need success from digitalization. We need to use AI and other technologies for our health care services. We need to use it to make our businesses excel. We need to use it to keep secure and safe and to collaborate across borders internationally as well.
So based on the knowledge which the report and lifecycle analyses from NCOM, I'll use that here in Norway to make good policies. We are now a couple days -- couple of weeks away from launching our new data center strategy. We know data centers uses a lot of energy today, but will use more in the years to come.
So make data centers efficient, energy efficient, sustainable is important, but also data center is important for keeping security, digital sovereignty, and so forth.
I think there are some research shown here in Norway that if you are able to reuse the [?] from data center, you will reduce the use of 10% from power -- from energy in Norway as well. So making the data center efficient is important for us, but also making the data centers good so that we can have safe digital infrastructures in the years to come.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for answering that question, Minister, and some very salient points there.
I would like to pose that question to the panel, but keeping in mind that this is -- this is not an easy challenge we're talking about. This is challenging for real, as somebody said later on.
The question then about how can we reduce environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint, I would like to pose to the panel, if you would like to answer, the other questions or potentially things that you can touch on inside that is innovation, let's say in digitalization, including lots of new and emerging technologies such as AI Blockchain and IoT. What's the link between innovation and sustain the. How do we make that bridge.
Also value creation, how do we create to societies where they operate and create lasting value. And then the question on data, what gets measured gets done. That we know.
So do we have the right frameworks in place to measure the footprint and handprint?
And then awareness. Mindset, what kind of mindset is needed and values for sustainability leaders to shape the digital infrastructure for the next generation.
And what roles do the variety of stakeholders play in ensuring trustworthy, just, and sustainable digital innovation.
I'm going over to you again, Jon, because I know that mindset and stakeholders were potentially things that you wanted to touch on. Please go ahead.
>> JON GRAVRAK: I think these are big questions and we need to think big thoughts. Our sustainability framework is about location which has been the local time and then it's also to build let's say data centers which consume as limited energy as possible with the support for the supplies here. And they we also think around the ecosystem, how can data centers be good citizen, you know, in a very local ecosystem.
And I think the third one is interesting here because the Minister talked about the excess heat, right, and our ability to make re-use of that heat. It's not a new problem, because all power-consuming industries have for 120 years had the same problem. That heat is a byproduct of the core process.
And it's released to the sphere. But I think our kids, they will not accept that we now build a new industry without making sure we use the energy twice. I think that's the difference.
So we are the ones that have to resolve it, or at least we're looked upon by our kids as the ones that should resolve and it not leave it to them.
And I think it's a big problem. So the easy part is maybe reuse some of that heat in the big cities to heat apartments and so on. But it's not really a great solution, because there's not enough need for heat in the cities.
By the way, the data centers shouldn't reside next to the big cities, they should reside close to the power in the rural areas. In my opinion, the solution here is to build industrial use of heat. You need to find and stimulate opportunities where other industries that actually need heat, it could be breweries, food production, could be protein production where they co-locate with the big data centers. Then we can solve many problems in one goal.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for that. Thank you for that.
Daniel, what would you like to touch on in answering that question? I can repeat the question.
It's how do we reduce environmental footprint of digital infrastructure while maximizing the handprint. But is there anything in particular that you want to touch on?
Do we have the right frameworks, data, value creation, innovation awareness? Are we aware enough? Are we accepting the challenge? How difficult is this really?
>> DANIEL DOBRYGOWSKI: I think it gets back to what Jon was pointing out, for a long term, long time, businesses that use a lot of energy generate waste heat. Why hasn't that been collected?
I think the issue is the incentives haven't aligned. In a lot of countries, especially ones that are heavily invested in developing AI and other innovations, electricity's fairly cheap and waste heat is essentially free.
How can we realign incentives to ensure that there is the kind of business case you want to see in order to capture that heat, to think ahead about what we're going to do for these data centers.
Or how to incentivize more uses of energy. I think we have more AI models cost less so the electricity costs less, there's a cost savings there. How you to incentivize the use of that heat. That's the big question we need to answer in order to get through the sustainability issues that this raises and maybe increase the handprint of the decrease of the footprint of the nomenclature that we're using.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: If you for that, Daniel. I'd like to come back you to, Kenneth.
How would you like to answer the question and how do you want to dive into this so we have the nitty-gritty and have some actual takeaways.
>> KENNETH FREDRIKSEN: I think it's important to keep in mind this is a global challenge and local challenge in negative and positive terms. It's extremely important that Europe, for example, doesn't end up overregulating itself like we perhaps have done in the past to kind of handicap ourselves in terms of realizing the handprint potential.
Because these are two very interconnected things. Unless you're properly, you know, doing the footprint job, you cannot realize the handprint potential. But if you're too restrictive on the footprint part, you're going to limit your handprint opportunities as well.
And in order to finance the innovation and continuous development of the handprint, you need to have value creation. And that is on the handprint part. It's very connected, and I think was said, we need to have several thoughts in our head at the same time to understand the overall picture and total picture of this.
Because if we only focus on reducing the footprint part, we're going to limit ourselves a lot on the handprint. Especially in the short-term. Because I think a lot of the potential will be realized longer down the road. And you need some investments both in terms of the transition period and of course also in terms of money and resources.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Absolutely.
And I'd like you to keep that in mind, that question as you talk about getting two thoughts in mind.
Pernilla, if I may come over you to. Answering that question how do we minimize the footprint, maximize the handprint, but looking specifically then at frameworks as well. Data for example, what gets measured gets done. Do we have the right tools to measure this and what we're talking about?
>> PERNILLA BERGMARK: Basically we've been working on the methods and standards for a long time, so I would say the basic standards are probably there. But it's also about using them to make claims.
But then also to supervising what's happening, what is data coming out and to learn from that. So as I mentioned in my presentation, of course we see when we benchmark companies that are leaders that are doing really well, but then it goes all the way down to the bottom, the sector as a whole is not really where it needs to be.
I think those initiatives like in Norway and also previously [?] I know [?] I think that those are good but there are also methodological challenges in learnings too.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for that.
I wanted to hop over to Anton from Google and just also to ask about that question, how do we do this for real?
It's a challenge, obviously, and do you want to bring in a strand around innovation as well into your answer there?
>> ANTON: I think it's really about collaboration. We have now a significant presence with infrastructure here in Europe too, and like not a single company or a single act or sector can do that alone. So I think it's about like sharing best practices as well.
I was mentioning that, that we're about to dean our roots near Norway with an upcoming data center in Sheen in the telemark company. But we have data centers in the region, Finland, and thinking about how can you better cool the infrastructure to, like, in this day, with water cooling and then also share those best practices.
I think this is -- this is one element in this really pursuit of increased efficiency of those infrastructures and we're doing our part there.
And then it's also collaboration in the sense of having access to better data. I was mentioning some cases with the [?] previously in my speech, but there are also platforms like environment insight explore are where local communities, cities can get more data on where they can improve their own system, for example, or transport.
So I think this is really -- and that's why we're so happy that the Norwegians are taking the lead in the true multi-stakeholder spirit to solutions and best practices. I can only invite you to come to our booth afterwards where we have some of the tools I mentioned before.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you, Anton. We do invite you to visit all of the booths. Very a fantastic exhibition outside and it's going to be there all week.
The word data keeps popping up. So what gets measured gets done. Do we have the right frameworks and understand to steer towards what it takes.
I'm going to pose that question to you, John-Eivind. What you to have to say on that?
>> JOHN-EIVIND VELURE: I'm the first to admit that this is a challenging task. It's difficult. And also as a traditional regulator, we're not used to actually put this high on the agenda.
We have done so in the last couple of years, and now we are starting to see some results. But some effort. But I think that's a key issue that regulators comments need to put this high on the agenda to start. And then you also need to seek knowledge.
Because I'll start here with this analysis, of course we have used a methodology, but we need more. We need to learn from each other. We need to share data. And we need to develop this so that we have a common basis, the politicians need this to also make decisions.
And I think we have just -- just started here. And this needs to be developed further. And we are too small to do this by ourselves. So by meeting here, I think that is also spreading the word. It's very important.
And to -- to initiate further collaboration, that is the key to succeed, I think.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, John-Eivind. And coming over to you, Minister Tung. How are Norway and other nations and companies when it comes to achieving this net positive digital sustainability, how much ambition do you have?
>> KARIANNE TUNG: We have high ambition but also cutting emissions and to be sustainable and we want to lead the way.
We're doing a couple things already, I just want to mention them quickly.
First, we are demanding from industries, also new data centers that they have to do analysis on how they can reuse their heat already to try to move over from just wasting heat and to reuse it in neighborhoods and for industries as well. That is one thing.
We have to do better when it comes to the circular economy, because today many emission from is not from data centers, but they're from mobile phones, iPads, like hardware. So to be able to keep your hardware longer, to fix it if it's broken, to work with the citizens and their mindset on how they use things are important.
And also we are now trying to [?] From mining of currency in Norway because we can see that mining is not energy efficient, so that's what we're trying to do so that we can keep the data centers that we really need in the future from making digitalization possible in our society.
So we are getting there, we are doing some hard action and some more soft actions, but we need to do more to be sure that we are able to get net positive in the future.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, Minister Tung.
On that note, I would like to say thank you so much to our esteemed panel and thank you so our audience also for joining us.
We truly appreciate it. I'm wondering if there was anyone in the panel who wanted to contribute a 30 to 60-second wrap up final thoughts. If not, we'll wrap up. But I'm going to give you the opportunity to do so.
>> JON GRAVRAK: My advice is that we're still at the very humble beginning of what we're building now of digital societies. And my encouragement is to think about that as an integrated part of our energy system and to do our kids a favour and make this one a sustainable one.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much. Please go ahead.
>> KENNETH FREDRIKSEN: I think in order to solve any challenge, you need to continue to innovate. And the best way of innovating is to make sure you have proper competition. So I think innovation and competition is going to be a key solution to these challenges.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you. Daniel.
>> DANIEL DOBRYGOWSKI: I guess I'll just contribute to one of the words we talked about a little bit was justice. We might refer to as fairness in the forums framework and I'm sure there some legal philosophies going oh, they're the same thing. I see you. But that's the point.
To innovate in an unsustainable way isn't fair or just to the future generations. We need to put this in the context of what's fair and just to create the incentives and measurements to order to have a sustainable innovation society going forward.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much for those parting words, Daniel.
John-Eivind.
>> JOHN-EIVIND VELURE: Just to add, foster innovation, make business cases, but perhaps you need some regulation.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: There we go. I saw you raise your hand, Anton. Yes.
>> ANTON: Very grateful for discussion. I think it's crucial to look at the footprint, but let's also put things into perspective. Like right now the dataset consumption worldwide according to the international agency is 1.5% of global electricity. So I'm talking of everything, not our operations.
Obviously it's a challenge. It's increasing. We need to work on it. But let's not forget about this is the foundation of, like, all economies, society, and all the potential solutions.
So my -- my request would really see -- would really be to see the opportunities of AI for good, also within the UN system we have IGF this week and in two weeks AI for Good in Geneva, really see what's happening and what potential solutions out there.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much. Minister.
>> KARIANNE TUNG: Just to follow up on Anton as well and I often say and people remember, one plus one is more than two because it's vast cooperation. The governments can't do it alone. Parliaments can't do it alone. Business sector can't do it alone. Citizens can't do it alone. We all have to do it together within the framework of cooperation. But I also believe in the framework of regulation.
Regulation which is not tight or too tight but regulation that can define and make innovation possible.
>> NATALIE BECKER-AAKERVIK: Thank you so much, Minister. Thank you so much to our esteemed panelists, our great speakers from all around the world who have made time to be here and have these very important conversations that affect all of us, that affect all of us.
Thank you so much. Our audience here, our audience globally, let's give our panelists a warm round of applause. Thank you so much.
(Applause)