On the 5th June, I had the privilege of presenting at the annual UCISA Sustainability Conference titled ‘Will New Technology Help or Harm the Planet?’. Here’s a run down of how it went.

Will technology save us?

Technology plays a crucial role in sustainability. Many of the environmental and social challenges we face today can be traced back to the creation and misuse of earlier technological developments. At the same time, it feels like every week there’s another silver bullet technology that can supposedly reverse climate change, reduce global hunger or even remove the need for anyone to work.  

However, at this conference, what stood out was not the promises that new technologies gave us (although there was some impressive analytics from the University of Bristol), but rather the way we use it. Technology depends on the systems, values, and humans that shape their design and deployment. 

I decided to focus my presentation on efficiency, as this is a common measure of sustainability, as it is often tied to easy wins marrying cost and energy savings. However, it can sometimes lead us to rely too heavily on technology to fix issues, rather than resolving our unsustainable practices.

The abstract for my talk:  

Becoming efficient: What happens when we can’t go any faster?
Oisin Doherty, Green Web Estate Intern, The University of Edinburgh 

Have we streamlined too close to the sun? As data storage grows exponentially and AI slop slowly fills the internet, this talk questions the role of efficiency in technology and emphasises the need to create with care. 

By addressing the rebound effect, it explores how technologies can shift our behaviours for the worse – and why a more intentional, considered approach to digital creation is needed to both clean up the internet and curb the negative impacts of digital technologies. 

The key message emphasized that unsustainable issues stem from human practices. Regardless of the technology or platform, we need to care more – by spending more time managing our websites rather than creating new ones without the required resource. 

The rest of the conference

I also sat on a panel discussing the influence of remote working on sustainability. This prompted a really interesting chat, looking at the benefits of flexibility for parents, reducing gender divides, and empowering employees. But we also talked about the power of place to provide community, and how measuring sustainability purely through quantitative metrics (like carbon emissions) can ignore inherent social sustainability values in work and life. 

My conference highlights:  

Susan Brown, from the University of Manchester, started us off with a powerful presentation reminding us of all of the global realities that lie behind the production of our tech and what happens to what we throw away. I particularly enjoyed reimagining how we teach and learn – reinforcing the point that high-tech use isn’t the only way.

Paul Rock broke down the meaning of scope 1,2 and 3 emissions – something that is key for digital services as many of the emissions fall under scope 3. This presentation helped me rethink how I measure website emissions (usually through the Sustainable Web Design Model) – as there are lots of other methods out there. Otis, the Green Web Platforms Intern, gave a good run down of some of the other models in this blog.  

Amongst all the scary AI rhetoric, John Vass-de-Zomba, also University of Manchester, clearly discussed the real impacts of AI, highlighting the severe environmental and social effects of developing and running large language models. He offered pragmatic recommendations for both institutions and individuals to navigate this new technology effectively – which are very needed!

Presentation slides and recordings are available to access through this link below (I think only for those who signed up to the conference?). Check it out!  

SUG25 – UCISA 

And many thanks to UCISA, and the Sustainability Group, for having me along.