Smartphones, streaming, AI: digital tech’s outsized climate impact in Switzerland

In 2022, eight out of ten young people in Switzerland owned a new smartphone. Keystone

Everyday devices and online services sap the planet’s natural resources and contribute to climate change. But there are ways to make digital life greener.

More than six billion people – three quarters of the world’s population – are now onlineExternal link. In high-income countries like Switzerland, virtually the entire population has internet access. The Swiss spend an average of five hours and 32 minutes online per day – three times more than they did in 2011.

Although the digital world may feel intangible and efficient, it’s a substantial contributor to environmental pollution and depleting the planet’s resources. As the population grows and as artificial intelligence (AI) spreads, the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on climate and the environment is rapidly increasingExternal link – as is the problem of waste from the manufacturing and disposing of electronics.

“Buying a new smartphone is far from insignificant from an environmental point of view,” says Louise Aubet from Resilio, a start-up at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) which aims to make digital technologies more sustainable.

A recent studyExternal link by Resilio quantified for the first time the environmental impact of the digital sector in Switzerland. Everyday electronic devices, from smartphones to televisions, negatively affect the climate even before they reach our hands. The number of data centres – physical facilities that store, process and distribute digital data – is also increasing, and with it, the electricity needed to power them.

Switzerland ranks among the nations with the highest number of electronic devices per capita and the greatest concentration of data centresExternal link.

>> What does it all mean? Read our breakdown of the terms associated with artificial intelligence here:

A nuclear power plant to supply electricity for the digital sector

The ICT sector uses 12% of Switzerland’s electricity, according to the study, which considered all electronic devices for private and professional use (such as smartphones, tablets, laptops), as well as telecommunications networks and data centres in the country in 2024. The total electricity demand is just below the annual output of the Gösgen nuclear plant in western Switzerland.

Meanwhile the country’s roughly 120 data centres account for half of this consumption – 6% of national electricity. Their number is constantly growing, along with electricity use and the water needed to cool servers.

The share of digital technology in Switzerland’s national electricity consumption is comparable to that of neighbouring France, one of the few countries to have analysed the ICT sector’s impact using a similar methodology. In 2022, digital goods and services consumed 14.3% of France’s electricityExternal link. Individual electricity consumption for internet users is also similar across the two countries.

Switzerland is among the countries with the highest density of data centres in the world (pictured is a facility in canton Aargau). Keystone / Christian Beutler

Digital technology’s climate footprint is similar to aviation

Resilio’s study also considered the entire life cycle of ICT equipment and infrastructure used in Switzerland, from the extraction of materials – like lithium and cobalt used in batteries – to the management of electronic waste.

Some 930 million tonnes of earth were dug up to meet Switzerland’s demand for minerals and metals for electronics and equipment in use in 2024, according to Resilio. That’s equivalent to a crater the size of the city of Winterthur and ten metres deep.

Extracting materials, manufacturing devices, and transporting them to Switzerland generates about two million tonnes of CO2 – nearly 2% of the emissions related to all the goods and services consumed in Switzerland. Globally, the digital sector accounts for between 1.5% and 4% of greenhouse gas emissions – a share comparable to that of civil aviation, according to a reportExternal link by the International Telecommunication Union and the World Bank.

When the energy required for the entire supply chain comes from fossil fuels, it generates CO2 emissions. In Asia, where most devices used in Switzerland and Europe are assembled, fossil fuels make up 70% of the electricity mixExternal link (compared to 40% in Europe).

The impact of emails and AI

Sending a short email from a computer generates 0.3 grams of CO₂External link – a negligible amount, but which has to be multiplied by the more than 374 billion messagesExternal link sent every day. A Google search consumes an average of 0.3 watt-hours of electricityExternal link. A ChatGPT query requires ten times as much (2.9 watt-hours).

Data centres require large amounts of water for construction and to cool electrical components. Global AI demand will consume between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of waterExternal link by 2027. By comparison, Switzerland’s population uses over two billion cubic meters annually.

And by 2030, AI will generate between 24 and 44 million tons of CO₂ per yearExternal link – the equivalent environmental impact of 5-10 million cars.

The impact of data centres will grow over the next ten years

In 2024, there were 73.5 million ICT devices in use in Switzerland. That’s an average of 8.5 phones, laptops, tablets, headphones, or similar objects for every person in the country. (By comparison, the figure is 6.9 in France and 5.7 worldwide.) These devices account for most (66%) of the digital sector’s environmental footprint in Switzerland, according to Resilio’s study.

In 2024, data centres – which such devices ping as they go online and retrieve data – were responsible for about a quarter of the ICT sector’s environmental impact in Switzerland. But this is changing: data centres are projected to account for 56% of the digital environmental footprint by 2035, according to Resilio’s forecasts.

The weight of data centres in the Swiss digital sector’s environmental footprint will increase by 2035. Resilio

This evolution is driven by the rapid expansion of cloud computingExternal link and the growth of high-intensity AI. The spread of digital services across all sectors of the economy – especially healthcare, finance, manufacturing, energy and transport – also contributes to data centres’ consumption.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, 43% of Switzerland’s population regularly uses generative AI to create text, images or audio. Among 15-24-year-olds, the share is 79%.

At the same time, AI-based systems can optimise industrial processes and improve energy efficiency, including in the ICT sector, reducing its impact on the climateExternal link and natural resources. 

“AI is just a tool: it depends on how we use it if it is going to reduce emissions or increase them,” Gudrun Gudmundsdottir, a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark and a reviewer of Resilio’s study, told Swissinfo.

However, she adds, “it’s very clear that the expectation of growing AI use will push companies and countries to build more data centres, will make network operators build for more capacity and hardware producers double down on their production”.

How to reduce the impact of digital technology?

There is no shortage of solutions to reduce the footprint of digital technologies, and they involve all players in the sector. In 2020, the International Telecommunication Union set the goal of reducing overall ICT sector emissions by 45% by 2030External link.

Data centres can cut energy consumption for server cooling by adopting submersive systems instead of fans and air conditioning, Gudmundsdottir says. In those systems, servers and other IT equipment are submerged in a liquid that dissipates heat. Data centres should also increase the share of renewables in their electricity mix.

Hardware producers, for their part, can work to reduce heat dissipation and the energy consumption of devices when they are on but are not performing any significant activity. Software companies can develop programs that are leaner and more energy-efficient, Gudmundsdottir explains.

Collaboration and a shared vision are needed so that all companies in the sector pursue the same goal of reducing emissions, she adds.

“Companies sharing data on emissions is one central solution to help firms to increase competition in low emissions products and create traceable and low emissions supply chains,” she says.

Do less, but better

Consumers can also do their part. “A simple practice is to avoid buying unnecessary electrical equipment, increase the lifetime of your devices, unplug them when not in use, and make sure they are recycled,” Gudmundsdottir emphasises.

According to a reportExternal link by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Swisscom, in 2022 eight out of ten young people in Switzerland owned a newly purchased smartphone. However, at 2.7 years, they used it for slightly longer than in 2016 (1.9 years).

Jan Bieser, professor of digitalisation and sustainability at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, sees ways to minimise data use. For example, a large share of the data traffic on the internet consists of video and social media content, which does not necessarily need to be transmitted in ever-higher resolutions – particularly when users do not even perceive a difference in quality.

Resilio’s study concludes that technological efficiency alone is not enough. Digital sobriety – doing less but better – must be at the heart of Switzerland’s approach to technology, it recommends.

Edited by Gabe Bullard/vdv,dos