Fujitsu Proud to be a Gold Sponsor of GeSI SMARTer2030  Report

The GeSI SMARTer2030 Report - 'ICT Solutions for 21st Century Challenges' - was launched on 9 June in Bonn at a joint GeSI-ICC event, in parallel with the UNFCCC negotiations that lead to the COP21 conference to be held in Paris at the end of the year.

GeSI, the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, is an international association driving the ICT sustainability agenda, and is a recognized thought leader contributing to the achievement of the low-carbon economy through responsible, ICT-enabled transformation.

SMARTer2030 Report

SMARTer2030 is the third instalment in the ground-breaking GeSI SMART series, following SMART2020 (2008) and SMARTer2020 (2012). It demonstrates the role of ICT in achieving a more sustainable world while creating business opportunities from the cross-sector adoption of ICT solutions.

SMARTer2030 demonstrates the unique and vital role which can be played by ICT, within the 2030 timeframe, in achieving sustainable development, not only from an environmental point of view, but also looking at social inclusion and economic growth. It quantifies the economic opportunities created by the adoption of ICT solutions, and its potential contribution to the goal of decoupling economic growth and carbon emissions.

SMARTer2030 calculates that ICT can help reducing global carbon emissions by 20% by 2030 (thus maintaining them at the same levels of 2015), whilst creating an economic benefit of 11 trillion USD.

SMARTer2030 identifies three distinct audiences who are key to ICT solutions being implemented and outlines the roles that each of these can play to build a more sustainable world:

Business

• ICT has substantial growth opportunities, as well as generating major sustainability and broader social benefits
• SMARTer2030 estimates 2 trillion USD in additional ICT revenues in 2030, 0.4 trillion USD from connecting 2.5 billion new people to ICT, and 9.4 trillion USD in indirect benefits via reduced costs, greater efficiencies and decreased waste
• Business leaders need to take action to explore the opportunities, realize the cost savings and commit to bold actions

Consumers

• SMARTer2030 shows how ICT solutions can help make life in 2030 different and better for all
• By bringing ICT into everyday life people can benefit from increased convenience , reduced costs, and greater income opportunities
• To reap these benefits people need to get online and embrace services such as e-health and e-learning

Policy makers

• ICT needs to be recognized as one of the key implementation tools to decrease emissions and support governments in operating more efficiently and enabling social inclusion policies
• To achieve this, incentives are necessary to support the infrastructure investment needed to deploy ICT solutions on a large scale and unlock their full potential
• A consistent and fair policy and legislative framework needs to be in place to provide business with the stability , and predictability, needed to make long-term investment decisions and implement innovation plans

What is clear is that business as usual is not an option. The world is on track to surpass the emissions budget that would keep the average global temperature rise below 2oC, and at the current rate of resource use, we will need three planets worth of natural resources to sustain economic growth. The core problem is that, historically, the link between economic growth, CO2e emissions and resource use has been very strong. In fact, for every 1% increase in GDP, CO2e emissions have generally risen by around 0.5% and resource intensity has risen by 0.4%. But we are reaching the limits of this model, both in terms of resource depletion and atmospheric greenhouse gas makeup. So, in the coming decades, the world must shift to a low carbon growth path and achieve "absolute decoupling" of economic growth from energy and resource consumption.

Smarter2030 uses new modelling, unpreceded in its range and depth, into the potential ICT to reshape radically the way we live, as well as reducing the impact that continued economic growth has on our environment. We have found that, through the smarter application of ICT the global economy could generate at least US$6 trillion of additional economic opportunity by 2030. Importantly, though, this can all be done without adding to resource or climate footprints, keeping CO2e emissions steady at today's (2015) levels.

SMARTer2030 is also the first report of its kind to examine the impact ICT can have on societal, as well as economic and environmental benefits - the triple bottom line of the world economy. For example, among the many findings in the report, we can show that the roll-out of ICT could save up to 25 billion barrels of oil, 332 trillion liters of water and 91 million tons of paper on a business as usual scenario. We also see a future in which 1.6 billion people have access to E-healthcare and half a billion have access to E-learning solutions. Overall, 2.5 billion more people will be connected to ICT and thereby get access to the benefits ICT can deliver.

But perhaps the most important societal benefit ICT can bring is empowerment, e.g. to the student or employee who can pursue lifelong learning through smart technology, to the citizen who can access health systems more easily, and to the telecommuter who has more time to spend with their families rather than sitting in traffic.

Fujitsu as a Gold Sponsor

Fujitsu is one of the Gold Sponsors of Smarter2030, and has been actively engaged in its production. The report includes many customer case studies illustrating real-life examples of how ICT can bring sustainability benefits, including from Fujitsu in the areas of Smart Energy, Smart Agriculture and Smart Manufacturing.

Following case studies introduced in SMARTer2030 are also available in our websites;

• Farm cloud computing -transforming farming by exploiting ICT More details
• Fujitsu's Akisai Food and Agriculture Cloud solution -achieving resilience through ICT More details

[Jun, 2015]