IoT on the Road to Sustainability: Vehicle or Bandit?

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the ecological impact of IoT devices and networks, revealing significant carbon footprints and energy consumption, and emphasizes the need for sustainable design and multidisciplinary efforts to ensure IoT supports a green future.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive assessment of IoT's ecological impact at both device and network levels, highlighting areas for sustainable innovation and design.

Findings

Device production carbon footprint exceeds operational emissions

Adding IoT support increases cellular network energy use by over 15%

Calls for multidisciplinary approaches to steer IoT towards sustainability

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) can support the evolution towards a digital and green future. However, the introduction of the technology clearly has in itself a direct adverse ecological impact. This paper assesses this impact at both the IoT-node and at the network side. For the nodes, we show that the electronics production of devices comes with a carbon footprint that can be much higher than during operation phase. We highlight that the inclusion of IoT support in existing cellular networks comes with a significant ecological penalty, raising overall energy consumption by more than 15%. These results call for novel design approaches for the nodes and for early consideration of the support for IoT in future networks. Raising the 'Vehicle or bandit?' question on the nature of IoT in the broader sense of sustainability, we illustrate the need for multidisciplinary cooperation to steer applications in desirable directions.