Climate Action Programme lecture: "Sustainable ICT: Call for action!"

Information and communication (ICT) systems are the focus of research of most of us. We try to make ICT trustworthy, reliable, fast, and dependable. We show how ICT can help in making our world a better, less energy-hungry place. Some of us work on making ICT systems more energy efficient, but many of us forget that ICT is also a great consumer of energy and ICT systems are by no means sustainable (just think how much electronic waste you generated last year?)

TU Delft positions itself as a climate action-driven university and there are already valuable initiatives taken to make TU Delf energy-neutral (https://www.tudelft.nl/en/sustainability/it-data-management-ai). Sadly, in my opinion, despite many world-class experts working at TU Delft in sub-domains of sustainable ICT (energy-efficient datacenters, 5G and beyond energy-efficient communication, energy-efficient code development, etc.), the knowledge is splintered and spread around many non-cooperating groups. There are no umbrella programs that stimulate, promote, and develop all *research* initiatives leading towards sustainable ICT (at TU Delft and nation-wide). Addressing this problem, in this talk I will present what steps I have taken to kick-start the Sustainable ICT Initiative at TU Delft, what do I want to achieve with it, and ask you for your input and help.

Przemysław Pawełczak is an associate professor within the Embedded and Networked Systems Group of TU Delft, The Netherlands, leading Sustainable Systems Lab. His research vision is to make Internet of Things free from batteries, less polluting and sustainable. With my students I do research that is experiment- and systems-oriented (where system is a creation of new hardware and software). Until the start of my tenure track at TU Delft in 2013 I researched performance of Cognitive Radio systems.

Max van Beek is a PhD candidate in the Resources & Recycling section, CEG TU Delft. He previously obtained his Bachelor (Molecular Science & Technology) and Master (Industrial Ecology) degrees from the TU Delft and Leiden University. His PhD is a part of the NWO project Circular Circuits and focusses on the development of physical separation technologies such as roll sorting and magnetic separation in order to sort electronic components found on discarded printed circuit boards.
The research by Max is nominated for the annual 'Het Klokhuis' science award 2024.