Session 1: Digital technologies for promoting green production and consumption

Name: Session 1: Digital technologies for promoting green production and consumption
Start: 2023-11-21T11:15:00+01:00
End: 2023-11-21T12:30:00+01:00
Location: OECD

Nov 21, 2023 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM

Description

Digital technologies can support the shift in production and consumption required for the green transition. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IOT) could lead to better environmental outcomes in several industries by improving resource use efficiency and supporting the adoption of more circular business models. Digital technologies can also empower consumers – who, according to surveys, are willing to make lifestyle compromises that benefit the environment when there are no additional financial costs – to make greener choices. Such transformations have distributional implications, however. For example, costs and impacts of the twin transitions, such as higher energy prices and job automation, tend to affect low-income households and low-skilled workers more. At the same time, lower-income households are often more exposed to the impacts of climate change and pollution, and are therefore more likely to reap the benefit of ambitious climate action. This session discussed how digital technologies can help to promote greener production and consumption while ensuring that no one is left behind and that sustainability concerns over the growing use of AI are addressed.

Presented by

Stephanie Minster

Eon

Manager

EIM

El Iza Mohamedou

OECD

Head, Centre for Skills

https://www.linkedin.com/in/el-iza-mohamedou-3965191b3/?originalSubdomain=fr

Michel Morvan

Co-founder, Cosmo Tech

Executive Chairman

https://cosmotech.com/team/michel-morvan/

Elena Verdolini

Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC)

Professor, University of Brescia, and Senior Scientist

https://www.cmcc.it/people/verdolini-elena

Christoph Ziegenhohn

EU Representation of the Federal Employment Agency, Germany

Senior Expert

Ilze Zvidrina

Latvia

Deputy Director, Labour Market Policy Department, Ministry...

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilze-zvidrina-a994a312/?originalSubdomain=lv

Session 1 - Key resources

Artificial intelligence systems can use massive computational resources, raising sustainability concerns. This report aims to improve understanding of the environmental impacts of AI, and help measure and decrease AI’s negative effects while enabling it to accelerate action for the good of the planet.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) creates new content in response to prompts, offering transformative potential across multiple sectors such as education, entertainment, healthcare and scientific research. This paper aims to inform about policy considerations and support decision makers in addressing them.

Alongside data and algorithms, AI computing capacity (“AI compute”) is a key enabler for AI and related economic growth and competitiveness. While data and machine learning algorithms receive significant attention in policy circles, the computational infrastructure that makes AI possible gets less. Yet understanding domestic AI compute capacity is critical for policy makers who want to formulate effective AI policies and make intelligent national AI investment choices.

Digital transformation is increasingly recognised as a means to help unlocking the benefits of more inclusive and sustainable growth and enhanced social well-being. In the environmental context, digitalisation can contribute to decoupling economic activity from natural resource use and their environmental impacts. This paper takes stock of the implications of digitalisation for the transition to a resource efficient and circular economy.

This publication identifies manufacturing activities that are particularly difficult to decarbonise and the transformations they require. It shows how these activities are distributed across European regions, focusing on employment at emission-intensive production locations. It identifies conditions for getting access to needed infrastructure and how access conditions differ across regions.

Policies aimed at reducing the environmental impact of human activities have important consequences for labour markets, jobs, and skills. As employment is shifting towards more sustainable activities, workers are increasingly expected to have skills that support the transition to a greener economy. Assessing and anticipating emerging skill needs is crucial to avoid bottlenecks and sustain the green transition. This report sheds light on existing methods to measure changes in skill demand and supply related to the green transition through an in-depth review of practices in five OECD countries (Australia, Austria, France, Norway and Sweden).

The green transition is changing jobs, skills, and local economies. It poses new challenges but also opportunities, both of which will differ across places within countries. This report provides novel evidence on those risks and opportunities across regions in 30 OECD countries. It examines the geography of green-task and polluting jobs and examines the impact of the green transition on gender and socioeconomic inequality by identifying the characteristics of workers in those jobs.

This paper quantifies changes in employment and the demand for skills in the European Union following the implementation of Fit for 55 policies. Between 2019 and 2030, the economy is projected to grow by 1.3% in the Fit for 55 scenario (3% in a Baseline scenario without the Fit for 55 policies).

Increasingly more emphasis is placed on damages and risks that people, companies and governments face in the way they affect their well-being as well as material conditions or financial fundamentals. This Policy Insights provides a glimpse at some of the positive practices to encourage others to make the shift and provide a benchmark against which future action could be measured.