From Green IT to Green IS and Digital Sustainability

Tackling grand global challenges requires collaborative, multidisciplinary efforts to which information systems (IS) scholars can contribute critical knowledge and expertise. One such specialization is Green IS, which positions IS researchers to help keep human activity within the safe and just space defined by planetary boundaries and social foundations.

Green IS covers both opportunities of "the greening of IT and the greening by IT." There is no denying that we need to look for ways to limit the emissions and pollution caused by IT use (the Greening of IT or simply "Green IT"). However, we should also seek ways to use IT to reduce the harmful environmental impacts of all human activity (the Greening by IT or Green IS).

The sector's footprint extends beyond climate change to at least three other planetary boundaries. Data center cooling and chip fabrication place significant demands on freshwater resources, often in water-stressed regions. E-waste — the fastest-growing waste stream globally — introduces novel entities (heavy metals, persistent chemicals) into ecosystems, with less than a quarter formally recycled. And the mining of rare earth elements, lithium, and cobalt for hardware manufacturing contributes to biosphere integrity loss and land-system change well upstream of any data center. Since seven of the nine planetary boundaries are now considered transgressed, Green IS research cannot treat carbon as the sector's only — or even primary — ecological liability.

On a positive note, Green IS scholars believe that IS can be a key enabler for activities that drive the mitigation of, and adaptation and resilience to, the transgression of the Climate Change and other planetary boundaries. This relates to the concept of "Green IS": the design and implementation of information systems that contribute to the sustainability of business and social processes.

A necessary caveat: the sustainability discourse and the sector's own record

This "Greening by IT" narrative deserves to be read alongside a harder set of facts about the sector producing the technology. The same industry positioning itself as a climate solution is also the subject of serious, well-documented criticism: opacity, concentration of power, hidden social and environmental costs. None of this negates the legitimate potential of Green IS. But a credible account of "greening by IT" has to hold two things at once: the genuine capacity of information systems to support environmental and social goals, and the fact that the sector producing those systems is, right now, also a significant source of the opacity, concentration, and harm that sustainable development is supposed to address. This is exactly the terrain SIG Green exists to explore — across IT, IT artifacts, and now AI.

Some topics that SIG Green scholars address are:

• Creating, managing and using information about environmental issues
• Enabling resilient communities and strategic goals through Green IS
• Designing, implementing and adopting Green IT
• Designing and implementing information systems to make organizations more environmentally aware and measure environmental performance
• Designing and implementing decision support for environmentally sustainable development
• Changing attitudes and behaviors towards climate change and other planet boundaries
• Energy informatics — using sensors to measure energy use for greater energy efficiency
• Meeting and collaborating virtually — reducing the need to travel