While the abrupt halting of human activities last spring led to a record drop in global CO2 emissions, the carbon footprint of the digital world has on the contrary increased over the same period, in the face of the rise of teleworking and the mass use of streaming worldwide. But the consequences for the environment are worrying, a new study shows.
Conducted by researchers at Purdue University, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, this new study evaluates the global carbon footprint of our lockdown activities and provides estimates for 2021, based on these digital consumption trends.