1) The document discusses digital solutions for achieving sustainability goals and the circular economy. 2) It notes that while digital technologies can help drive innovation, their development and use also creates environmental risks that must be addressed. 3) The document argues that digitalization and sustainability must work together, with digital systems designed to be carbon neutral and support principles like reducing waste and maintaining maximum utility of products and materials.

1. DSC DACH 23
AI-POWERED SUSTAINABILITY
Digital Solutions for ESG
21.04.223

2. Mag. Stefan Blachfellner
I have been the Executive Director of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science
(BCSSS) in Vienna for 10 years, organizing the European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems
Research and the Circular Economy Forum Austria, the largest multi-stakeholder platform
supporting the transformation towards a circular economy in Austria.
I have broad international cross-sector experience as an entrepreneur, business and policy advisor,
and university lecturer focusing on entrepreneurship, digitalization, systemic innovation and
systems design in conjunction with sustainable development, working in Austria, Germany, Slovenia,
Serbia, Italy, France, Belgium, UK, Vietnam, Taiwan, China and the USA.
I am a long-time lecturer at the University Krems, since 2020 also at the Business School in the
context of the Sustainable Management MBA and since 2023 senior lecturer at the University of
Applied Sciences Burgenland, Department Business Studies, in particular for International
Sustainable Business, Digitalization and Innovation Ecosystems.
My current work focuses on regenerative economy and digitalization to address complex challenges
towards the so-called Next Economy, especially the Circular Economy.

3. Digitalisation and Sustainability
Narrative

4. 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169
Targets und 304 Indicators since 2015 until 2030

5. TWI2050 - The World in 2050, (2018). Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative. International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis (IIASA) , Laxenburg, Austria. 10.22022/TNT/07-2018.15347 .

6. TWI2050 - The World in 2050, (2018). Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative. International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis (IIASA). Laxenburg, Austria. 10.22022/TNT/07-2018.15347 .

7. 2020 Report intakes
“Although innovation has driven human development, and will continue to do so, it
does not come without risk and unintended consequences.
The real question is how to harness, or steer, future innovation toward a
sustainable future while avoiding further detrimental social and environmental
impacts.”
TWI2050 - The World in 2050 (2020). Innovations for Sustainability. Pathways to an efficient and post-pandemic future. Report prepared by The World in 2050 initiative.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria. www.twi2050.org
Available at: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/16533/

8. „This is Europe’s man on the moon moment”
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Dezember 2019
Von der Leyen: Green deal is Europe's Man on the moon moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z7rio5sow
Figure: https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/themen/europa-aktuell/von-der-leyens-green-deal-fuer-europa.html

9. Helping the Europen Green Deal meeting societal
needs through 8 economic ecosystems
A System Change Compass. Implementing the European Green Deal in a Time of
Recovery. 2020. https://clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/System-
Change-Compass-Full-report-FINAL.pdf

10. The EU Recovery Plan
As a necessary response to the coronavirus pandemic, the EU has developed NextGenerationEU, a
over €800 billion temporary recovery instrument to help address the immediate economic and
social damage of the coronavirus pandemic, which will include programs for SMEs.
https://www.interregeurope.eu/policylearning/news/11616/a-recovery-plan-for-europe-one-year-after-the-new-european-sme-strategy/
https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/recovery-coronavirus/recovery-and-resilience-facility_en
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/recovery-plan-europe_en

11. The Bureau of European Design Associations:
https://www.beda.org/news/towards-a-next-generation-design-policy-for-europe/
Beda: Design Policy for Europe

12. Twin Challenge or Opportunity for Business?
Sustainable development is already increasingly being established together
with digitalisation as an integral part of strategic corporate management.
Not only current and future regulations determine the speed of this
integration for companies, but above all the requirements of customers and
the dynamics of competition.
Combined digitalisation and sustainability offers companies the opportunity
to achieve double efficiency gains, cost reductions by saving resources while
optimizing all processes, and new value creation with data-based business
models.

13. Digitalisation and Sustainability
Trade Offs!

14. Sustainable Development
Rockström, J. and Sukhdev, P. (2016). How Food connects all the SDGs.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2016-06-14-
how-food-connects-all-the-sdgs.html

15. Impact of AI on SDGs according to an expert consensus study
Vinuesa, R., Azizpour, H., Leite, I. et al. The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nat Commun 11, 233 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-14108-y

16. Houston we have a problem – We need to Re-think!
Digital technology is an opportunity, but not a universal solution. It comes at a cost
to the environment!
From 1995 to 2015 the material footprint of digital devices quadrupled!
Extraction of raw materials used (precious metals, rare earths) causes severe
environmental damage (soil degradation, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity) and
social damage (mining conditions)
According to the United Nations University’s Global e-waste monitor, around 50
million metric tones of electronic products are discarded every year, equalling the
weight of nearly 4,500 Eiffel towers. Much of it is incinerated or placed in landfill,
causing pollution, human health hazards and the loss of valuable finite resources.
E-waste is the world’s fastest growing waste stream and the amount is estimated to
increase to 52.2 million metric tones by 2021 unless this trend is reversed.
https://tcocertified.com/e-waste/

17. Houston we have a problem – We need to Re-think!
Digital technologies are estimated to be responsible for 3.7% of global greenhouse
gas emissions.
A rebound effect causes constantly increasing energy consumption: the better a
digital solution is, the more users are processing more data.
Studies have found that Google’s AlphaGo Zero – the AI that plays the game of Go
against itself to self-learn – generated a massive 96 tonnes of carbon dioxide over
40 days of research training. That is comparable to 1,000 hours of air travel, as well
as the carbon footprint of about 10 average citizens over an entire year.
OpenAI trained its GPT-3 model on 45 terabytes of data. Training the final version
of MegatronLM used almost the amount of energy three US homes use in a year.
The economy of scale backfires on the digital solutions for sustainability!

18. Digitalisation and Sustainability
Solutions?

19. Systemic Innovation & Sustainability
19
Economic sustainability can only succeed if environmental and social sustainability are
strengthened in the same way (DIGI for SDG, Guide for SMEs. respACT, Vienna 2022)

20. The objective of a circular economy
is to maintain products, components
and materials with maximum utility
and value at all times.
Bocken, N. M. P., Olivetti, E. A., Cullen, J. M., Potting, J. &Lifset, R. Taking the Circularity to the Next Level: A Special Issue on the Circular Economy.J. Ind. Ecol.21, 476–482 (2017).

22. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-9R-Framework-Source-Adapted-from-Potting-et-al-2017-p5_fig1_320074659

23. Digital infrastructures and energy
requirements must themselves become CO2-
neutral
The underlying digital systems and infrastructures, as well as
energy sources for processing data, are to become CO2-neutral.
The ecological footprint is increasingly becoming the new
currency for providers of cloud Solutions, such as Microsoft and
Amazon Web Services.
Already today, CO2 budgets must be taken into account in
addition to financial budgets when submitting bids for public
tenders and competing for corporate customers.

24. https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/aws/new-customer-carbon-footprint-tool/

25. https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/de/magazin/serie-eresourcing/eresourcing-nachhaltiger-umgang-mit-daten.html
From linear to circular data life cycle management

26. Thank you!
Mag. Stefan Blachfellner
stefan.blachfellner@fh-burgenland.at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/blachfellner
https://www.blachfellner.eu
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4076-8922