Green economics: A roadmap to sustainable ICT development

The paper discusses a systematic approach to sustainable development. It puts forward an idea of analysing energy efficiency and sustainability of a particular product, service or even a process during the whole life-cycle. Minor carbon footprint or low energy consumption of a product during its operation or exploitation does not necessary mean that the product manufacturing, decommissioning and disposal are also sustainable. In this paper, we discuss a set of sustainable principles and propose a graphical notion describing key factors of product/process sustainability. We also consider information and communication technologies (ICT) as essential tools of sustainable development in various application domains. On the other hand, ICT themselves should be considered as an object of energy efficiency improvement. The paper discusses ICT impact on the environment and identifies the fundamental green ICT trade-off between dependability, performance and energy consumption. Finally, we consider problems and propose approaches to building green clouds and datacenters.