Green ICT Developments

This three-part expert series gives updates and new insights into our research on the environmental impacts of electronics at Fraunhofer IZM.

Microelectronics has become the backbone and major innovation driver of most industries. But with the explosion of both distributed and centralized electronics everywhere, the perception has shifted to look more closely at the environmental impacts caused by the electronics industry, and by the rapidly growing resource consumption of the digital services provided by huge data centers, and in particular AI data centers.

How fast and how inevitable are these developments? What environmental improvements can be made by companies who are not data center operators? Can electronics even be designed to be green? And how can we make sure that environmental claims towards consumers (but also within the electronics supply chain) are becoming more robust and comparable?

Digitalisation is required for all sustainable development trajectories

Despite the emphasis on the negative environmental impacts of the massive increase of electronics, it must be noted that more digitalisation is needed to achieve sustainable development goals.

Against the backdrop of huge increases – of digital end products, of digital industrial products and of computational infrastructure to handle it all – we need to minimize the environmental impact by magnitudes and concentrate the use of electronics where positive impacts for society are certain or at least likely.

As the basis of »lowest environmental impact per useful outcome« we always need to come back to the hardware level, which needs to be designed, produced, used and recirculated in a sustainable manner.

Session 1: 
October 13, 2026, 4 p.m. CET

Dr. Lutz Stobbe: Environmental and Technical Trends Regarding Data Centers and AI Data Centers

This session focusses on the data center developments internationally and for Germany. Obviously, the role of AI data centers takes center stage, and needs constant updating and recalibration of environmental impact predictions.

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Session 2:
October 27, 2026
Dr. Nils Nissen: Drive Towards Greener Electronics Hardware for Competitiveness

This session looks at the bigger range of electronic products everywhere except in the digital infrastructure. What can be done to make products more environmentally friendly – and how is this linked to becoming more competitive?

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Session 3
November 13, 2026
Karsten Schischke, Dr. Chris Eckstein: The Need for Standardization of Environmental Assessments in the Electronics Industry (PCR)

This session gives insight into a family of international initiatives to further harmonize the calculation of product carbon footprints, so that CO2 emissions declared by semiconductor manufacturers, by product manufacturers or by digital service providers can be directly compared in the future.

Who should attend:

While open to all levels of expertise from students up to C-level management the online sessions work best with some prior knowledge, as the basics of environmental assessments and in particular carbon accounting will not be covered in the short sessions.

Likewise, some knowledge of core electronic components is helpful to follow the details of the examples.

The series intentionally excludes environmental legislation and the ongoing legislative developments. We have published various videos  (in german only) covering such topics on our YouTube-Channel.