IT and Sustainability: New Strategies for Reducing Carbon Emissions and Resource Usage in...
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- 1. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon
emissions and resource usage in transportation Jeffrey L. Funk n
National University of Singapore, Division of Engineering and
Technology Management, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 1175769,
Singapore a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Information technology
Moores law Rates of improvement Sustainability Transportation Buses
Phones GPS Telecommunications Bike sharing Electric vehicles
Autonomous vehicles Wireless Charging Power electronics Cameras a b
s t r a c t This paper describes how rapid rates of improvement in
smart phones, telecommunica- tion systems and other forms of IT
enable solutions for sustainability and how this provides
opportunities for the fields of telecommunication and information
systems. While reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change focuses on technol- ogies with rates of improvement less
than 5% per year, most types of information technologies are
experiencing annual rates of improvement that exceed 30% per year.
These rapid rates of improvement are changing the economics of many
activities of which this paper describes four examples in
transportation. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for
universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications
and information systems. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights
reserved. 1. Introduction Creating a more sustainable world through
reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in general have become
important challenges for governments, firms, and universities. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses on
learning curves for alternative energy technologies such as solar,
wind, geothermal, and ocean energy and how costs fall as cumulative
production increases. It largely ignores the potential impact of
continued improvements in smart phones, telecommunication systems,
and other forms of IT (information technology) on the better design
of transportation, logistics, office, and home systems. Implicit in
their report is that sustainability is a substitution rather than a
design problem and thus the goal is to stimulate the production of
new energy technologies in order for their costs to fall, even
though the rates of improvement for these technologies are very
slow. For example, according to the IPCC, the annual rate of cost
reduction for wind turbines has been 2% per year over the last 30
years and the rate has dropped to zero in the last few years (IPCC,
2013). Even for solar cells, the rate of improvement is about 7%
per year when the cost is for installed solar as Contents lists
available at ScienceDirect URL: www.elsevier.com/locate/telpol
Telecommunications Policy
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007 0308-5961/& 2015
Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Tel.: 65 6516 7446. E-mail
address: etmfjl@nus.edu.sg Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]])
]]]]]] Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i
- 2. opposed to just solar modules (UCS, 2014). Given the higher
costs of solar and wind energy than of fossil fuel-based
electricity generation, there seems to be long road ahead. This
paper discusses an alternative that is never mentioned by the IPCC,
an alternative that may end up having a larger impact on
sustainability than do the technologies emphasized by the IPCC. It
focuses on smart phones, telecommunication systems and other forms
of IT that are experiencing rapid rates of annual improvement and
that lead to improvements in higher level systems. For example, as
shown in Table 1, microprocessors, memory, cameras, lasers, and new
displays have experienced annual rates of improvement of greater
than 30% and these improvements have enabled similar magnitude
improvements in computer and telecommunication systems. Even
software development costs have fallen as open source software has
become available; a noteworthy example is the Linux operating
system from which the Android operating system was developed.
Taking this one step further, improvements in software, computers
and telecommunications have enabled improvements in higher level
systems such as retail, wholesale, logistics, financial trading,
and education (Cortada, 2004, 2005). Theoretically speaking, ICs,
lasers, displays, and open source software can be thought of as
components (Funk, Table 1 Information Technologies with recent
rapid rates of improvement. Sources: Wikipedia (2014); Preil
(2012); Suzuki (2010); Miller (2012); Chader, Weiland, and Humayun
(2009); Stasiak, Richards, and Angelos (2009); Hasegawa and Takeya
(2009); Franklin (2013); Fujimaki (2012); Devoret and Schoeldopf
(2013); Evans et al. (2011); Nordhaus (2007); Koomey et al. (2011);
D-Wave (2013); SingularityHub.com (2013); ICKnowledge (2009); ISSCC
(2013); Francis (2011); Yoon (2010); Brown (2011); ISSCC (2013);
Azevedo, Morgan, and Morgan (2009); Haitz and Tsao (2011); Lee
(2005; Sheats et al. (1996); Martinson (2007); Economist (2012);
Kwak (2010). Technology domain Sub-technology Dimensions of measure
Time period Rate per year (%) Integrated circuits (or related) for
processing Microprocessor Number of transistors/ chip 19712011 38
Camera chips Pixels per dollar 19832013 49 Light sensitivity
19862008 18 Power ICs Current density 19932012 16 MEMS: Artificial
eye Number of electrodes 20022013 46 MEMS: inkjet printers Drops
per second 19852009 61 Organic transistors Mobility 19822006 109
Single walled carbon nanotube transistors 1/Purity (% metallic)
19992011 32 Density 20062011 357 Superconducting Josephson
junction-based transistors 1/Clock period 19902010 20 1/Bit energy
19902010 20 Qubit lifetimes 19992012 142 Bits per Qubit lifetime
20052013 137 Photonics Data Capacity per chip 19832011 39
Electronic products Digital computers Instructions per unit time
19792009 36 Instructions per time- cost 19792009 52 Quantum
computers Number of Qubits 20022012 107 Information storage Dynamic
RAM Memory bits per chip 19712010 44 Flash memory Storage capacity
20012013 47 Resistive RAM 20062013 272 Ferroelectric RAM 20012009
38 Magneto RAM 20022011 58 Phase change RAM 20042012 63 Magnetic
Storage Recording density of disks 19912011 56 Recording density of
tape 19932011 32 Cost per bit of disks 19562007 33 Information
trans-mission Last mile wireline Bits per second 19822010 48.7
Wireless, cellular Bits per second 19962013 79.1 Wireless, WLAN
19952010 58.4 Wireless, 1 m 19962008 77.8 Electronic Lighting and
Displays Light emitting diodes (LEDs) Luminosity per Watt, red
19652008 17 Lumens per Dollar, white 20002010 41 Organic LEDs
Luminosity/Watt, green 19872005 29 GaAs Lasers Power density
19872007 30 Cost per Watt 19872007 31 Liquid Crystal Displays
Square meters per dollar 20012011 11.0 Quantum Dot External
Efficiency, red 19982009 36 Displays Acronyms: RAM (Random access
memory) and WLAN (wireless local area network). Please cite this
article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for
reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation.
Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]2
- 3. 2013a, 2013b) or as general purpose technologies (Bresnahan
& Trajtenberg, 1995; David, 1990; Helpman, 2003; Lipsey,
Carlaw, & Bekar, 1998, Lipsey et al., 2005) that have a large
impact on higher level systems and thus on the overall economy.
This paper shows that these technologies, which are called IT for
reasons of simplicity, have reached the levels of performance and
cost that are needed to have a large impact on a wide variety of
energy intensive activities. These improvements are changing the
economics of these activities, enabling more efficient designs to
emerge. In doing so we recognize that improvements in the
efficiency of an activity may increase the use of that activity,
thus reducing the impact from improvements in energy efficiency
(Brookes, 1984; Khazzoom, 1980). However, in the cases addressed in
this paper, increases in usage are limited and/or many of the new
methods are so superior to the existing ones that increased usage
would still result in dramatic reductions in energy usage. We
expand on this argument throughout the paper. To simplify the
discussion, this paper focuses on human transportation, partly
since the impact of improved IT on logistics (Dooley, 2014; Wible,
Mervis, & Wigginton, 2014), telecommuting (Mitomo &
Jitsuzumi, 1999), teleconferencing (Biello, 2009; Kraut, 1995),
lighting and smart cities (Steenbruggen, Tranos, & Njikamp,
2015; Walravens, 2015) have been discussed by others. First,
improvements in GPS and smart phones can increase bus usage through
their impact on bus services and information for these services.
Second, existing and better smart phones can also facilitate the
sharing economy including the sharing of bicycles and cars; the
former can overcome crowded bus storage areas and thus facilitate
greater use of bicycles hopefully in combination with trains
(Otzen, 2014). Third, roads dedicated to autonomous vehicles, which
become cheaper and better through improvements in ICs, MEMS, and
lasers, can increase the capacity of roads and the fuel efficiency
of vehicles (Berry, 2010). Fourth, improvements in power
electronics, microprocessors, and other electronics are reducing
the cost of wired and wireless charging stations, which reduces the
required energy storage densities and thus the cost of electric
vehicles. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for
universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications
and information systems. 2. IT facilitates public transportation
Increases in the use of public transportation lead to reductions in
per capita energy usage and per-capita carbon emissions. For
example, trains and buses consume about 20% and 40% respectively
the energy per passenger-kilometer as do automobiles in London and
about 9% and 28% respectively the energy per passenger-kilometer as
do automobiles in Japan. The differences between London and Japan
are largely from differences in capacity utilization and thus
Japanese cities are probably even more energy efficient than are
its rural areas since fuller buses and trains lead to lower energy
per rider (McKay, 2009). Furthermore, greater use of public
transportation also probably leads to less land needed for total
transportation as the necessary space for roads and parking spaces
are reduced. Improvements in IT have already enabled better public
transportation and continued improvements can also improve and
increase the use of public transportation. Past improvements
include better ticketing, route design, and scheduling. Most cities
now allow smart cards or phones to be used as tickets thus
eliminating the need for purchasing tickets each time a person
rides a train or boards a bus. Computers have been used for many
years to do route design and scheduling and their successor, Big
Data, are enabling the better designs of routes, better choices of
train station location and bus stops and the better integration of
bus and subway routes. It is also being used to reduce downtime in
for example Seoul and Singapore through better preventative
maintenance (SMG, 2014; Tay, 2014). But, this paper argues that the
biggest benefits from IT will come from GPS, smart phones, and
connected devices (some call this the Internet of Things) that
together will enable dramatic increases in the number of bus and
train users (Farley, 2012; McNeill, 2013). The biggest challenge
for most bus users is the difficulty of finding information about
bus routes, schedules, and expected arrivals at bus stops. Reading
through detailed bus pamphlets and hoping that the bus arrival
times match the posted ones are not activities liked by most
people. Smart phones and GPS can change this situation. Following
the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 (West & Mace, 2010),
smart phones continue to experience improvements (Cecere,
Corrocher, & Battaglia, 2015) (see Table 2) and these Table 2
Improvements in Smart phones that have and continue to occur.
Source: authors analysis. Component Types of Improvements
Implications GPS Higher accuracy Better location information Memory
Greater capacity Can store more apps and more sophisticated ones
Microprocessor Faster speeds Can run more sophisticated apps and
process them faster. Can access newer network standards, both
cellular and WiFi ones Network Faster speeds Can download larger
apps and access the apps and the relevant data more quickly WiFi
Faster and more available Users can download larger apps and access
the apps and the relevant data more quickly. Greater availability
means cheaper Internet access Display Greater resolution, more
flexibility Greater resolution enables users to more easily
understand more complex information. Greater flexibility enables
displays to conform to wrists or other parts of body Touch screen
and glass Thinner and stronger Can use touch screens even when
wearing gloves Less chance of glass breaking even when the phone is
dropped. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 3
- 4. improvements enable better bus-related services for users.
GPS chip sets are already less than $10 and improvements in the
accuracy of GPS (GPS, 2014) continue to occur and they provide
better location information on both users and buses. Better
displays enable better presentation of information. Most
importantly, faster data speeds, faster microprocessors, and larger
memory enable more sophisticated apps to become available (see Fig.
1). For example, Fig. 1 shows navigation, Fig. 2 shows bus stops
for a specific bus, and Fig. 3 shows arrival times for specific bus
stops in smart phone apps. Continued improvements in smart phones
are enabling more sophisticated apps to emerge that can integrate
information on multiple types of transportation modes and thus help
users make better real-time decisions between different modes of
transportation and different combinations of them. More
specifically, in many cities apps provide users with the following
information: (1) the closest bus stop; (2) walking directions to
it; (3) expected arrival times with less than a few minutes of
error; (4) When users should start walking to the bus stop. Also in
some cities, a single app does this for various alternatives
including buses, trains, and taxis and it provides the expected
trip time for each alternative based on existing and destination
locations. For example, this is available in Singapore through an
app called SBS Next Bus and in a much smaller city, Helsinki
through its Reittiopas service. Such services enable users to
obtain estimated trip times for multiple modes of transportation
with a single click and this type of information will encourage
more people to choose public transportation over car ownership.
This is not the end of improvements, however, the phones and phone
services will get cheaper and better as improvements in ICs and
displays continue. Smart phones will become cheap enough for all 7
billion of the worlds population, and they will continue to get
better. In addition to better processors and memory, displays are
and will continue to become more sensitive, durable, and flexible
and they will conform better to wrists and other parts of our
bodies. Some of this will come from changes to displays based on
organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and some will come from
augmented reality. Perhaps most importantly, the number of WiFi
locations is growing quickly and many of these locations provide
free or almost free services. As of November 14, 2014, there were
one hot spot for every 11 people in the UK and for every 150 people
in the world. By late 2018, it is expected there will be one for
every 20 people in the world, including one for every 408 in Africa
(WiFi, 2015). The greater availability of WiFi and its falling cost
enables lower cost if not free data Fig. 1. Example of navigation
with smart phones. Fig. 2. Example of finding bus stops ons. Please
cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New
strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in
transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]4
- 5. transmission and in addition, public transportation
authorities can introduce free WiFi for their users, which provides
an additional means of differentiating themselves from automobiles
and thus increasing their share of transportation. Work can be done
while commuting thus decreasing the actual time lost to commuting
(Achachlouei & Hilty, 2014). These changes are likely to occur
first in big European and Asian cities and later in big U.S.
cities, smaller cities around the world, and cities in third world
countries. The biggest impact may be in small cities where the
lower frequency of bus arrivals requires better information on bus
arrival times, routes, and bus stop locations. Many people will not
risk the potentially long waiting times for low frequency bus
services and thus will not use buses in small cities until better
information services are available. But as smart phones,
telecommunication systems, and other forms of IT become better and
cheaper, smart phone-based solutions will diffuse from large to
small cities, thus enabling a dramatic increase in the use of bus
transportation and a drop in car usage. Improvements in smart
phones, telecommunication systems, Big Data, and other forms of IT
can also facilitate ride sharing in private vehicles and buses and
thus take us beyond current car sharing or carpooling. Smart phone
apps are enabling new taxi services and facilitating carpooling.
More importantly, Big Data can analyze the large amounts of data
being collected by these smart phone transportation apps and other
sources and better understand starting and ending points for
individuals. This enables private bus companies to offer better bus
services. Already, 35% of Silicon Valleys work forces uses these
services (Markoff & Dougherty, 2015) and it is likely that
increases can be made beyond this 35% as improvements in IT
continue to occur. Similar if not larger percentages are possible
in other parts of the world. A positive impact from smart phones on
public transportation may already be occurring in the US, one of
the most car intensive nations in the world. Evidence suggests that
public transportation is already increasing its share of transport
since the percentage of licensed drivers and the number of miles
driven per capita have dropped, with the lowest car ownership
existing in cities (Thompson, 2014). The percentage of 1524
year-olds who are licensed drivers in the U.S. dropped by almost
50% between 1983 and 2010 (Economist, 2012). The number of miles
driven per capita peaked between 2004 and 2006 and this figure had
dropped by almost 10% by 2011 (SSTI, 2013). Utilizing the
improvements in GPS and smart phones that are emphasized above can
strengthen these trends, thus reducing the energy intensity of U.S.
and other cities. 3. IT promotes integration of bicycles and public
transportation Improvements in smart phones, telecommunication
systems, and other forms of IT (such as connected bicycles) can
also facilitate bike sharing perhaps in combination with commuting
by train. Although ideally more people would commute solely by
bicycle, this is only possible in places where hills are few,
weather is cool, commutes are short, and roads are designed for
bicycles. For example, the percentage of trips by bicycle exceeds
30% in European cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munster,
Utrecht, and Malmo (Copenhagenize, 2009) and it is also very high
in Asia (Spokefly, 2015). In most cities, however, bicycles will
only be used in combination with other modes of transportation,
particularly trains. Getting to train stations has always been a
challenge. One option is to allow bicycles on trains, which angers
other commuters. Alternatively, many cities have constructed large
bicycle storage centers next to train stations or in other widely
visited places. The problem with these bicycle storage systems is
that many are overcrowded and thus it can take many minutes to find
ones bicycle amid the many bicycles in the storage system. If a
system is poorly organized as many are, many bikes cannot be found
and are discarded thus increasing the problems for other people
finding their bicycles (see left side of Fig. 4). This has caused
some cities to implement automated bicycle storage spaces that may
extend many floors up (Campbell-Dollaghan, 2013) or down
(Grozdanic, 2015), but that clearly involve high construction
costs. Fig. 3. Example of finding arrival times for specific bus
stops with smart phones. Source:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fatattitude.
buscheckeruk. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 5
- 6. An alternative is bicycle sharing (Larsen, 2013). Bicycles
are stored in a form of large vending machine in which users rent
bicycles for short time periods and return them to the same or
different locations. Payments can be made with smart cards on smart
phones. For users, bicycle sharing can reduce the time to park and
find bicycles thus transforming chaos into order (see Fig. 4). For
cities, bicycle sharing can free up expensive land (often next to
train stations) for other activities. Perhaps, most importantly,
bicycle sharing can promote rail usage. By placing storage systems
near train stations, commuters can ride a bike from near home to a
train station, ride a train to another station, and then ride
another bicycle or walk to their final destination. Some users
might do this with bicycles when in the past they did this with
buses. For example, NY City placed many of its bike sharing
stations near train stations and this contributed to the success of
the program (Business Insider, 2014). Improvements in IT are
improving the economics of these systems. IT helps manage the
renting, storage, and collection of bicycles and the improvements
in phones that were mentioned in the last section are also relevant
to bike sharing. Inexpensive sensors and GPS can track bicycles and
thus reduce thefts. Apps and GPS help users find bike sharing
stations (Walravens, 2015). Intelligent cameras can help reduce
vandalism. Computers can help redistribute the bicycles when some
stations have too many bicycles while others do not have enough.
Phones help users find bike stations, register for use, borrow
bikes, and make payments. The increasing availability of open
source software also reduces implementation costs (see below).
These improvements can also reduce the capital and operating costs
of the bicycle sharing systems, which are still high. One study
found that the capital costs per bicycle are between $3000 and
$4500 and the operating costs are between $1200 and $1944 per
bicycle and per year (Lajas, 2012). However, these costs will fall
as the improvements in IT continue, as the initial costs are
amortized over many users, as standard systems become available,
and as more open source designs including software become
available. Open source designs including software may offer the
greatest opportunity for cost reduction and universities should
play a role in promoting open source designs for both bicycle
storage and bus-related GPS systems. By developing and promoting
these designs, universities can help reduce the cost of these
systems and prevent one supplier from becoming the Google, Apple,
or Uber of bicycle storage systems through high switching costs.
Thus, rather than waiting for the benefits from economies of scale
and standardization to emerge, universities should develop and
promote open source designs that are much cheaper than proprietary
designs and that enable more sharing of design costs across
multiple installations. Furthermore, by doing this at the global
level, there can be wide spread sharing of these designs, thus
enabling different universities to focus on different sub-systems
within bicycle sharing and bus-related GPS systems. Finally,
bicycle sharing is part of a larger trend called the sharing
economy. The sharing economy can enable automobiles, automobile
trips (carpooling or shared taxis), parking spaces, housing (e.g.,
Airbnb) and manufactured products to be shared over many people and
thus the resources associated with them to be likely reduced. For
transportation, shared parking spaces and better IT and phones can
reduce searching for these parking spaces (Economist, 2015;
McCarrick, 2013). In support of these trends, cities can also
increase parking rates and reduce the number of parking spaces
(Economist, 2015; McCarrick, 2013). A greater use of bicycles,
bicycle sharing, and public transportation will likely lead to
lower per-capita usage of energy and carbon emissions. While
improvements in quality or reductions in price can lead to greater
usage of a given product or service (Brookes, 1984; Khazzoom,
1980), this will probably not occur for bicycles and public
transportation. The former involves human effort and the latters
usage is probably more limited by time than by price and public
transportation is much slower than are personal automobiles or
taxis. Thus, if more people change from private vehicles to public
transportation, this will probably cause more people to reduce
their commuting time by moving from the suburbs to cities than for
people to extend their commuting times by moving in the opposite
direction. Furthermore, movements to the city Fig. 4. From chaos to
order: the benefit of bike storage. Please cite this article as:
Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing
carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation.
Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]6
- 7. will reduce per capita energy consumption overall since
cities have lower per capita energy consumption than do rural areas
(Glaeaser, 2012). A second reason that lower prices or better
quality public transportation will not lead to greater commuting
miles and certainly not greater per capita-energy usage is that
capacity utilization has a large impact on per capita energy usage
and thus increases in usage lead to both higher capacity
utilization of buses and lower per capita energy usage. 4. IT
facilitates roads dedicated to autonomous vehicles Improvements in
IT are also making it economically feasible to dedicate roads to
autonomous vehicles (AVs). While not as environmentally friendly as
bicycles, buses, and trains, dedicating roads to AVs can reduce
inter-vehicle distances, delays at traffic signals (Fig. 5),
frequency of braking, speed changes, and thus increase the capacity
of roads (see Fig. 6) and percentage of moving vehicles; the
resulting higher speeds (up to 30 mph) will increase fuel
efficiency (Fig. 7) and reduce carbon emissions. Perhaps equally
importantly, in the long term, AVs can reduce car ownership and
thus necessary space for roads and parking; cities can use this
reduced space to close parking garages and block vehicles from some
streets thus resulting in higher quality city environments. AVs are
rapidly getting cheaper and better because of improvements in IT
such as the falling cost of cameras, lasers, GPS, and MEMS
(micro-electronic mechanical systems). Cameras recognize lane
markings, infrared ones recognize objects, and pairs of cameras
build a real-time 3D image of the road. Light detection and ranging
systems (LIDAR) develop a 3601 view by spinning at 900 rpm where
these systems include up to 64 lasers. GPS provides a location on a
map, wheel encoder MEMS provide location information when the GPS
is obstructed in tunnels or parking garages, and ICs act and
interpret on all the data mentioned in this paragraph (Vanderbilt,
2012). Fig. 5. Dedicated roads lead to fewer traffic delays at
signals. Source: Dresner and Stone (2008). Fig. 6. Average safe
inter-vehicle distance and highway capacity. Source: Toyota (2011).
Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New
strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in
transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 7
- 8. When will these components become cheap and good enough?
According to one source, the cost of the Google Car was about
$150,000 in 2013 of which most of the costs were for electronic
components (e.g., about $70,000 is for LIDAR) (Naughton, 2013). A
July 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal reported the cost of
Googles prototype 64-laser unit (made by Velodyine) to be
$75,000$85,000 while the cost of 32- and 16-laser units from the
same firm, Velodyne to be $30,000 $40,000 and less than $10,000
respectively. Other suppliers claim the costs are even lower,
because fewer lasers are need; TriLumina Corp. expects them to cost
less than $150 by 2016 (Shchetko, 2014). In any case, the costs of
lasers and other electronics will fall because they have been
falling for the last 50 years. Thus, even if the cost of LIDAR is
$70,000, it is likely that these costs will fall at a rapid rate.
For example, current rates of improvement for GaAs lasers are 3040%
and those for other information technology are 40% per year. Being
conservative, if costs drop 25% a year, the cost of electronics in
the Google Car will drop by 90% in ten years thus making AVs only
slightly more expensive than existing vehicles by 2023. Most
likely, this will occur on an incremental basis as the sensors are
gradually incorporated into existing vehicles (TI, 2014). But the
real benefits from AVs will only come when roads are dedicated to
them. AVs by themselves can allow drivers to do other things while
driving and perhaps reduce crashes, accidents, deaths, ambulances,
insurance expenditures, traffic tickets and police officers. But
dedicating roads or lanes in roads to AVs can also increase the
density of cars on highways along with reducing congestion and
enabling higher fuel efficiencies. The higher densities of vehicles
on roads can provide cities with a choice: do they allow an
increase in the total number of vehicles or do they keep their
numbers constant or reduce their numbers by reducing road, highway,
and parking spaces. Singapore wants to do the latter because this
will enable the freed space to be used for other things like
housing, parks, bicycles, or pedestrians (Mahbubani, 2014). This
should probably be the goal of AVs reduce the areas for roads and
parking spaces, enable a car-free lifestyle, and uses the space for
other things. Dedicating roads to AVs will also probably reduce the
things mentioned in the second sentence of this paragraph much more
than will the use of AVs and non-AVs on the same roads. All of this
can improve quality of life. Dedicating roads to AVs is also less
technically demanding than having both AVs and non-AVs on the same
road because wireless communication can be used for the former thus
reducing the amount of complex sensors, particularly LIDAR, that
are needed in the AVs. When roads are dedicated to AVs, the AVs do
not have to worry about human drivers and the unexpected things
they might do. Cars can be checked for autonomous capability when
they enter a dedicated road. Route plans are checked and integrated
with other route plans. Improvements in computer processing power
facilitate checking and integrating these plans. When all the
vehicles are AVs, they can all be sensed and controlled by a
combination of magnets, RFID tags, and/or wireless communication.
The magnets and RFID tags can create an invisible railway that
keeps the AVs in their lanes. One study estimated the cost the cost
of these sensors for all of Singapores roads as less than $300
million or less than $2 per registered vehicle (Chang, 2014; Quick,
2014). Improvements in wireless communication and computers are
also improving the economics of dedicating roads to AVs.
Improvements in ICs and other components are reducing the response
time, i.e., latency of cellular data services (see Fig. 8) thus
making it more feasible to control vehicles with cellular services.
Latency fell by 100 times between 2003 and 2014 and latency is
expected to fall below 0.1 ms with the 5G services that will be
implemented by the early 2020s; this may be the biggest application
for 5G cellular services (Jones, 2015) as WiFi becomes a more
important form of telecommunication services for individual users.
Improvements in ICs are also needed to handle the high cost of
processing the data from the cellular services since processing
costs are much higher as response time is reduced. However,
improvements in ICs continue to occur as seen in Moores Law and the
processing cost per vehicle will also fall as the number of cars in
the system increases to expected levels. Implementing these systems
will of course require extensive cooperation between various
technology suppliers, AV suppliers, universities and city
governments and this cooperation will involve extensive legal and
regulatory changes. Improving safety and reducing the risk of
terrorism should be highly emphasized and the challenges of
achieving these goals should not be underestimated. Nevertheless,
these systems are becoming economically feasible through Fig. 7.
Roads dedicated to AVs can have higher speeds and thus higher fuel
efficiencies. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]8
- 9. improvements in ICs, wireless transmission, and other
electronics, whether AVs are pursued or not, and they should be
pursued because the potential benefits are very large. Universities
also need to promote open source designs for these AV-related
systems just as they need to do so with systems for shared bicycles
and bus-related GPS systems. The initial costs for dedicating roads
to AVs will be very high and the potential for safety and terrorism
problems are also high. Developing reliable systems will require
intelligent and time- consuming design in which the architecture
for these systems is debated by various city groups, officials,
citizens groups, universities, and technology suppliers. 5. IT
facilitates electric vehicles Improvements in IT also facilitate
the implementation of electric vehicles and their implementation
can reduce carbon emissions particularly if the electricity is
produced by renewable energy such as solar or wind. The problem for
electric vehicles is that hybrids containing both sets of
propulsion (engines and motors) and storage (gasoline tanks and
batteries) will always be more expensive than will pure electric
vehicles but pure electric vehicles require dramatic improvements
in the energy storage density of batteries and these improvements
are proceeding very slowly. For example, at current rates of
improvement (Howell, 2014; Tarascon, 2009), it will take more than
50 years before the energy storage densities of Li-ion batteries
reach those of gasoline (Energy Storage Density, 2015). Thus,
radical new forms of batteries or new forms of electric charging
systems are needed. This is where IT can make a contribution.
Better IT leads to the faster location of charging stations, faster
charging of the vehicles (Seger, 2015), and a lower cost of
charging stations. Faster location and charging enables more
frequent charging by drivers and lower cost charging stations
enable an increase in the density of charging stations. And as the
number of stations increased, the necessary driving range for
vehicles can be decreased. If the necessary range can be
sufficiently decreased, the engine can be discarded and the battery
can provide all the propulsion. Furthermore, if the necessary range
can be further decreased through a high density of charging
stations, the weight and the cost of the battery can be reduced and
thus the electric vehicle can be made even lighter (and cheaper)
than that of conventional vehicles. The cost of locating a charging
station is falling because the costs of location-based services
through cheaper GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and inertial sensors are
falling, as noted in earlier discussions of GPS for buses. These
location-based services are appearing in our phones and in our cars
and combined with new payment systems, facilitate frequent
recharging. The cost of charging stations also falling through
improvements in electronics and these charging stations can charge
a vehicle with either cables or wirelessly. These improvements in
electronics are also enabling a change from mechanical to electric
controls on vehicles, which enable dramatic reductions in vehicle
weight and better control of the motor. 5.1. Wired charging Wired
charging is currently the predominant method of charging. The rate
of charging and the cost of wired charging stations are being
improved because of improvements in power electronics ICs such as
MOSFETs (metal-oxide semi- conductor field-effect transistors) and
to lesser extent microprocessors (see typical composition of
charging station in Fig. 9). The improvements in MOSFETs are
usually measured in terms of lower resistance time area for a
specific voltage. Using Ohms Law (voltagecurrent resistance), it
can be easily shown that lower resistance times area is equivalent
to current density. Improvements in current density lead to a lower
cost of MOSFETs since fewer materials are needed. The current cost
of a fast charging station (about 200 amps) is between $12,000 and
$15,000 and it can provide 5060 miles on a one hour charge
(DriveClean, 2015). The cost of MOSFETs has been falling about 16%
per year for almost 20 years. If the price of a $15,000 charger
falls 10% per year, the cost will be $5770 in 10 years. Assuming
100,000 chargers are need in a metropolitan area of 2 million
people to effectively use 100,000 electric vehicles, the cost would
be $577 million in chargers. Fig. 8. Latency improvements in
cellular data services. Source:
http://www.slashgear.com/4g-what-does-this-really-mean-30143435/.
Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New
strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in
transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 9
- 10. The reason why the MOSFETS are experiencing improvements is
because engineers and scientists have and continue to create
materials that have a combination of lower resistance and higher
breakdown voltages. Both enable the power ICs to have both higher
current densities and thus higher charging rates; the higher
current densities also enable lower costs because fewer materials
are needed. The higher breakdown voltages enable the MOSFETs to
work without being damaged by the higher current densities (Briere,
2008; Lapedus, 2015; Mishra, 2013). These new materials involve
various forms of silicon, silicon-carbide, and gallium nitride
MOSFETs. Silicon MOSFETS are used in low power applications like
vehicle recharging since they are the most inexpensive but they
have lower breakdown voltages than do silicon-carbide and gallium
nitride based ones. However, as improvements in the current
densities for silicon-carbide and gallium nitride continue to
occur, they are expected to replace silicon MOSFETs in many
applications and this will enable faster charging. Current
silicon-carbide based and gallium-nitride-based MOSFETs have about
ten times the breakdown voltages of silicon-based ones and their
theoretical limits are about ten and 100 times higher than are
silicon- based ones. Furthermore, for the same breakdown voltages,
their current densities are several hundreds and several thousands
of times higher respectively than are silicon ones. The higher
breakdown voltages enable higher current densities and the lower
resistance enables lower costs (Briere, 2008; Mishra, 2013;
Lapedus, 2015). 5.2. Wireless charging Electric vehicles can also
be wirelessly charged using thin-film coils. The advantages of
wireless charging include protected connections, greater
durability, and faster connections. While cables are exposed to the
rain, sun, and other elements with wired charging, there are no
cables with wireless charging and the charging coils can be
separated from each other and thus protected from the elements. The
receiving coil can be placed at the bottom of a vehicle and the
transmitting coil can be placed near the surface of the ground.
This increases the durability of the chargers and it also
eliminates the need for drivers to connect cables or even leave
their vehicle. Instead, the coils are automatically aligned using
sensors and other electronics. This is important for instances of
short charging that enable frequent recharging (Boys & Covic,
2015; SAE, 2015). The disadvantage of wireless charging is that it
is currently more expensive than wired charging and the efficiency
of its charging falls below 90% as the distance becomes larger than
the coil diameter. Coil diameters can be made larger but this
reduces the accuracy of the charging and it also raises the cost.
Nevertheless, efficiencies are being improved for a given distance
and a variety of approaches are being pursued. Some of these
improvements have been motivated by non-vehicle applications such
as materials handling in factories where wireless charging was
implemented in order to reduce the Fig. 9. Typical composition of
charging station. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]10
- 11. amount of chemicals, residues, and wires. For example,
inductive chargers developed by the University of Auckland were
used in over 8000 factories as of 2012 (Boys & Covic, 2015).
The typical composition of a wireless charging system is shown in
Fig. 10. The cost includes various types of electronics such as
memory, microprocessors, modulators, and thin-film coils, all of
which are experiencing rapid improvements. Although thin-film
technology was not discussed in previous sections, all of the
technologies in Table 1 involve thin-film (e.g., ICs, displays)
because all of them require the deposition and patterning of
thin-films. This has attracted IC suppliers of wireless
applications such as Qualcomm to wireless charging since they would
like to apply their wireless data technologies to wireless
charging. As improvements in these components continue to occur at
1530% per year, it is likely that the economics of wireless
charging will dramatically improve over the next few years. If
thin-film coils become cheap enough, it will be possible to
wirelessly charge a vehicle while the vehicle is moving; this is
called dynamic charging. Dynamic charging would almost eliminate
the need for batteries in vehicles and thus dramatically reduce the
weight of the vehicle. It would also raise the efficiencies of
wireless charging because it would eliminate the inefficiencies
associated with charging and discharging batteries since the motor
could be directly driven by the electricity from the charging
station (Boys & Covic, 2015). One major challenge of wireless
(and even wired) charging is the cost of installation. Digging up
roads to implement coils can be very expensive and block traffic,
particularly for dynamic charging, but also for wireless and wired
charging in general. The wired chargers cited earlier do not
include installation costs and these costs are probably higher than
are the hardware costs since construction is highly manual and
highly regulated. Thus, finding inexpensive ways to implement
charging stations is a major challenge for electric vehicles and a
wide variety of approaches should be explored. Broadly speaking,
the right to sell electricity should probably be given to parking
garages, parking lots, and other third parties in order to
encourage the installation of charging stations. From a technical
perspective, there are probably a number of ways to install
wireless charging stations. The large number of electricity cables
that lie above or beneath cities suggest that few places in cities
are far from a high-voltage cable. But how can these high-voltage
cables be accessed? Can they be reached through sewers, manhole
covers, or other techniques? Furthermore, while road construction
is expensive and a hindrance to traffic, it is done periodically
for many reasons. Is it possible to implement charging stations
when other construction work is done, such as when
telecommunication cables are upgraded or repaired or when
resurfacing of roads is done? Innovative organizational solutions
are needed and universities have a role to play in devising these
organizational solutions. Finally, software costs will also likely
be higher than hardware costs for electric vehicle charging systems
and thus cities must be innovative in this area as well. As with
the previous sections, open source software is needed and
universities have a role to play in the design of these systems.
The initial cost for these systems is likely to be high and
developing inexpensive and reliable systems will require
intelligent and time-consuming designs in which the architecture
for these systems is debated by various city groups and officials.
6. Planning and design of solutions The planning and design of
these solutions requires better partnerships between local
governments, high tech suppliers, local businesses, and local
universities in order to implement sustainable designs for our
cities and communities. In particular, universities need to play a
larger role in the evaluation, planning, and design of the systems
discussed in this Fig. 10. Typical composition of wireless charging
systems. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 11
- 12. paper because local governments, businesses and residents
do not have sufficient time or resources to understand technologies
with rapid rates of improvement and they are naturally afraid of
being fooled by hi-tech suppliers. Local universities have the
skills, time, and energy to address local problems and create
solutions that are appealing to local governments, local businesses
and the residents. They can analyze problems, evaluate the changing
economics of alternative designs, create implementation plans, and
in some cases develop the designs (e.g., open source software).
This involves not just research by professors but also the
involvement of undergraduate and masters students in small and
large- scale projects. For example, some management of technology
programs help students understand the economics of new technologies
by providing information on rapidly improving technologies (like
those in Table 1) and their potential impact on higher- level
systems. The latter requires knowledge about those systems that
have been proposed by universities and firms. This knowledge
includes the composition of existing systems, the tradeoffs between
various designs, the cost and performance of the components, and
how these cost and performance are changing. Students use this
information to propose and analyze new systems and present their
results (Funk, 2015). Larger student projects can build on these
small group projects. The large scale projects can analyze
sustainability problems such as those described in this paper,
evaluate alternative designs, and create implementation plans. For
example, the School of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
has used large student projects to assess public policy issues that
are technical in nature for almost 40 years. This paper is
proposing similar types of projects for other universities with an
emphasis on creating sustainability designs in local communities.
Universities can also promote the use of open source designs to
reduce the cost of these solutions. Many of these solutions require
software systems whose potential costs can be reduced through the
use of open source designs. By linking efforts across many
universities and cities in the evaluation, planning,
implementation, and design of these systems, the appropriate open
source software can be identified, evaluated, and tested. This
would not be the first time Americas universities have addressed
local problems; many were created in the 19th century to help
improve agricultural productivity. State and federal governments
should encourage state and private universities to do this in the
21st century, but this time to solve a different set of problems.
Efforts from departments traditionally concerned with systems such
as Information Systems, Telecommunications Policy, Systems
Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Management, and Economics are
particularly needed. These departments should help students better
understand systems and the role of rapidly improving technologies
and they should increase their offering of project courses.
Government should encourage universities to place greater emphasis
on these activities and become a bigger part of local solution to
sustainability. Privatization and outsourcing are also a key part
of making IT a solution for sustainability. Many of the new systems
that are summarized in this paper can be better implemented by
specialized suppliers than by public organizations. Specialized
suppliers will have better skills at implementing and managing GPS
services for buses, bicycle sharing systems, roads dedicated to
autonomous vehicles, and charging stations. Private organizations
have more skills in these areas than do public organizations and
standard solutions from suppliers are often cheaper than custom
solutions developed internally. This requires local governments to
adopt new roles that in some cases will be larger than in the past
and in some cases will smaller than in the past. 7. Discussion
Sustainability is an important challenge for universities,
governments, and firms and there are alternative ways to address
sustainability than are currently being promoted by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC focuses
on learning curves for alternative energy technologies and on how
costs fall as cumulative production increases. It ignores the
potential impact of IT on the better design of transportation,
logistics, office, and home systems and more generally the fact
that sustainability is a design problem. The IPCCs reports imply
that sustainability is merely a substitution problem; just replace
one component (e.g., coal-burning power plant) with another
component (solar cells) and ignore the ways in which IT and other
new technologies enable new forms of system designs. This paper
focuses on information technologies that are experiencing rapid
rates of improvement and that enable new forms of system designs
that are more efficient than are the existing ones. Improvements in
IT have been occurring at a rapid rate for more than 50 years and
it appears that they will continue for many decades to come. This
provides us with an opportunity to use these technologies to
redesign the world and in doing so reduce resource utilization and
provide the worlds citizens with a higher quality of life. This
paper demonstrated this approach by analyzing four examples in
which improvements in IT are improving the economics of new systems
that have much lower resource utilization than do existing systems.
Improvements in IT are improving the economics of GPS for buses and
of shared bicycles and this will likely increase the number of bus,
bicycle and probably even train riders. Improvements in IT are also
improving the economics of AVs and electric vehicles; the former
can reduce traffic congestion and thus improve fuel efficiency
while the latter can reduce carbon emissions as long as the
electricity is generated by a clean source. Some may argue that
these improving economics will merely cause more of these
activities to occur and thus more energy to be consumed and more
carbon to be emitted. For the first two examples, the orders of
magnitude lower energy intensity of buses and bicycles means that
this is highly unlikely. Even if bus riders commute 50% further in
distance than do Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and
sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and
resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i J.L. Funk /
Telecommunications Policy ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]12
- 13. they currently do with automobiles, something that is
highly unlikely given the slower speeds of buses as compared to
automobiles, energy consumption per user will fall. In fact, the
one outcome that might lead to greater per capita energy usage is
no increase in either bus ridership or shared bicycles since no
change in human activities would occur and thus the implementation
of GPS for buses and shared bicycles would represent wasted energy.
For AVs and electric vehicles, the possible outcomes are more
complex and uncertain. If cities dedicate all existing roads to
AVs, thus increasing the capacities of roads, this could increase
the miles driven per user and thus energy usage as riders zip
around cities at 100 miles per hour. Cities should use the higher
density of vehicles per road area available with AVs to use roads
for other activities such as parks and play areas and only allow
pedestrians and bicycles in these areas. Furthermore, since the
cities own the roads, they can also set high prices for the use of
AVs and justify these high prices based on the high value of the
land that the roads occupy. The greater use of electric vehicles
might also increase carbon emissions if clean sources of
electricity are not used. Thus, it is imperative that cleaner
sources of electricity generation be implemented, but this should
not discourage cities from pursuing electric vehicles or from
pursuing the redesign of their infrastructure. Waiting for coal
plants to be closed before implementing electric vehicles will
waste time. Furthermore, since electric vehicles will not have
faster speeds than do current vehicles, it is unlikely that they
will encourage longer commutes as AVs have the potential to do.
Using IT to improve sustainability also involves behavioral change.
Encouraging individuals to use buses, trains, bicycles, and
electric vehicles by utilizing improvements in IT assumes that
people will respond to incentives. Dedicating roads to AVs also
assumes that people will want fewer roads and thus fewer cars.
While some are pessimistic about such behavioral changes, others
such as Novel Laureate Robert Shiller believe that Idealism,
Expressed in Concrete Steps, Can Fight Climate Change (Shiller,
2015). Copenhagen has done this with bicycles (Wagner &
Weitzman, 2015) and the author believes that most cities can and
will fight climate change in their own way. Making choices
available to designers and users of cities is one goal of this
paper. I hope this paper will stimulate new thinking and new
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