Building and maintaining the hardware that will be necessary for an increasingly digital world, and the energy that will be required to power it, poses a great challenge to environmental sustainability going forward.

Unless the minerals and other materials required for the hardware are sustainably extracted and recycled, and the additional energy used to fuel this is derived from clean energy sources, this will exacerbate our already unsustainable consumption and emissions dynamic on Earth.

A crucial facet of this topic is the hopeful shift towards a clean energy transition: the massivescale global shift from using non-renewable energy sources to mainly using renewable energy sources. Over the next few decades this will result in a very drastic increase in the global demand for minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, graphite, copper, and many others, because of their use in the energy storage, EV batteries, equipment, and hardware requirements associated with renewable energy technologies and formats.

Because mineral extraction and processing is itself quite a disruptive and polluting process, this adds a paradoxical element to the goal of the clean energy transition. On one hand, these minerals can facilitate the functioning of renewable energy technologies. On the other hand, however, unless the supply chain of these minerals is managed sustainably, their environmentally damaging production and end-of-life management could undermine the environmental benefits they stand to provide.

Climate Trends in Near Future

Various sources, such as the IEA, state that global coal emissions are expected to peak within the next two to ten years. However, unless extremely drastic and disruptive changes are made towards emissions reductions globally, this will not have a significant enough mitigation impact on the progression of climate change. Climate change is not a question of ‘if’, rather it is a question of ‘how extreme’ the changes will be. Some of the environmental changes and challenges that will occur are:

• Continued arctic ice melting
• Continuously more extreme weather, and more climate refugees as a result of this
• Worse water shortages/ droughts/flooding
• Sea level rise, sea temperature rise, ocean acidification

Implications of Russia- Ukraine war

There are many aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war that pose environmental challenges, both on a large scale and on a smaller scale. Outside of Russia and Ukraine, a large-scale issue is that coal production and use in Europe is expected to increase as a result of reductions in Russian natural gas imports. In the short-term, the use of fossil fuel energy and the resultant carbon emissions are expected to increase in Europe because of the energy crisis-related supply disruptions that have resulted from Western sanctions on energy imports from Russia.

Over-investments in new natural gas infrastructure in Europe as a knee-jerk reaction to the energy crisis may result in higher natural gas consumption rates in the near term due to being financially ‘locked in’ to make the infrastructure investment worthwhile. Otherwise, redundant fossil fuel infrastructure might eventually be the result of this potential response.

Overall this crisis has resulted in a push for more renewable energy production in the European Union, for example through the REPowerEU Plan, which emphasizes energy savings strategies, as well as plans for increased clean energy production and the diversification of the EU’s energy supplies.

In Ukraine specifically, infrastructure and natural resources have already been destroyed to an extent, which will only continue as the war goes on. As infrastructure is eventually rebuilt, this will bring additional emissions and require the extraction of more natural resources.

The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines have both sustained damage, resulting in gas leaks that have been called one of the worst methane leaks in history. Fossil fuel consumption for military vehicles, such as tanks and aircraft, represents another environmental issue associated with this war. The mass transportation of refugees also has a carbon footprint, from the emissions caused by the numerous flights, train trips, and car trips undertaken by those seeking safety. Moreover, even the weapons manufactured and used for this war have a negative environmental impact.