Sustainable Subsea Networks

Research Question

1. How carbon intensive is the subsea cable network, in what ways can it be decarbonized, and what social and economic effects will this produce?

Media and Publications

• Telegeography Map A map produced in collaboration with Telegeography that compiles data about sustainability initiatives around the world, including emerging technologies and regulations, along with initiatives within the industry such as renewable energy, energy efficiency standards and plans.
• SubOptic Congress on Sustainability First intentional gathering of members from across sectors and around the world to sustainability in the subsea cable industry
• Carbon Footprinting Calculator Carbon emissions data compiled at each stage of the life cycle of a cable and a mathematical model developed to establishing a carbon footprint of the cables.
• Travel Emissions Saving Calculator Calculator that can determine the amount of emissions produced by traveling
• Ramifications for National Security—A Legal Perspective A Legal and Policy report that represents an exhaustive catalog and analysis of the existing policies that impact the practices of the subsea industry, including policies around shipping and ports, renewable energy, and assessments and contracting.
• Report on best practices in subsea telecommunications sustainability The Final Report document includes both carbon calculators, the Telegeography Map, and an extensive list of best practices and recommendations for sustainability across all parts of the subsea industry. It also includes all of the data collected from companies and individuals across the industry.
• The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts The article proposes a relational footprinting that demarcates particular relationships between elements—geographic, technical, and social—within broader information and communications technology infrastructures.
• Disaggregating the Network Footprint: Why Infrastructural Literacy is Essential to Mitigating the Internet’s Environmental Impact.
• ICT Environmentalism and the Sustainability Language-Game This article describes how sustainability has been deployed by tech companies, and how these efforts have also been contested – and strategically mobilized – by activist environmental non-profits and critical scholars seeking to reform tech sector practices.
• “The Cost of Cool: Singapore’s Data Center Moratorium and its Network Effects” in Intersections: Histories of Environment, Science, and Technology in the Anthropocene, University of Pittsburgh Press, In Progress.
• Flying the Skies to Wire the Seas: Should the Subsea Cable Industry Rethink Travel?
• Disaggregated footprints: An Infrastructural Literacy Approach to the Sustainable Internet The book chapter contains a breakdown of the parts of the internet’s infrastructure and the environmental issues most pertinent to each and discusses one relevant digital infrastructural trend—that of edge caching—and describe how this logistical technique dramatically reshapes the environmental effects of signal traffic.
• Sustainable subsea networks: Connecting ports, ships, and cables