Paris (AFP)

How to reconcile digital development and ecological transition?

The Senate dominated by the right-wing opposition is preparing to adopt on Tuesday at first reading a transpartisan bill aimed at "reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology in France".

Carried by Patrick Chaize and Guillaume Chevrollier (LR) as well as Jean-Michel Houllegatte (PS) and Hervé Maurey (centrist), the text was signed by some 130 senators from all sides, including elected RDPI majority En Marche and environmentalists.

The chairman of the Territorial Planning Commission, Jean-François Longeot (centrist) insists on "the novel character of a text addressing for the first time a blind spot in public policies".

"At a time when the Citizen's Climate Convention has recalled the need to regulate this area, no measure appears in the draft bill dedicated to the measures of the Citizen's Climate Convention," said for his part the environmental group Monday in a statement, calling on the government "to act" by including the text "as quickly as possible on the agenda of the National Assembly, with a view to its final adoption".

"I am not closed to our being able to move forward on a certain number of interesting points", for his part indicated during his hearing by the committee the Secretary of State in charge of Digital Transition Cédric O, for whom " in general ", the government meets" the objectives of the bill ".

"In some places, it adopts a normative approach, while we favor an incentive approach," he added, however.

The authors of the bill intend to activate four "priority levers" to bring together digital and ecological transitions.

- "Digital sobriety" -

The first step is to make users aware of the environmental impact of digital technology.

The text thus provides, from an early age, for the establishment of "digital sobriety education".

Crucially, it aims to limit the renewal of digital terminals, "whose manufacture is the main responsible for the carbon footprint of digital in France": the senators propose in particular to "sanction software obsolescence" and extend the duration the legal guarantee of conformity of digital products from two to five years.

Digital equipment, telephones, computers and other electronic equipment, represent "80% of the environmental impact of digital", according to Cédric O.

The bill also intends to promote "ecologically virtuous" digital uses, in particular by making "eco-design" of websites compulsory, and "bringing about environmental regulation" to prevent the increase in consumption and emissions from networks and centers. of data.

The senators want in particular to ask operators to subscribe by 2023 to binding multiannual environmental commitments with Arcep, the telecoms gendarme, for example to reduce the impacts associated with the manufacture and use of "boxes" made available to their subscribers.

According to the work of a senatorial fact-finding mission, if nothing is done to stop the rise in pollution, digital technology would by 2040 be responsible for 24 million tonnes of carbon equivalent, or around 7 % of France's emissions, compared to 2% today.

About sixty amendments were tabled for consideration of the text in the hemicycle.

The environmental group, which considers the bill as "an important first step", wishes to "strengthen" its ambition, by proposing several additional measures, such as the experimentation by local authorities of instructions on certain digital equipment, or an evaluation environmental impact of new technologies such as 5G.

"The environmental transition will not take place without a digital transition", Cédric O stressed to the committee, pleading for a "massive use" of artificial intelligence and "a development of the connection of objects, including via 5G" .

© 2021 AFP