Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

In this paper, we present findings from a qualitative interview study, which highlights the difficulties and challenges with quantifying carbon emissions and discusses how to move productively through these challenges by drawing insights from studies of deep uncertainty. Our research study focuses on the digital sector and was governed by the following research question: how do practitioners researching, working, or immersed in the broad area of sustainable digitisation (researchers, industry, NGOs, and policy representatives) understand and engage with quantifying carbon? Our findings show how stakeholders struggled to measure carbon emissions across complex systems, the lack of standardisation to assist with this, and how these challenges led stakeholders to call for more data to address this uncertainty. We argue that these calls for more data obscure the fact that there will always be uncertainty, and that we must learn to govern from within it.

Original publication

DOI

10.3390/su16052017

Type

Journal article

Journal

Sustainability

Publication Date

02/2024

Volume

16

Addresses

Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, Strand, London WC2B 4BG, UK.