Abstract

The development towards a "digitalised" society is often accompanied by the promise that the ecological crisis can be solved technically and that resource efficiency can be promoted or that economic development can even be dematerialised. But this seems one-sided and rather optimistic. Many actors rightly fear that digitalisation will also boost resource consumption. This applies, for example, to certain raw materials through increased use of (short-lived) electronics and sensor technology, etc. The German Raw Materials Agency assumes that by 2035 almost four times as much lithium will be needed as in 2013 and by 2050 more than three times as much copper as in 2010. There is talk of the age of information technology, which is replacing the fossil age and is now based on metallic raw materials. However, increasingly complex processes have to be used to obtain the raw materials.

Authors

Göpel, Maja; Leitschuh, Heike; Brunnengräber, Achim; Ibisch, Pierre; Loske, Reinhard; Müller, Michael; Summer, Jörg; Weizsäcker, Ernst U. von