IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation

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IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation Jeffrey L. Funk n National University of Singapore, Division of Engineering and Technology Management, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 1175769, Singapore

a r t i c l e i n f o

Keywords: Information technology Moore’s law Rates of improvement Sustainability Transportation Buses Phones GPS Telecommunications Bike sharing Electric vehicles Autonomous vehicles Wireless Charging Power electronics Cameras

abstract This paper describes how rapid rates of improvement in smart phones, telecommunication systems and other forms of IT enable solutions for sustainability and how this provides opportunities for the fields of telecommunication and information systems. While reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on technologies with rates of improvement less than 5% per year, most types of information technologies are experiencing annual rates of improvement that exceed 30% per year. These rapid rates of improvement are changing the economics of many activities of which this paper describes four examples in transportation. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications and information systems. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Creating a more sustainable world through reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in general have become important challenges for governments, firms, and universities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses on learning curves for alternative energy technologies such as solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean energy and how costs fall as cumulative production increases. It largely ignores the potential impact of continued improvements in smart phones, telecommunication systems, and other forms of IT (information technology) on the better design of transportation, logistics, office, and home systems. Implicit in their report is that sustainability is a substitution rather than a design problem and thus the goal is to stimulate the production of new energy technologies in order for their costs to fall, even though the rates of improvement for these technologies are very slow. For example, according to the IPCC, the annual rate of cost reduction for wind turbines has been 2% per year over the last 30 years and the rate has dropped to zero in the last few years (IPCC, 2013). Even for solar cells, the rate of improvement is about 7% per year when the cost is for installed solar as

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Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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Table 1 Information Technologies with recent rapid rates of improvement. Sources: Wikipedia (2014); Preil (2012); Suzuki (2010); Miller (2012); Chader, Weiland, and Humayun (2009); Stasiak, Richards, and Angelos (2009); Hasegawa and Takeya (2009); Franklin (2013); Fujimaki (2012); Devoret and Schoeldopf (2013); Evans et al. (2011); Nordhaus (2007); Koomey et al. (2011); D-Wave (2013); SingularityHub.com (2013); ICKnowledge (2009); ISSCC (2013); Francis (2011); Yoon (2010); Brown (2011); ISSCC (2013); Azevedo, Morgan, and Morgan (2009); Haitz and Tsao (2011); Lee (2005; Sheats et al. (1996); Martinson (2007); Economist (2012); Kwak (2010). Technology domain

Sub-technology

Dimensions of measure

Time period

Integrated circuits (or related) for processing

Microprocessor

Number of transistors/ chip Pixels per dollar Light sensitivity Current density Number of electrodes Drops per second Mobility 1/Purity (% metallic) Density 1/Clock period 1/Bit energy Qubit lifetimes Bits per Qubit lifetime Data Capacity per chip Instructions per unit time Instructions per timecost Number of Qubits Memory bits per chip Storage capacity

1971–2011

38

1983–2013 1986–2008 1993–2012 2002–2013 1985–2009 1982–2006 1999–2011 2006–2011 1990–2010 1990–2010 1999–2012 2005–2013 1983–2011 1979–2009

49 18 16 46 61 109 32 357 20 20 142 137 39 36

1979–2009

52

Camera chips Power ICs MEMS: Artificial eye MEMS: inkjet printers Organic transistors Single walled carbon nanotube transistors Superconducting Josephson junction-based transistors

Electronic products

Information storage

Information trans-mission

Electronic Lighting and Displays

Photonics Digital computers

Quantum computers Dynamic RAM Flash memory Resistive RAM Ferroelectric RAM Magneto RAM Phase change RAM Magnetic Storage

Last mile wireline Wireless, cellular Wireless, WLAN Wireless, 1 m Light emitting diodes (LEDs)

Organic LEDs GaAs Lasers Liquid Crystal Displays Quantum Dot Displays

Recording density of disks Recording density of tape Cost per bit of disks Bits per second Bits per second

Luminosity per Watt, red Lumens per Dollar, white Luminosity/Watt, green Power density Cost per Watt Square meters per dollar External Efficiency, red

Rate per year (%)

2002–2012 107 1971–2010 44 2001–2013 47 2006–2013 272 2001–2009 38 2002–2011 58 2004–2012 63 1991–2011 56 1993–2011

32

1956–2007 1982–2010 1996–2013 1995–2010 1996–2008 1965–2008

33 48.7 79.1 58.4 77.8 17

2000–2010

41

1987–2005 1987–2007 1987–2007 2001–2011

29 30 31 11.0

1998–2009

36

Acronyms: RAM (Random access memory) and WLAN (wireless local area network).

opposed to just solar modules (UCS, 2014). Given the higher costs of solar and wind energy than of fossil fuel-based electricity generation, there seems to be long road ahead. This paper discusses an alternative that is never mentioned by the IPCC, an alternative that may end up having a larger impact on sustainability than do the technologies emphasized by the IPCC. It focuses on smart phones, telecommunication systems and other forms of IT that are experiencing rapid rates of annual improvement and that lead to improvements in higher level systems. For example, as shown in Table 1, microprocessors, memory, cameras, lasers, and new displays have experienced annual rates of improvement of greater than 30% and these improvements have enabled similar magnitude improvements in computer and telecommunication systems. Even software development costs have fallen as open source software has become available; a noteworthy example is the Linux operating system from which the Android operating system was developed. Taking this one step further, improvements in software, computers and telecommunications have enabled improvements in higher level systems such as retail, wholesale, logistics, financial trading, and education (Cortada, 2004, 2005). Theoretically speaking, ICs, lasers, displays, and open source software can be thought of as components (Funk, Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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2013a, 2013b) or as “general purpose technologies” (Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995; David, 1990; Helpman, 2003; Lipsey, Carlaw, & Bekar, 1998, Lipsey et al., 2005) that have a large impact on higher level systems and thus on the overall economy. This paper shows that these technologies, which are called IT for reasons of simplicity, have reached the levels of performance and cost that are needed to have a large impact on a wide variety of energy intensive activities. These improvements are changing the economics of these activities, enabling more efficient designs to emerge. In doing so we recognize that improvements in the efficiency of an activity may increase the use of that activity, thus reducing the impact from improvements in energy efficiency (Brookes, 1984; Khazzoom, 1980). However, in the cases addressed in this paper, increases in usage are limited and/or many of the new methods are so superior to the existing ones that increased usage would still result in dramatic reductions in energy usage. We expand on this argument throughout the paper. To simplify the discussion, this paper focuses on human transportation, partly since the impact of improved IT on logistics (Dooley, 2014; Wible, Mervis, & Wigginton, 2014), telecommuting (Mitomo & Jitsuzumi, 1999), teleconferencing (Biello, 2009; Kraut, 1995), lighting and smart cities (Steenbruggen, Tranos, & Njikamp, 2015; Walravens, 2015) have been discussed by others. First, improvements in GPS and smart phones can increase bus usage through their impact on bus services and information for these services. Second, existing and better smart phones can also facilitate the sharing economy including the sharing of bicycles and cars; the former can overcome crowded bus storage areas and thus facilitate greater use of bicycles hopefully in combination with trains (Otzen, 2014). Third, roads dedicated to autonomous vehicles, which become cheaper and better through improvements in ICs, MEMS, and lasers, can increase the capacity of roads and the fuel efficiency of vehicles (Berry, 2010). Fourth, improvements in power electronics, microprocessors, and other electronics are reducing the cost of wired and wireless charging stations, which reduces the required energy storage densities and thus the cost of electric vehicles. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications and information systems. 2. IT facilitates public transportation Increases in the use of public transportation lead to reductions in per capita energy usage and per-capita carbon emissions. For example, trains and buses consume about 20% and 40% respectively the energy per passenger-kilometer as do automobiles in London and about 9% and 28% respectively the energy per passenger-kilometer as do automobiles in Japan. The differences between London and Japan are largely from differences in capacity utilization and thus Japanese cities are probably even more energy efficient than are its rural areas since fuller buses and trains lead to lower energy per rider (McKay, 2009). Furthermore, greater use of public transportation also probably leads to less land needed for total transportation as the necessary space for roads and parking spaces are reduced. Improvements in IT have already enabled better public transportation and continued improvements can also improve and increase the use of public transportation. Past improvements include better ticketing, route design, and scheduling. Most cities now allow smart cards or phones to be used as tickets thus eliminating the need for purchasing tickets each time a person rides a train or boards a bus. Computers have been used for many years to do route design and scheduling and their successor, Big Data, are enabling the better designs of routes, better choices of train station location and bus stops and the better integration of bus and subway routes. It is also being used to reduce downtime in for example Seoul and Singapore through better preventative maintenance (SMG, 2014; Tay, 2014). But, this paper argues that the biggest benefits from IT will come from GPS, smart phones, and connected devices (some call this the Internet of Things) that together will enable dramatic increases in the number of bus and train users (Farley, 2012; McNeill, 2013). The biggest challenge for most bus users is the difficulty of finding information about bus routes, schedules, and expected arrivals at bus stops. Reading through detailed bus pamphlets and hoping that the bus arrival times match the posted ones are not activities liked by most people. Smart phones and GPS can change this situation. Following the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 (West & Mace, 2010), smart phones continue to experience improvements (Cecere, Corrocher, & Battaglia, 2015) (see Table 2) and these Table 2 Improvements in Smart phones that have and continue to occur. Source: author’s analysis. Component

Types of Improvements

GPS Memory Microprocessor

Higher accuracy Greater capacity Faster speeds

Network WiFi Display Touch screen and glass

Implications

Better location information Can store more apps and more sophisticated ones Can run more sophisticated apps and process them faster. Can access newer network standards, both cellular and WiFi ones Faster speeds Can download larger apps and access the apps and the relevant data more quickly Faster and more available Users can download larger apps and access the apps and the relevant data more quickly. Greater availability means cheaper Internet access Greater resolution, more Greater resolution enables users to more easily understand more complex information. Greater flexibility flexibility enables displays to conform to wrists or other parts of body Thinner and stronger Can use touch screens even when wearing gloves Less chance of glass breaking even when the phone is dropped.

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improvements enable better bus-related services for users. GPS chip sets are already less than $10 and improvements in the accuracy of GPS (GPS, 2014) continue to occur and they provide better location information on both users and buses. Better displays enable better presentation of information. Most importantly, faster data speeds, faster microprocessors, and larger memory enable more sophisticated apps to become available (see Fig. 1). For example, Fig. 1 shows navigation, Fig. 2 shows bus stops for a specific bus, and Fig. 3 shows arrival times for specific bus stops in smart phone apps. Continued improvements in smart phones are enabling more sophisticated apps to emerge that can integrate information on multiple types of transportation modes and thus help users make better real-time decisions between different modes of transportation and different combinations of them. More specifically, in many cities apps provide users with the following information: (1) the closest bus stop; (2) walking directions to it; (3) expected arrival times with less than a few minutes of error; (4) When users should start walking to the bus stop. Also in some cities, a single app does this for various alternatives including buses, trains, and taxis and it provides the expected trip time for each alternative based on existing and destination locations. For example, this is available in Singapore through an app called SBS Next Bus and in a much smaller city, Helsinki through its Reittiopas service. Such services enable users to obtain estimated trip times for multiple modes of transportation with a single click and this type of information will encourage more people to choose public transportation over car ownership. This is not the end of improvements, however, the phones and phone services will get cheaper and better as improvements in ICs and displays continue. Smart phones will become cheap enough for all 7 billion of the world’s population, and they will continue to get better. In addition to better processors and memory, displays are and will continue to become more sensitive, durable, and flexible and they will conform better to wrists and other parts of our bodies. Some of this will come from changes to displays based on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and some will come from augmented reality. Perhaps most importantly, the number of WiFi locations is growing quickly and many of these locations provide free or almost free services. As of November 14, 2014, there were one hot spot for every 11 people in the UK and for every 150 people in the world. By late 2018, it is expected there will be one for every 20 people in the world, including one for every 408 in Africa (WiFi, 2015). The greater availability of WiFi and its falling cost enables lower cost if not free data

Fig. 1. Example of navigation with smart phones.

Fig. 2. Example of finding bus stops ons.

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Fig. 3. Example of finding arrival times for specific bus stops with smart phones. Source: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fatattitude. buscheckeruk.

transmission and in addition, public transportation authorities can introduce free WiFi for their users, which provides an additional means of differentiating themselves from automobiles and thus increasing their share of transportation. Work can be done while commuting thus decreasing the actual time lost to commuting (Achachlouei & Hilty, 2014). These changes are likely to occur first in big European and Asian cities and later in big U.S. cities, smaller cities around the world, and cities in third world countries. The biggest impact may be in small cities where the lower frequency of bus arrivals requires better information on bus arrival times, routes, and bus stop locations. Many people will not risk the potentially long waiting times for low frequency bus services and thus will not use buses in small cities until better information services are available. But as smart phones, telecommunication systems, and other forms of IT become better and cheaper, smart phone-based solutions will diffuse from large to small cities, thus enabling a dramatic increase in the use of bus transportation and a drop in car usage. Improvements in smart phones, telecommunication systems, Big Data, and other forms of IT can also facilitate ride sharing in private vehicles and buses and thus take us beyond current car sharing or carpooling. Smart phone apps are enabling new taxi services and facilitating carpooling. More importantly, Big Data can analyze the large amounts of data being collected by these smart phone transportation apps and other sources and better understand starting and ending points for individuals. This enables private bus companies to offer better bus services. Already, 35% of Silicon Valley’s work forces uses these services (Markoff & Dougherty, 2015) and it is likely that increases can be made beyond this 35% as improvements in IT continue to occur. Similar if not larger percentages are possible in other parts of the world. A positive impact from smart phones on public transportation may already be occurring in the US, one of the most car intensive nations in the world. Evidence suggests that public transportation is already increasing its share of transport since the percentage of licensed drivers and the number of miles driven per capita have dropped, with the lowest car ownership existing in cities (Thompson, 2014). The percentage of 15–24 year-olds who are licensed drivers in the U.S. dropped by almost 50% between 1983 and 2010 (Economist, 2012). The number of miles driven per capita peaked between 2004 and 2006 and this figure had dropped by almost 10% by 2011 (SSTI, 2013). Utilizing the improvements in GPS and smart phones that are emphasized above can strengthen these trends, thus reducing the energy intensity of U.S. and other cities.

3. IT promotes integration of bicycles and public transportation Improvements in smart phones, telecommunication systems, and other forms of IT (such as connected bicycles) can also facilitate bike sharing perhaps in combination with commuting by train. Although ideally more people would commute solely by bicycle, this is only possible in places where hills are few, weather is cool, commutes are short, and roads are designed for bicycles. For example, the percentage of trips by bicycle exceeds 30% in European cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munster, Utrecht, and Malmo (Copenhagenize, 2009) and it is also very high in Asia (Spokefly, 2015). In most cities, however, bicycles will only be used in combination with other modes of transportation, particularly trains. Getting to train stations has always been a challenge. One option is to allow bicycles on trains, which angers other commuters. Alternatively, many cities have constructed large bicycle storage centers next to train stations or in other widely visited places. The problem with these bicycle storage systems is that many are overcrowded and thus it can take many minutes to find one’s bicycle amid the many bicycles in the storage system. If a system is poorly organized as many are, many bikes cannot be found and are discarded thus increasing the problems for other people finding their bicycles (see left side of Fig. 4). This has caused some cities to implement automated bicycle storage spaces that may extend many floors up (Campbell-Dollaghan, 2013) or down (Grozdanic, 2015), but that clearly involve high construction costs. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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Fig. 4. From chaos to order: the benefit of bike storage.

An alternative is bicycle sharing (Larsen, 2013). Bicycles are stored in a form of large vending machine in which users rent bicycles for short time periods and return them to the same or different locations. Payments can be made with smart cards on smart phones. For users, bicycle sharing can reduce the time to park and find bicycles thus transforming chaos into order (see Fig. 4). For cities, bicycle sharing can free up expensive land (often next to train stations) for other activities. Perhaps, most importantly, bicycle sharing can promote rail usage. By placing storage systems near train stations, commuters can ride a bike from near home to a train station, ride a train to another station, and then ride another bicycle or walk to their final destination. Some users might do this with bicycles when in the past they did this with buses. For example, NY City placed many of its bike sharing stations near train stations and this contributed to the success of the program (Business Insider, 2014). Improvements in IT are improving the economics of these systems. IT helps manage the renting, storage, and collection of bicycles and the improvements in phones that were mentioned in the last section are also relevant to bike sharing. Inexpensive sensors and GPS can track bicycles and thus reduce thefts. Apps and GPS help users find bike sharing stations (Walravens, 2015). Intelligent cameras can help reduce vandalism. Computers can help redistribute the bicycles when some stations have too many bicycles while others do not have enough. Phones help users find bike stations, register for use, borrow bikes, and make payments. The increasing availability of open source software also reduces implementation costs (see below). These improvements can also reduce the capital and operating costs of the bicycle sharing systems, which are still high. One study found that the capital costs per bicycle are between $3000 and $4500 and the operating costs are between $1200 and $1944 per bicycle and per year (Lajas, 2012). However, these costs will fall as the improvements in IT continue, as the initial costs are amortized over many users, as standard systems become available, and as more open source designs including software become available. Open source designs including software may offer the greatest opportunity for cost reduction and universities should play a role in promoting open source designs for both bicycle storage and bus-related GPS systems. By developing and promoting these designs, universities can help reduce the cost of these systems and prevent one supplier from becoming the Google, Apple, or Uber of bicycle storage systems through high switching costs. Thus, rather than waiting for the benefits from economies of scale and standardization to emerge, universities should develop and promote open source designs that are much cheaper than proprietary designs and that enable more sharing of design costs across multiple installations. Furthermore, by doing this at the global level, there can be wide spread sharing of these designs, thus enabling different universities to focus on different sub-systems within bicycle sharing and bus-related GPS systems. Finally, bicycle sharing is part of a larger trend called the sharing economy. The sharing economy can enable automobiles, automobile trips (carpooling or shared taxis), parking spaces, housing (e.g., Airbnb) and manufactured products to be shared over many people and thus the resources associated with them to be likely reduced. For transportation, shared parking spaces and better IT and phones can reduce searching for these parking spaces (Economist, 2015; McCarrick, 2013). In support of these trends, cities can also increase parking rates and reduce the number of parking spaces (Economist, 2015; McCarrick, 2013). A greater use of bicycles, bicycle sharing, and public transportation will likely lead to lower per-capita usage of energy and carbon emissions. While improvements in quality or reductions in price can lead to greater usage of a given product or service (Brookes, 1984; Khazzoom, 1980), this will probably not occur for bicycles and public transportation. The former involves human effort and the latter’s usage is probably more limited by time than by price and public transportation is much slower than are personal automobiles or taxis. Thus, if more people change from private vehicles to public transportation, this will probably cause more people to reduce their commuting time by moving from the suburbs to cities than for people to extend their commuting times by moving in the opposite direction. Furthermore, movements to the city

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will reduce per capita energy consumption overall since cities have lower per capita energy consumption than do rural areas (Glaeaser, 2012). A second reason that lower prices or better quality public transportation will not lead to greater commuting miles and certainly not greater per capita-energy usage is that capacity utilization has a large impact on per capita energy usage and thus increases in usage lead to both higher capacity utilization of buses and lower per capita energy usage.

4. IT facilitates roads dedicated to autonomous vehicles Improvements in IT are also making it economically feasible to dedicate roads to autonomous vehicles (AVs). While not as environmentally friendly as bicycles, buses, and trains, dedicating roads to AVs can reduce inter-vehicle distances, delays at traffic signals (Fig. 5), frequency of braking, speed changes, and thus increase the capacity of roads (see Fig. 6) and percentage of moving vehicles; the resulting higher speeds (up to 30 mph) will increase fuel efficiency (Fig. 7) and reduce carbon emissions. Perhaps equally importantly, in the long term, AVs can reduce car ownership and thus necessary space for roads and parking; cities can use this reduced space to close parking garages and block vehicles from some streets thus resulting in higher quality city environments. AVs are rapidly getting cheaper and better because of improvements in IT such as the falling cost of cameras, lasers, GPS, and MEMS (micro-electronic mechanical systems). Cameras recognize lane markings, infrared ones recognize objects, and pairs of cameras build a real-time 3D image of the road. Light detection and ranging systems (LIDAR) develop a 3601 view by spinning at 900 rpm where these systems include up to 64 lasers. GPS provides a location on a map, wheel encoder MEMS provide location information when the GPS is obstructed in tunnels or parking garages, and ICs act and interpret on all the data mentioned in this paragraph (Vanderbilt, 2012).

Fig. 5. Dedicated roads lead to fewer traffic delays at signals. Source: Dresner and Stone (2008).

Fig. 6. Average safe inter-vehicle distance and highway capacity. Source: Toyota (2011).

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Fig. 7. Roads dedicated to AVs can have higher speeds and thus higher fuel efficiencies.

When will these components become cheap and good enough? According to one source, the cost of the “Google Car” was about $150,000 in 2013 of which most of the costs were for electronic components (e.g., about $70,000 is for LIDAR) (Naughton, 2013). A July 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal reported the cost of Google’s prototype 64-laser unit (made by Velodyine) to be $75,000–$85,000 while the cost of 32- and 16-laser units from the same firm, Velodyne to be $30,000– $40,000 and less than $10,000 respectively. Other suppliers claim the costs are even lower, because fewer lasers are need; TriLumina Corp. expects them to cost less than $150 by 2016 (Shchetko, 2014). In any case, the costs of lasers and other electronics will fall because they have been falling for the last 50 years. Thus, even if the cost of LIDAR is $70,000, it is likely that these costs will fall at a rapid rate. For example, current rates of improvement for GaAs lasers are 30–40% and those for other information technology are 40% per year. Being conservative, if costs drop 25% a year, the cost of electronics in the Google Car will drop by 90% in ten years thus making AVs only slightly more expensive than existing vehicles by 2023. Most likely, this will occur on an incremental basis as the sensors are gradually incorporated into existing vehicles (TI, 2014). But the real benefits from AVs will only come when roads are dedicated to them. AVs by themselves can allow drivers to do other things while driving and perhaps reduce crashes, accidents, deaths, ambulances, insurance expenditures, traffic tickets and police officers. But dedicating roads or lanes in roads to AVs can also increase the density of cars on highways along with reducing congestion and enabling higher fuel efficiencies. The higher densities of vehicles on roads can provide cities with a choice: do they allow an increase in the total number of vehicles or do they keep their numbers constant or reduce their numbers by reducing road, highway, and parking spaces. Singapore wants to do the latter because this will enable the freed space to be used for other things like housing, parks, bicycles, or pedestrians (Mahbubani, 2014). This should probably be the goal of AVs – reduce the areas for roads and parking spaces, enable a car-free lifestyle, and uses the space for other things. Dedicating roads to AVs will also probably reduce the things mentioned in the second sentence of this paragraph much more than will the use of AVs and non-AVs on the same roads. All of this can improve quality of life. Dedicating roads to AVs is also less technically demanding than having both AVs and non-AVs on the same road because wireless communication can be used for the former thus reducing the amount of complex sensors, particularly LIDAR, that are needed in the AVs. When roads are dedicated to AVs, the AVs do not have to worry about human drivers and the unexpected things they might do. Cars can be checked for autonomous capability when they enter a dedicated road. Route plans are checked and integrated with other route plans. Improvements in computer processing power facilitate checking and integrating these plans. When all the vehicles are AVs, they can all be sensed and controlled by a combination of magnets, RFID tags, and/or wireless communication. The magnets and RFID tags can create an invisible railway that keeps the AVs in their lanes. One study estimated the cost the cost of these sensors for all of Singapore’s roads as less than $300 million or less than $2 per registered vehicle (Chang, 2014; Quick, 2014). Improvements in wireless communication and computers are also improving the economics of dedicating roads to AVs. Improvements in ICs and other components are reducing the response time, i.e., latency of cellular data services (see Fig. 8) thus making it more feasible to control vehicles with cellular services. Latency fell by 100 times between 2003 and 2014 and latency is expected to fall below 0.1 ms with the 5G services that will be implemented by the early 2020s; this may be the biggest application for 5G cellular services (Jones, 2015) as WiFi becomes a more important form of telecommunication services for individual users. Improvements in ICs are also needed to handle the high cost of processing the data from the cellular services since processing costs are much higher as response time is reduced. However, improvements in ICs continue to occur as seen in Moore’s Law and the processing cost per vehicle will also fall as the number of cars in the system increases to expected levels. Implementing these systems will of course require extensive cooperation between various technology suppliers, AV suppliers, universities and city governments and this cooperation will involve extensive legal and regulatory changes. Improving safety and reducing the risk of terrorism should be highly emphasized and the challenges of achieving these goals should not be underestimated. Nevertheless, these systems are becoming economically feasible through Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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Fig. 8. Latency improvements in cellular data services. Source: http://www.slashgear.com/4g-what-does-this-really-mean-30143435/.

improvements in ICs, wireless transmission, and other electronics, whether AVs are pursued or not, and they should be pursued because the potential benefits are very large. Universities also need to promote open source designs for these AV-related systems just as they need to do so with systems for shared bicycles and bus-related GPS systems. The initial costs for dedicating roads to AVs will be very high and the potential for safety and terrorism problems are also high. Developing reliable systems will require intelligent and timeconsuming design in which the architecture for these systems is debated by various city groups, officials, citizens groups, universities, and technology suppliers. 5. IT facilitates electric vehicles Improvements in IT also facilitate the implementation of electric vehicles and their implementation can reduce carbon emissions particularly if the electricity is produced by renewable energy such as solar or wind. The problem for electric vehicles is that hybrids containing both sets of propulsion (engines and motors) and storage (gasoline tanks and batteries) will always be more expensive than will pure electric vehicles but pure electric vehicles require dramatic improvements in the energy storage density of batteries and these improvements are proceeding very slowly. For example, at current rates of improvement (Howell, 2014; Tarascon, 2009), it will take more than 50 years before the energy storage densities of Li-ion batteries reach those of gasoline (Energy Storage Density, 2015). Thus, radical new forms of batteries or new forms of electric charging systems are needed. This is where IT can make a contribution. Better IT leads to the faster location of charging stations, faster charging of the vehicles (Seger, 2015), and a lower cost of charging stations. Faster location and charging enables more frequent charging by drivers and lower cost charging stations enable an increase in the density of charging stations. And as the number of stations increased, the necessary driving range for vehicles can be decreased. If the necessary range can be sufficiently decreased, the engine can be discarded and the battery can provide all the propulsion. Furthermore, if the necessary range can be further decreased through a high density of charging stations, the weight and the cost of the battery can be reduced and thus the electric vehicle can be made even lighter (and cheaper) than that of conventional vehicles. The cost of locating a charging station is falling because the costs of location-based services through cheaper GPS, Wi-Fi positioning and inertial sensors are falling, as noted in earlier discussions of GPS for buses. These location-based services are appearing in our phones and in our cars and combined with new payment systems, facilitate frequent recharging. The cost of charging stations also falling through improvements in electronics and these charging stations can charge a vehicle with either cables or wirelessly. These improvements in electronics are also enabling a change from mechanical to electric controls on vehicles, which enable dramatic reductions in vehicle weight and better control of the motor. 5.1. Wired charging Wired charging is currently the predominant method of charging. The rate of charging and the cost of wired charging stations are being improved because of improvements in power electronics ICs such as MOSFETs (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors) and to lesser extent microprocessors (see typical composition of charging station in Fig. 9). The improvements in MOSFETs are usually measured in terms of lower “resistance time area” for a specific voltage. Using Ohms Law (voltage¼ current  resistance), it can be easily shown that lower “resistance times area” is equivalent to current density. Improvements in current density lead to a lower cost of MOSFETs since fewer materials are needed. The current cost of a fast charging station (about 200 amps) is between $12,000 and $15,000 and it can provide 50–60 miles on a one hour charge (DriveClean, 2015). The cost of MOSFETs has been falling about 16% per year for almost 20 years. If the price of a $15,000 charger falls 10% per year, the cost will be $5770 in 10 years. Assuming 100,000 chargers are need in a metropolitan area of 2 million people to effectively use 100,000 electric vehicles, the cost would be $577 million in chargers. Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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Fig. 9. Typical composition of charging station.

The reason why the MOSFETS are experiencing improvements is because engineers and scientists have and continue to create materials that have a combination of lower resistance and higher breakdown voltages. Both enable the power ICs to have both higher current densities and thus higher charging rates; the higher current densities also enable lower costs because fewer materials are needed. The higher breakdown voltages enable the MOSFETs to work without being damaged by the higher current densities (Briere, 2008; Lapedus, 2015; Mishra, 2013). These new materials involve various forms of silicon, silicon-carbide, and gallium nitride MOSFETs. Silicon MOSFETS are used in low power applications like vehicle recharging since they are the most inexpensive but they have lower breakdown voltages than do silicon-carbide and gallium nitride based ones. However, as improvements in the current densities for silicon-carbide and gallium nitride continue to occur, they are expected to replace silicon MOSFETs in many applications and this will enable faster charging. Current silicon-carbide based and gallium-nitride-based MOSFETs have about ten times the breakdown voltages of silicon-based ones and their theoretical limits are about ten and 100 times higher than are siliconbased ones. Furthermore, for the same breakdown voltages, their current densities are several hundreds and several thousands of times higher respectively than are silicon ones. The higher breakdown voltages enable higher current densities and the lower resistance enables lower costs (Briere, 2008; Mishra, 2013; Lapedus, 2015). 5.2. Wireless charging Electric vehicles can also be wirelessly charged using thin-film coils. The advantages of wireless charging include protected connections, greater durability, and faster connections. While cables are exposed to the rain, sun, and other elements with wired charging, there are no cables with wireless charging and the charging coils can be separated from each other and thus protected from the elements. The receiving coil can be placed at the bottom of a vehicle and the transmitting coil can be placed near the surface of the ground. This increases the durability of the chargers and it also eliminates the need for drivers to connect cables or even leave their vehicle. Instead, the coils are automatically aligned using sensors and other electronics. This is important for instances of short charging that enable frequent recharging (Boys & Covic, 2015; SAE, 2015). The disadvantage of wireless charging is that it is currently more expensive than wired charging and the efficiency of its charging falls below 90% as the distance becomes larger than the coil diameter. Coil diameters can be made larger but this reduces the accuracy of the charging and it also raises the cost. Nevertheless, efficiencies are being improved for a given distance and a variety of approaches are being pursued. Some of these improvements have been motivated by non-vehicle applications such as materials handling in factories where wireless charging was implemented in order to reduce the Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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Fig. 10. Typical composition of wireless charging systems.

amount of chemicals, residues, and wires. For example, inductive chargers developed by the University of Auckland were used in over 8000 factories as of 2012 (Boys & Covic, 2015). The typical composition of a wireless charging system is shown in Fig. 10. The cost includes various types of electronics such as memory, microprocessors, modulators, and thin-film coils, all of which are experiencing rapid improvements. Although thin-film technology was not discussed in previous sections, all of the technologies in Table 1 involve thin-film (e.g., ICs, displays) because all of them require the deposition and patterning of thin-films. This has attracted IC suppliers of wireless applications such as Qualcomm to wireless charging since they would like to apply their wireless data technologies to wireless charging. As improvements in these components continue to occur at 15–30% per year, it is likely that the economics of wireless charging will dramatically improve over the next few years. If thin-film coils become cheap enough, it will be possible to wirelessly charge a vehicle while the vehicle is moving; this is called dynamic charging. Dynamic charging would almost eliminate the need for batteries in vehicles and thus dramatically reduce the weight of the vehicle. It would also raise the efficiencies of wireless charging because it would eliminate the inefficiencies associated with charging and discharging batteries since the motor could be directly driven by the electricity from the charging station (Boys & Covic, 2015). One major challenge of wireless (and even wired) charging is the cost of installation. Digging up roads to implement coils can be very expensive and block traffic, particularly for dynamic charging, but also for wireless and wired charging in general. The wired chargers cited earlier do not include installation costs and these costs are probably higher than are the hardware costs since construction is highly manual and highly regulated. Thus, finding inexpensive ways to implement charging stations is a major challenge for electric vehicles and a wide variety of approaches should be explored. Broadly speaking, the right to sell electricity should probably be given to parking garages, parking lots, and other third parties in order to encourage the installation of charging stations. From a technical perspective, there are probably a number of ways to install wireless charging stations. The large number of electricity cables that lie above or beneath cities suggest that few places in cities are far from a high-voltage cable. But how can these high-voltage cables be accessed? Can they be reached through sewers, manhole covers, or other techniques? Furthermore, while road construction is expensive and a hindrance to traffic, it is done periodically for many reasons. Is it possible to implement charging stations when other construction work is done, such as when telecommunication cables are upgraded or repaired or when resurfacing of roads is done? Innovative organizational solutions are needed and universities have a role to play in devising these organizational solutions. Finally, software costs will also likely be higher than hardware costs for electric vehicle charging systems and thus cities must be innovative in this area as well. As with the previous sections, open source software is needed and universities have a role to play in the design of these systems. The initial cost for these systems is likely to be high and developing inexpensive and reliable systems will require intelligent and time-consuming designs in which the architecture for these systems is debated by various city groups and officials.

6. Planning and design of solutions The planning and design of these solutions requires better partnerships between local governments, high tech suppliers, local businesses, and local universities in order to implement sustainable designs for our cities and communities. In particular, universities need to play a larger role in the evaluation, planning, and design of the systems discussed in this Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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paper because local governments, businesses and residents do not have sufficient time or resources to understand technologies with rapid rates of improvement and they are naturally afraid of being fooled by hi-tech suppliers. Local universities have the skills, time, and energy to address local problems and create solutions that are appealing to local governments, local businesses and the residents. They can analyze problems, evaluate the changing economics of alternative designs, create implementation plans, and in some cases develop the designs (e.g., open source software). This involves not just research by professors but also the involvement of undergraduate and master’s students in small and largescale projects. For example, some management of technology programs help students understand the economics of new technologies by providing information on rapidly improving technologies (like those in Table 1) and their potential impact on higherlevel systems. The latter requires knowledge about those systems that have been proposed by universities and firms. This knowledge includes the composition of existing systems, the tradeoffs between various designs, the cost and performance of the components, and how these cost and performance are changing. Students use this information to propose and analyze new systems and present their results (Funk, 2015). Larger student projects can build on these small group projects. The large scale projects can analyze sustainability problems such as those described in this paper, evaluate alternative designs, and create implementation plans. For example, the School of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University has used large student projects to assess public policy issues that are technical in nature for almost 40 years. This paper is proposing similar types of projects for other universities with an emphasis on creating sustainability designs in local communities. Universities can also promote the use of open source designs to reduce the cost of these solutions. Many of these solutions require software systems whose potential costs can be reduced through the use of open source designs. By linking efforts across many universities and cities in the evaluation, planning, implementation, and design of these systems, the appropriate open source software can be identified, evaluated, and tested. This would not be the first time America’s universities have addressed local problems; many were created in the 19th century to help improve agricultural productivity. State and federal governments should encourage state and private universities to do this in the 21st century, but this time to solve a different set of problems. Efforts from departments traditionally concerned with systems such as Information Systems, Telecommunications Policy, Systems Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Management, and Economics are particularly needed. These departments should help students better understand systems and the role of rapidly improving technologies and they should increase their offering of project courses. Government should encourage universities to place greater emphasis on these activities and become a bigger part of local solution to sustainability. Privatization and outsourcing are also a key part of making IT a solution for sustainability. Many of the new systems that are summarized in this paper can be better implemented by specialized suppliers than by public organizations. Specialized suppliers will have better skills at implementing and managing GPS services for buses, bicycle sharing systems, roads dedicated to autonomous vehicles, and charging stations. Private organizations have more skills in these areas than do public organizations and standard solutions from suppliers are often cheaper than custom solutions developed internally. This requires local governments to adopt new roles that in some cases will be larger than in the past and in some cases will smaller than in the past. 7. Discussion Sustainability is an important challenge for universities, governments, and firms and there are alternative ways to address sustainability than are currently being promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC focuses on learning curves for alternative energy technologies and on how costs fall as cumulative production increases. It ignores the potential impact of IT on the better design of transportation, logistics, office, and home systems and more generally the fact that sustainability is a design problem. The IPCC’s reports imply that sustainability is merely a substitution problem; just replace one component (e.g., coal-burning power plant) with another component (solar cells) and ignore the ways in which IT and other new technologies enable new forms of system designs. This paper focuses on information technologies that are experiencing rapid rates of improvement and that enable new forms of system designs that are more efficient than are the existing ones. Improvements in IT have been occurring at a rapid rate for more than 50 years and it appears that they will continue for many decades to come. This provides us with an opportunity to use these technologies to redesign the world and in doing so reduce resource utilization and provide the world’s citizens with a higher quality of life. This paper demonstrated this approach by analyzing four examples in which improvements in IT are improving the economics of new systems that have much lower resource utilization than do existing systems. Improvements in IT are improving the economics of GPS for buses and of shared bicycles and this will likely increase the number of bus, bicycle and probably even train riders. Improvements in IT are also improving the economics of AVs and electric vehicles; the former can reduce traffic congestion and thus improve fuel efficiency while the latter can reduce carbon emissions as long as the electricity is generated by a clean source. Some may argue that these improving economics will merely cause more of these activities to occur and thus more energy to be consumed and more carbon to be emitted. For the first two examples, the orders of magnitude lower energy intensity of buses and bicycles means that this is highly unlikely. Even if bus riders commute 50% further in distance than do Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i

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they currently do with automobiles, something that is highly unlikely given the slower speeds of buses as compared to automobiles, energy consumption per user will fall. In fact, the one outcome that might lead to greater per capita energy usage is no increase in either bus ridership or shared bicycles since no change in human activities would occur and thus the implementation of GPS for buses and shared bicycles would represent wasted energy. For AVs and electric vehicles, the possible outcomes are more complex and uncertain. If cities dedicate all existing roads to AVs, thus increasing the capacities of roads, this could increase the miles driven per user and thus energy usage as riders zip around cities at 100 miles per hour. Cities should use the higher density of vehicles per road area available with AVs to use roads for other activities such as parks and play areas and only allow pedestrians and bicycles in these areas. Furthermore, since the cities own the roads, they can also set high prices for the use of AVs and justify these high prices based on the high value of the land that the roads occupy. The greater use of electric vehicles might also increase carbon emissions if clean sources of electricity are not used. Thus, it is imperative that cleaner sources of electricity generation be implemented, but this should not discourage cities from pursuing electric vehicles or from pursuing the redesign of their infrastructure. Waiting for coal plants to be closed before implementing electric vehicles will waste time. Furthermore, since electric vehicles will not have faster speeds than do current vehicles, it is unlikely that they will encourage longer commutes as AVs have the potential to do. Using IT to improve sustainability also involves behavioral change. Encouraging individuals to use buses, trains, bicycles, and electric vehicles by utilizing improvements in IT assumes that people will respond to incentives. Dedicating roads to AVs also assumes that people will want fewer roads and thus fewer cars. While some are pessimistic about such behavioral changes, others such as Novel Laureate Robert Shiller believe that “Idealism, Expressed in Concrete Steps, Can Fight Climate Change” (Shiller, 2015). Copenhagen has done this with bicycles (Wagner & Weitzman, 2015) and the author believes that most cities can and will fight climate change in their own way. Making choices available to designers and users of cities is one goal of this paper. I hope this paper will stimulate new thinking and new activities in universities and cities. References Achachlouei, M. & Hilty, L. (2014). Modelling rebound effects in system dynamics. In Proceedings of the 28th EnviroInfor 2014 conference. Oldenburg, Germany. September 10–12. 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Please cite this article as: Funk, J. L. IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation. Telecommunications Policy (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2015.07.007i