Digital and Environment Roadmap

Country / jurisdiction: France · Year: 2021 · Status: In force · Level: National · Type: Mandatory

The Digital and Environment Roadmap sets out a series of fifteen measures designed to bring together digital and ecological transition objectives. The measures aim to improve transparency around environmental impacts of digitalisation, to reduce these impacts, and to support innovative solutions that harness digitalisation for environmental benefit.

Several measures were proposed through France's Citizen's Convention for Climate, and many involve the French telecommunications regulatory authority (ARCEP) and the French agency for ecological transition (ADEME). The main targets presented in the roadmap include:

- Setting up an "environmental barometer" based on environmental data collected from digital economy players;

- Working with digital economy players to formalise codes of good conduct in terms of environmental impact, with the aim of feeding these into EU processes, so they could eventually become legally enforceable;

- An initial framework letter from the Government asking ARCEP to work on ways and means of taking environmental issues into account in the allocation criteria for the next 26Ghz frequency bands;

- Requesting ARCEP to analyse the impacts of the commercial practice of subsidising mobile phones, following the request of the Citizen's Convention for the Climate, to enable the Government to take measures as needed;

- Exemplary public sector procurement, aiming for 20% of telephone and IT equipment to be refurbished or second-hand fixed, and adoption of eco-design by digital public services in the framework of the Tech.gouv roadmap ;

- Launching an awareness campaign on less polluting digital practices, because the ecological impact of uses can be minimised by better informing the French;

- Supporting high-potential Greentech start-ups through the Mission French Tech, to accelerate their development;

- Launching calls for projects to support the development of innovative solutions using 5G and Artificial Intelligence for ecological transition.

- Providing € 21 million from the recovery plan to ADEME's circular economy fund to support the development of repair and reuse, particularly in the field of electrical and electronic equipment.

- Funding regional demonstrators by supporting VSEs / SMEs in their efforts towards sustainable digital products and practices with € 4 million per year financed by the recovery plan.

Official source: https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/Feuille_de_route_Numerique_Environnement.pdf