French regulator calls for accountability of Big Tech to improve environmental footprint

Big Tech should be made accountable for their environmental footprint at an EU level, by being incentivised to design digital services in a sustainable way, said Arcep’s President Laure de la Raudière, in a speech on Thursday (30 May).

The regulator called for accountability of online content providers regarding their ecological impact, on broadband consumption in her annual speech on the health of the country’s telecom sector.

“Autoplay and infinite social media feeds are not good sustainable designs,” of digital services said de la Raudière, repeating her position shared in January at BFM Business, calling for “holding Big Tech accountable for their [induced] environmental footprint.”

Given data traffic is increasing by 25% per year, Big Tech should be made accountable for their unsustainable business model, they should “integrate in practice sustainable design of their digital services,” she said.

Discussions on the sustainability should take place at an European level and cannot be addressed solely by France, the regulator said.

Taxing traffic

“It does not necessarily have to be through a tax, but they must be held accountable,” she said.

The idea of a senders-pay tax lost steam at the EU level last year after most regulators and business opposed it. The tax would have made digital platforms using the most broadband, such as Netflix, Amazon, Google or Meta, contribute towards network costs.

Yet the Commission’s white paper still “entertains the idea of network usage fees,” acording to the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), representing Amazon, Google and Meta.

According to the digital platforms this ‘fair share’ levy “addresses a non existent problem,” as the telecom operators business are already profitable, writing in their 2023 position paper. They argue instead it would increase prices for end users of digital content services.

Telecoms energy consumption

De la Raudière also would want WiFi and TV set-top boxes designed to be more energy efficient, accounting for 0.7% of France’s total electricity consumption in 2022.

In 2022 in France, data centers saw a 15% increase in electricity consumption, while fixed and mobile networks noted a 7% rise, she added.

The switch to the cloud is a key driver for data centers’ increased electric consumption. But in terms of sustainability, data centers that offer cloud services are better than companies using in-house servers, she stressed.

Warning that electricity consumption figures could skyrocket in the future there is a need to act now, she said.

Arcep published in May jointly with other regulatory authorities a framework to help product owners, project managers , designers and the like to analyse how sustainable their services are.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]

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