Digital Tools to Mitigate Climate Change: A Scoping Review

Richard J Webster, Mary-Ann Harrison and Gabriele Zitikyte

No 92sp3, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Decision makers around the world are announcing climate targets, but often assume that future technologies will make their decarbonisation promises of today achievable tomorrow. Concerningly, the IPCC states that current technologies are insufficient to address the climate crises. Digital tools (e.g., software, phone apps, dashboards) provide an interesting microcosm to investigate the pace of emerging technologies, as they are rapidly developed, easily scaled, and leverage analytics; yet little is known about digital tools for climate action. This scoping review aims to i) identify digital tools for climate mitigation, ii) assess their pace of innovation, and iii) perform a gap analysis. We identified 352 digital tools for climate mitigation. This repository of tools has particular value as 72% of these digital tools were found to be open source. A novel statistical analysis was used to determine the pace of innovation and assess the maturity of climate mitigation digital technologies. Encouragingly, digital tools for climate mitigation are emerging at an annual rate of 19% (95% CI: 16- 22%), with open-source solutions driving this exponential growth. This snowballing growth of climate mitigation digital innovations might yield disruptive solutions for emissions savings and is optimistic news for tackling the climate crisis.

Date: 2024-06-06
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:92sp3

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/92sp3

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