Professor Horvath's research reveals the potential environmental benefits of wireless technologies in news delivery and business travel

The June 1 paper of Professor Arpad Horvath and Ph.D. student Michael Toffel, "Environmental implications of wireless technologies: News delivery and business meetings," published in Environmental Science & Technology, explores the potential energy and air pollution benefits of wireless technologies in two activities with a high potential for information technology penetration, reading the daily news and conducting business meetings. The research, using life-cycle and supply chain assessment of all the industrial processes and services included, shows that reading newspaper (New York Times) content on a personal digital assistant (PDA) versus in printed form typically releases 32-140 times less carbon dioxide, several orders of magnitude less nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, and uses 26-67 times less water. Forgoing a business trip for teleconferencing could result in 1-3 orders of magnitude less air emissions.


This research was also highlighted in the June 12 edition of Science News: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040612/fob7.asp

The full paper is accessible at
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/esthag/2004/38/i11/pdf/es035035o.pdf

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