Sustainable digitalization and digital sufficiency

Digital technology is primarily a tool: on the path to net zero, it has the potential to promote resource and energy efficiency as well as the circular economy, thus contributing to a CO2-neutral future. Currently, however, it is causing ever more emissions and consuming more energy and resources:

Efficiency improvements through digitalization and technological innovations often do not lead to reduced environmental impact when viewed holistically and in the long term. Sometimes, they even increase it (rebound and induction effects): technological savings in energy or time are offset by additional consumption. An example is mobile devices like smartphones. They allow consumers to shop anytime and anywhere. Since mobile shopping creates new opportunities – for example, in the middle of the night or while waiting at a bus stop – this is called an induction effect: the technology enables additional consumption that would not have occurred otherwise.

Making Technology Part of the Solution – Not the Problem

To achieve climate goals and design digital technologies so that they work for the planet instead of against it, they need to become not just more efficient (“better”) and consistent (“different”) but also sufficient (“as much as necessary, as little as possible”).

“The prevailing strategy of using digital technologies to improve efficiency must be guided by an overarching strategy of sufficiency, aimed at achieving satisfaction of needs (‘enough’) rather than ongoing increase (‘more’).“

Digital sufficiency aims to lower the absolute level of resource and energy consumption or emissions through or with digital technology and asks the question: How can we use digital technologies to enable a good life for all within planetary boundaries?

Digital sufficiency includes four dimensions:

  • Software sufficiency: energy-efficient and data-sparing software;
  • Hardware sufficiency: fewer devices that are longer-lasting, repairable, and upgradeable;
  • Usage sufficiency: using digital technologies to save energy and resources or to promote sufficient practices;
  • Economic sufficiency: enabling the transition to a post-growth economy with digital technologies (e.g., reduced working hours, circular economy).

Prototypes for a More Sustainable Future

But how can more digital projects and technologies specifically help reduce Switzerland’s ecological footprint? We don’t have the final answer. What we do offer is a proven, methodically structured funding program that demonstrably helps interdisciplinary teams develop human-centered, collaborative technological solutions to complex societal problems: the Prototype Fund.

New digital solutions must already address potential negative effects during the development process. This is the only way to ensure that technology successfully contributes to decarbonization. With the Prototype Fund, we support projects at exactly this early development phase – and we want to embed sustainability and sufficiency approaches even more strongly into the tech community and our program structure.

We recognize that tackling the global multi-crisis requires more systemic solutions – technological progress that does not exceed planetary boundaries and endanger our livelihoods but operates within them. We need to move away from the narrative of omnipotent tech geniuses and hype technologies that solve all our problems and toward holistic, collaborative bottom-up solutions. Due to its unique funding structure, the Prototype Fund has great potential to support precisely this transformation. We want to leverage this potential together with you.

What We Fund

You can still submit Open Source software, hardware, or other projects. We explicitly encourage you to apply with projects that promote sustainable digitalization and digital sufficiency by other means. In case of doubt: even if code or hardware development plays a minor role in your project idea, you should still give it a try.

We provide space for experiments and prototypes that test sustainable and sufficient concepts in practice and have the potential to scale – from digital minimalism to smart resource use. Through your project ideas, we will continue to learn what sufficiency and sustainability can mean in the digital context.

Your project should relate to digital technology in one of the following two ways:

  1. Reducing technology as a problem: The project should encourage a more conscious use of digital technology (hardware and/or software) and contribute to an absolute reduction in energy/resource consumption or emissions in IT.
    • Examples:
      • How can the increasing consumption of digital products and services in Switzerland be limited?
      • How can digital products, services, or platforms be designed so that operators have incentives to reduce absolute resource consumption?
  2. Technology as part of the solution: The project should use digital technology (hardware and/or software) to contribute to an absolute reduction in energy/resource consumption or emissions in other sectors (e.g., mobility, buildings, nutrition).
    • Examples:
      • How can digital products, services, or platforms help reduce the energy consumption and emissions of mobility?
      • How can digital products, services, or platforms contribute to a shift toward more sustainable diets?

If you are unsure whether your idea fits our focus theme, feel free to contact us via email.

For inspiration, here are a few examples of existing and fictional projects. If you know of others, let us know!

  • Software: Unified design standards, ad blockers, Open Source libraries, Open Data or shared data pools (e.g., mobility data) as infrastructure or for synergy use; tools that optimize code and software processes to minimize energy consumption (e.g., UPS Orion); search engines like Ecosia, which use revenue for reforestation.
  • Hardware: Framework, Fairphone, Open (Source) Hardware; virtualization to use hardware more efficiently or avoid its purchase.
  • Usage: Sharing platforms like Too Good To Go; tools that raise awareness (e.g., a plugin that visualizes energy consumption from browsing); technology-supported energy and resource optimization for buildings or energy management platforms for households.

The application phase runs from January 23 to March 20, 2025. Visit our Info- & Networking-Event to learn more about the theme and connect with potential collaborators. To stay updated, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Mastodon or LinkedIn. Together, we’ll make digital innovation in Switzerland more sustainable. We look forward to your ideas and solutions!