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The relation between digitalization and environmental sustainability is ambiguous. There is potential of various digital technologies to slow down the transgression of planetary boundaries. Yet resource and energy demand for digital hardware production and use of data-intensive applications is of substantial size. The world over, there is no comprehensive regulation that addresses opportunities and risks of digital technology for sustainability. In this perspective article, we call for a Digital Green Deal that includes strong, cross-sectoral green digitalization policies on all levels of governance. We argue that a Digital Green Deal should first and foremost aim at greater policy coherence: Current digital policy initiatives should include measures that service environmental goals, and environmental policies must address risks and advance opportunities of digital technologies to spur sustainability transformations., Environmental Science & Policy, 147, ISSN:1462-9011, ISSN:1873-6416

ICT hold significant potential to increase resource and energy efficiencies and contribute to a circular economy. Yet unresolved is whether the aggregated net effect of ICT overall mitigates or aggravates environmental burdens. While the savings potentials have been explored, drivers that prevent these and possible counter measures have not been researched thoroughly. The concept digital sufficiency constitutes a basis to understand how ICT can become part of the essential environmental transformation. Digital sufficiency consists of four dimensions, each suggesting a set of strategies and policy proposals: (a) hardware sufficiency, which aims for fewer devices needing to be produced and their absolute energy demand being kept to the lowest level possible to perform the desired tasks; (b) software sufficiency, which covers ensuring that data traffic and hardware utilization during application are kept as low as possible; (c) user sufficiency, which strives for users applying digital devices frugally and using ICT in a way that promotes sustainable lifestyles; and (d) economic sufficiency, which aspires to digitalization supporting a transition to an economy characterized not by economic growth as the primary goal but by sufficient production and consumption within planetary boundaries. The policies for hardware and software sufficiency are relatively easily conceivable and executable. Policies for user and economic sufficiency are politically more difficult to implement and relate strongly to policies for environmental transformation in general. This article argues for comprehensive policies for digital sufficiency, which are indispensible if ICT are to play a beneficial role in overall environmental transformation.

The war in Ukraine is changing the political landscape at breakneck speed. How should politics and society react to high energy prices and a precarious dependence on fossil fuels imports? Can modern societies get by with much less energy? Energy sufficiency can play an important role in answering these questions. The contributions in this Special topic explore sufficiency as an interdisciplinary research topic for energy modeling, scenarios, and policy. Der Krieg in der Ukraine verändert die politischen Prämissen in rasender Geschwindigkeit. Wie sollen Politik und Gesellschaft auf hohe Energiekosten und eine fatale Abhängigkeit von fossilen Energieimporten reagieren? Können moderne Gesellschaften mit viel weniger Energie auskommen? Energiesuffizienz kann eine wichtige Rolle bei der Beantwortung dieser Fragen spielen. Die Beiträge in diesem Special topic erforschen Suffizienz als einen interdisziplinären Forschungsgegenstand für Energiemodellierung, -szenarien und -politik.

A transition toward a sustainable way of living is more pressing than ever. One link to achieving this transition is to increase the currently low level of sustainable consumption, and sustainability labeling has been shown to directly influence sustainable purchasing decisions. E-commerce retailers have recently picked up on a means to inform online shoppers about sustainable alternatives by introducing on their websites third-party and private sustainability labels as nudging instruments. However, despite its increasing relevance in practice, research lacks evidence about the availability and credibility of sustainability labeling in online retail. Our study is guided by the question of how online retailers use sustainability labels to communicate information on the sustainability of products to consumers. Our empirical research is based on a large-scale dataset containing sustainability information of nearly 17,000 fashion products of the leading online retailers in Germany Zalando and Otto. The results show that a large number of fashion products are tagged as sustainable, with two-thirds carrying a private label and one-third a third-party verified label. Only 14% of the tagged products, however, present credible third-party verified sustainability labels. This low percentage makes it challenging for consumers to comprehend to what degree a product is sustainable. The wide distribution of private labels indicates that most of the available sustainability information in the selected online shops addresses only single sustainability issues, preventing comparability. Furthermore, label heterogeneity can add to the confusion and uncertainty among consumers. Our practical recommendations support political initiatives that tackle the risk of greenwashing resulting from uncertified and weak sustainability information.