Building a ‘Green Data’ Future: how a human-centric approach to data and nudges can help fight climate change

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a conceptual framework for linking data governance with climate goals, useful for further empirical research.

🏢実務担当者:Offers insights into how user-held data could enable new green services and business models, though implementation details are limited.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests regulatory principles for unlocking green data, relevant for designing data-sharing policies that support climate objectives.

Mark Fenwick is a professor of International Business Law, Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. Paulius Jurcys is a senior research fellow at Vilnius University Law Faculty (Vilnius, Lithuania) and a co-founder of Prifina Inc. (San Francisco, USA). A defining feature of digital transformation is the sensorization of everything and the concomitant creation of vast amounts of data covering every aspect of social and economic life. It is unfortunate that the value of this vast data pool has not been fully leveraged in tackling climate change and other environmental challenges facing humanity. This article suggests that this failure is a product of the closed and siloed character of the modern data ecosystem in which some stakeholders deem the collected data as their proprietary asset and have little incentive to share it with those interested in creating new value from such data, including, for example, by developing innovative technologies relevant for tackling climate change. This article argues that a user-held data model, in which data are reconceptualized as the property of the users who generate it, might better unlock or activate the ‘green value’ of these data and, by doing so, facilitate the creation of innovative green technologies. This paper focuses on three settings where a user-centric approach to data might usefully contribute to achieving these environmental goals, namely, facilitating green lifestyles, fostering sustainability in green cities and building green innovation ecosystems. Based on the foregoing discussion, this article concludes by identifying some normative principles that might be useful to guide regulatory interventions in this context. In November 2022, the global population surpassed 8 billion people.1 The rapid growth of the human species is a testament to the progress that humanity has achieved in science, technology and healthcare. Still, the fate of humanity depends on whether and how quickly we are able to solve the challenges of climate change and its effects. An ongoing and pressing issue for the global community of regulators and other policymakers is indeed how to collectively address the climate change and the carbon problem issues we currently face. What tools should be put in place to ensure we meet our carbon reduction goals? What technologies, regulations and processes are needed to help us immediately contain the CO2 emissions and reach net zero carbon emission targets? One of the major causes of climate change is human activity and, more specifically, the use of fossil fuels that cause the emission of carbon dioxide. CO2 results from driving cars, generating electricity, building infrastructure and enjoying what we consider a better quality of life. One way of framing the task that lies ahead of us with regard to decarbonization is how to enable economic growth without creating harmful environmental impacts. Investments in green and sustainable technologies reached an all-time high in 2021.2 In reality, however, paring down CO2 emissions has become difficult because of the high number of global stakeholders and conflicting interests. CO2 emission has been especially challenging in the most polluting industries (ie steel manufacturing, construction, mobility and agriculture). Therefore, new approaches are being developed to address the carbon equation problem.3 One such promising endeavour, for example, revolves around the idea of capturing CO2 that is already in the atmosphere and safely storing it for thousands of years.4 To advance carbon capture technologies, some of the largest technology and consulting companies in Silicon Valley (namely, Stripe, Meta, Alphabet, Google and McKinsey) have launched a 1 billion US dollar fund that aims to provide advance funding for companies working on carbon capture technologies to help build the market for carbon capture.5 Many governments and public and private organizations have adopted various environment, social and governance (ESG) programmes to achieve net zero carbon emission objectives. There are three main elements of such net zero programmes: (i) to measure carbon emissions, (ii) to reduce CO2 emissions as much as possible and (iii) to do everything else that is possible under the given circumstances.6 This said, ESG initiatives on a corporate level have been rather ineffective as differences in data and metrics often make meaningful comparisons difficult.7 The above-mentioned strategies all involve various sets of data that must be harnessed and utilized in achieving the carbon equation. Ironically and disappointingly, the potential ‘green value’ of these data has been largely ignored. Although the amount of data generated by various sensors continues to grow exponentially, only a small amount of such data is used in practice to address the climate change issues. Academic research in IP has mostly focused on the analysis of how existing IP frameworks and different areas of IP contribute to the global efforts to fight climate change. For instance, academics have been exploring role intersection between patent rights and unlocking sustainable/green technologies,8 the right to repair9 or how fashion brands are adopting new recycled materials, anticompetitive implications,10 as well as risks of using misleading terms to define products as environmentally friendly (so-called ‘greenwashing’).11 In the past several years, IP academics and practitioners have increasingly discussed issues related to the relationship between data and IP rights, and most recently, the debate has focused on access to data.12 One of the major obstacles in fighting climate change and reaching ESG goals is that most of the data are locked away behind the walled gardens of device manufacturers and large technology companies.13 Data generated by consumers interacting with apps and using sensorized devices are collected, stored and processed in vast databases of device manufacturers who deem such data as their proprietary asset and have no incentive to share it with the owners of sensorized devices nor with third parties who might be interested in creating new value (applications and services) with such data.14 In this article, we proceed from the observation that a lot of ‘green data’ are captured by a wide variety of sensors and that the sensorization of everything is one of the defining features of digital transformation. Such sensors are embedded in industrial machinery, smart internet of things (IoT) devices used by consumers and businesses and personal sensors that individuals interact with in every aspect of their daily lives (eg wearable fitness devices or IoT devices at home). The trend of sensorization and the quantity and quality of data generated will continue to increase exponentially. Finding a bit way to leverage the value of such data is a defining challenge of our age. We argue that one of the key aspects of building a more sustainable future and combating climate change is to unlock the green value of these data. In Section 2, we provide some background context to our argument, namely, the sensorization of everything, the concept of unlocking the green value of data and a user-held data model, which we suggest represents a better way of leveraging such unlocked value. In Section 3, we explore the potential of the user-held data model and possible applications in the context of smart cities and agriculture, empower consumers to make ‘greener’ choices in their daily lives and facilitate the ‘green data economy’. In Section 4, we conclude by identifying some regulatory principles for unlocking green data on a global scale and activating such data to meet carbon equation objectives. The main argument is that more green data need to be unlocked and activated to reach the carbon equation expeditiously. Over the past decade, cloud computing, Big Data and data analytics technologies have been at the heart of innovations that permeate all sectors of the economy. Data have become a defining feature of the contemporary world, ie sensor-equipped devices and artificial intelligence (AI) applications built on top of such sensor-generated data open new opportunities that could also help alleviate the effects of climate change. The trend of sensorization, collection of data and development of AI solutions happens in all sectors of the economy (mobility, real estate, construction, agriculture, health, energy, etc). In this section, we argue that the key aspect of building a more sustainable future is to unlock the green value of sensor-generated data. Here, we introduce the so-called ‘user-held data’ model that is based on a human-centric approach to data and the idea that user-generated data should belong to users.15 We focus on explaining the technical architecture behind the user-held data model and the innovation breakthrough that will happen in an open data ecosystem where everyone can their data in their personal data cloud and where data are private by are every aspect of our daily This trend at the largest global of the which place in in companies their innovations in the of and In this a that personal user-generated data and built on top of such data (eg AI tools and AI are The sensorized data ecosystem can be three or sensors are being all possible daily to measure the of devices and as well as various human are in the of and the of and digital in various and For instance, a is with sensors and that measure more data (eg a is the and etc). and devices have a embedded in the device and are by an that a of data and such data are by the of the device and to the of the where the data are processed and the results are to the of the data are utilized in various by companies that are to solve For instance, in are companies that are developing digital to businesses in technical facilitating research and development or of There are also companies that build various AI tools to or tools that can be in and daily that the trend

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpad031first seen 2026-08-02 17:19:15