Emerging trends in ICT applications and environmental sustainability

Information and communication technology (ICT) has greatly impacted how humans live and interact with the environment. This work reviews the various ways in which ICT has influenced sustainability; it cuts across the role of ICT in establishing a low-carbon society, Green ICT and energy, cloud computing and virtualisation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT), and most recently, the drive towards establishing Smart 'Cities', as they fit within the concept of the sustainability principles. Additionally, we reviewed the current and emerging sustainability frameworks shaping innovation in this area, models such as the lifecycle, enabling, structural impact (LES) model, and other instrumental models to the green concepts paradigm and its application of emerging technology, including AI and 5G technologies. Finally, the consensus is that the impact of ICT on environmental sustainability can be either positive or negative depending on the principles guiding its deployment.