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Satellites: A green technology?

Tony Chan | April 22, 2008 | 0 Comments

Satellites are highlighted by the High Tech: Low Carbon report by the EICTA as one of the most efficient networking solutions in terms of reducing carbon emissions.

“With access to sunshine reserves 1 billion times greater than those that reach the earth, space-related technologies are truly disruptive technologies that offer dramatic potential for replacing traditional terrestrial processes with low energy alternatives,” the report said, adding that there is scope for achieving orders of magnitude energy savings by switching to satellite technology to perform terrestrial network infrastructure tasks, particularly in the communications field.

“Broadcasting is a good example of this: all the current terrestrial TV broadcast systems across Europe together consume between 600 and 900 mW and release between 3 and 4.5 million tons of CO2 per annum,” the report pointed out. “Three satellites could provide all of Europe’s TV in HD format and release nearly zero CO2 into the atmosphere in the use phase. They are powered purely by sunlight. Even the uplink requirement is miniscule in comparison – far less than 1% of terrestrial demand. As satellite power and antenna size increase, future satellite systems (eg GEO and LEO) will also be able to provide broadband and mobile cost and performance comparable with terrestrial systems. They will provide a greener ICT network alternative for a wide range of service providers.”

According to the report, even satellite launchers do little impact to the environment – less CO2 than a single transatlantic flight and is only necessary once every 20 years.

In addition to its potential to replace networks, satellites also provide a way to conduct remote monitoring applications, such as earth observation for tracking environmental trends without having to physically conduct field surveys. Combined with sensors on the ground, satellites can also track conditions in hard to reach locations such as the polar regions, war zones, oceans, and enable a host of “smart services” such as data on ground conditions to farmers.