Telecoms has US$1.2 trillion carbon abatement potential – report
A new report by Insight Research claims that the telecommunications industry has the potential to abate as much as US$1.2 trillion worth in carbon emissions in the next five years by simply repackaging existing services into “green communications.”
The report, “Communicating Green: Telecommunications Value in Promoting Environmental Improvement, 2008-2013,” evaluated the use of existing telecommunications technologies and services applied to five key domains: transportation demand management to improve gasoline consumption; demand side management of electrical power, machine-to-machine communications to improve operational efficiencies; the recycling of electronic devices; and regulatory compliance and audits. To impact the environment positively in each of the domains, specific improvements were quantified in nine solution areas: mobile workforce; field services and personnel; data center operations; telecommuting; facilities/building management; environmental audit and compliance systems; branch and remote office capabilities; environmentally located data centers; and ICT equipment recycling.
“This report is not so much about telecommunications companies being good corporate citizens, as it is about telecommunications carriers doing what they do best – which is providing a highly reliable service in an area where people want to move data around,” said Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research. “The thrust of the study is that there is a multi-million dollar opportunity hanging out there for telecommunications carriers worldwide to provide various services at individuals, that home owners can use, that small business can use and large enterprises can use to lessen their environmental footprint.”
According to Rosenberg, the value of the potential market was derived by calculating the total volume of potential carbon emissions eliminated through the use of telecommunications services and then multiplying that number with the current price of carbon on the world’s carbon trading floors.
“Once the US signs the Kyoto Protocol, those trading floors in the US, which currently consists of mostly voluntary trades, will explode,” he said. “Europe had US$8 billion in carbon trades last year on a much smaller economic base than we have. That number is going to go through the roof in the US.”
Related posts:
- Telstra's Sol says carbon abatement is good for profits
- China Mobile makes environmental pledge in first CSR report
- Study confirms green data centre market potential
- BetterWorld Telecom claims carbon neutral certification
- Internode goes carbon-neutral
Category: Applications, Climate change, Green corporations, Mobile
Follow us...
If you enjoyed this article, connect with us to receive more just like it.
This is a great list of activities but we are all from big companies and big companies can do lots of things and things with big numbers attached – but how do we know if they are sufficient ? The challenge that we should be setting ourselves as corporations is to be able to put our activities and targets within the context of solving the problem. So for example if every company followed HP’s great example and took back that much waste (as a proportion of the material they produce) would we have a sustainable approach to landfills ?
BT has tried to do this with our new Climate Stabilization Intensity (CSI) target for emissions reduction by setting a target for reductions that, if all corporations were to set similar targets, would put us on the road that reflects the most recent scientific consensus for what is required to achieve stabilization. http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=f1df4b4f-ca46-4dee-849a-66e447b53e68
Hi Kevin, I have been following BT’s environmental performance since I started this site back at the end of 2007 – in fact, one of the first interviews for the site was with BT’s Donna Young, who basically give me a climate change 101 lesson to help me get up to speed on the topic – very much appreciated on my part.
I think BT is probably one of the leaders in understanding the business requirements of operating in the new carbon-awared economy and is well on its way to putting the necessary systems (both technical and operational) in place to achieve results.
The biggest problem is that there are still (many) carriers out there who have no idea of the issues of climate change, who have not gone through what I loosely define as the six stages of implementing a successful climate change strategy – audit (seeing what their environmental footprint is), analyze (looking at their carbon intensity), identify (find where they can improve), deploy (implement solutions), monitor (check results of those solutions) and maintain (put in place long term improvement goals).
I believe part of the problem is regulatory, especially here in Asia where customers are less concern on CSR than perhaps more discerning end-users in the US and Europe. The carriers that have progress the most in terms of strategies and initiatives to achieve sustainability all come from markets where the governments have implemented strong directives to reduce overall emissions, i.e. Japan, and most recently Australia, and to some extent China (albeit lacking in a systematic approach and implementation details).
Part of the problem is simply old business practices and lack of senior executive buy-in. It will take some bold decisions by CEOs to launch a business case for implementing climate change policies because carriers today are asked to do so much more with so much less – in terms of financing as well as human resources. So I doubt any middle manager will have the time to put together, nevermind, take the responsibility for, a new business case for a sustainability project.
It’s going to take a full fledge effort, with dedicated human resources, and probably extra workload across all department (in terms of implementation of project initiatives, reporting and so on) to make a company fully carbon-awared – that perhaps is the biggest climate change challenge for today’s carriers, and to a greater extent, the rest of the corporate world.
Then again, don’t they know they can save money by going green?
As the author of the GREEN Communications report, and on behalf of Insight Research Corporation, I want to thank Mr. Chan for pinpointing the main thrust that led to this 17-month long undertaking. That thrust, is that service providers, generally, and carriers, specifically, may enjoy a substantial window of opportunity to capture market share and realize an overall cumulative adjusted growth rate forecast of 35% over the next 5-year period. As is true with all windows of opportunity, they close. Leading to our US$1.2 trillion impact figure, we incorporate over 60,000 variables into the worldwide GREEN Communications Model. We identified 55+ offers that carriers/service providers can provide to end-user market segments including consumers, small office home office, small medium sized businesses, real estate management companies, and enterprise customers. Furthermore, we tracked and forecasted the value of carbon credits (1 metric ton of carbon dioxide = 1 carbon credit). Now the real issue will be if carriers/service providers don’t implement and incorporate GREEN Communications into their market offerings, electric power and other utility holding companies will. A climate change strategy not only provides accrued benefits pertaining to Corporate Social Responsibility (maximizes shareholder, stakeholder, and community value) but the main impetus for Insight Research’s GREEN Communications report readers is that a product sales and marketing roadmap is provided. This approach provides the impetus for decisions starting at the chief executive officer level and supported and promoted by the other c-level executives for the implementation of both an internal and an external climate change strategy. It begs the question and provides the answer all at the same time. Carriers can save money (OPEX reduction) by going GREEN. Carriers can maximize shareholder value. Carriers can increase revenues, market share, improve margins, and enhance and differentiate their brand. The GREEN Communications report is even further segmented down to geographic areas and country economic status. Not many industry sectors possess the reach that carriers do, whether they be in Indonesia, Brazil, United States, UAE, or Spain, Ghana, and Australia. This is BIG. This is REAL.
You may be interested in a project in Ottawa to encourage carbon reduction by providing free triple play and fiber to the home
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/
Bill
Hi Bill, thanks for the info. The concept sounds very interesting.
Look for a proper post on the main page in the next couple of days when I’ve had some time to digest the info..
Hi Tony, I read your article with great interest. I would recommend that you also research the topic on “Floating Car Data” using cellular networks. With today’s cellular network, we are already able to collect mobile phones location positioning in the course of its normal RF network connections activities. By collecting a group of mobile positions along the street – floating data – you can use the data to measure movement on any roadways and provide accurate speed measurements. This results in a real-time traffic congestion information as updated as every 1 minute. This information is then turned into consumer services delivered to the mobile, or into business to business services. You should visit http://www.intellione.com for one example of such solution. The solution provides immediate impact to the environment as it encourages consumer to plan ahead on trips, and reduces gas emission on roads by avoiding congestions. There is now great demand for ITIS companies, Navigations, Mapping companies to draw in this kind of data. The value here is that is real-time and in the hands of consumer, so the translation of positive environment impact will be immediate and direct.