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Inside GSMA’s Green Manifesto – Four Part report

Tony Chan | December 4, 2009 | 0 Comments

GSMA’s recently announced Green Manifesto is a milestone in that it represents the first official pledge by the telecoms industry (albeit primarily mobile) to combat the effects of climate change. Not only does the document set a target for the mobile industry to curb its own emissions, but also offers a systematic (somewhat) analysis of the benefits of using mobile technology (and ICT in general) to stem emissions across other industries.

In a nutshell, the Green Manifesto calls for the mobile industry to reduce its overall carbon intensity from operations – measured as CO2 equivalent emissions per subscriber – by 40% by 2020, compared to 2009 levels. Paired with the projected growth of mobile connections from 4.6 billion to 8 billion by 2020 without adding more emissions by the industry. In other words, the 40% reduction target will effectively allow the mobile industry to continue to add subscribers without adding any more emissions, thus maintaining total emissions at 245Mt CO2e – which is the amount of emission by the industry this year. It also calls for handset and equipment makers to reduce the lifecycle emissions of their products by 40% over the same period.

More importantly perhaps, the Green Manifesto highlights some of the key challenges in coming up with a target for the industry, including the need to come up with a common standard of measurement for environmental performance.

In this four part report, we look at what the Green Manifesto is all about and what it means to the mobile industry – and perhaps the world as a whole.

Part 1 – Measurement & Metrics

Part 2 – Projects and Progress

Part 3 – what mobile can do for the world

Part 4 – what mobile wants from policy makers