The trouble with green telecoms…

Before I go on and lament the state of green telecoms adoption, and why the telecoms and ICT industries need to step up to the plate when it comes to the fight against climate change, I’d like to clarify that I support fully the development and deployment of green telecoms and green IT.

As Ericsson’s VP of sustainability and corporate responsibility Elaine Weidman-Grunewald stated in her presentation at the Green Telecom session at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it is high time the world shifted its investments in 20th Century high carbon infrastructures to the low carbon technologies of the 21st Century. Sure, we still need roads and airports, but there needs to be more consideration for alternatives, such as visual communications that the ICT Industry can provide.

And yes, there should have been some mention of ICT at COP15, although in my view, it was probably more important for world leaders to come up with a consensus on carbon reduction – which they did not do, but which if they did, would have inevitably called for the use of ICT as reduction measures.

While I do understand the ICT industry’s frustration in being left out (in the cold) for such an important global decision making process, I maintain my reservations on the ICT’s lobby for government mandates to use ICT to reduce carbon. ICT is, after all, a tool and not an ends by itself. Even if governments mandate the use of ICT, say a theoretical policy like ‘each department needs to have broadband access and use video conferencing for meetings as much as possible,’ there is absolutely no guarantee that departments and their users will generate less carbon, or impact the environment less – just look at the adoption of printers and their impact on the use of paper for example.

Yes, it will be a great policy for equipment vendors and service providers, but does it help the end goal of reducing emissions and saving our planet?

While equipment vendors and service providers are busy promoting their green telecom, green IT and green application services, they haven’t really been living up to their own words when it comes to adopting low carbon technologies. So while they are lobbying governments to adopt green solutions and technologies, the majority of telecoms investments are still based on today’s business priorities, rather than tomorrow’s environmental benefits.

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For example, the panel on Green Telecoms at MWC focused on the adoption of renewable energy base stations. Yes, the panelists say, these base stations can certainly reduce, and in some cases, eliminate emissions with the use of solar or wind power generation. However, these types of solutions are applicable within the telco’s network only if they can reduce the cost of operating the cell site.

In other words, even though they recognised that alternative energy solutions can reduce the emissions of their networks, those solutions are only applicable in a miniscule number of cell sites – those in environments where using renewable energy can save them money. And the situation is even getting worse due to the economic downturn last year. According to one executive, operators who use to be happy to deploy such solutions with a ROI period of 5-6 years, are now demanding a ROI period of 1-2 years. The result is a dramatic reduction in the number of sites that these solutions are applicable.

The same can probably be said for the adoption of new, more energy efficient networking equipment, or even obvious low carbon solutions such as telepresence. To date, only a small percentage of global telcos actually leverage the very same technologies that they are selling. Of all the major global telcos, you get names like AT&T, BT, Cable & Wireless, and Orange Business, who have put in place telepresence networks, but while they have installed rooms in key locations, it’s far from ubiquitous, even within their own internal operations.

There are notable exceptions of telcos committing investment to reduce their emissions, such as BT’s commitment to build wind farms around the UK to generate 50% of the power require for their facilities there, or AT&T’s purchase of hybrid vehicles for its fleet in the US, not to mention the countless data centre consolidation and optimisation projects across the industry.

It’s perfectly understandable that in today’s business environment, it’s simply not viable to spend money on ‘green’ projects just for the sake of being ‘green.’ But that is perhaps what the technology sector is asking of the rest of the world. After all, how many ICT applications and technologies out there can guarantee an ROI of under 2 years – because that is exactly how some operators are evaluating going green.

If the telecoms industry wants the rest of the world to adopt their solutions, perhaps it needs to start by adopting those solutions themselves.

HAITI TRAGEDY
Ironically, one of the most encouraging developments in the adoption of green telecoms comes from one of the most tragic events of the last year – the Haiti earthquake. The devastation caused by the earthquake will serve as a foundation for Haitian operator, Digicel, to rebuild its network from the ground up, according to Tom Bryant, vice president at Digicel.

Digicel will now leverage help from the rest of the industry to build “what we think will be the most sophisticated, the most unique, mobile network as we rebuild Haiti. The operator intends to take “the different initiatives, the different ideas, to ensure base station continuity, to keep them online, under all circumstances,” in its reconstruction of the network. One technology that Bryant highlighted was hydrogen fuel cells for cell sites, “which was a great idea” before the earthquake, but is “a superb idea to us today.”

“A year from now, if the association invites us back to give a presentation, we’ll tell you a story where we took the most innovative, the most unique, the newest things, the things that aren’t on any drawing board tonight, but will be in the months ahead. Digicel, with the guidance of the GSMA, are going to go ahead and implement,” Bryant said. “We are going to try quite literally every single combination of events, every single thing we can come up with, to make sure that the network can stay up and alive.”

I for one can’t wait to hear Digicel’s story. It’s just pretty sad that it has to take such a tragedy for someone in the industry to really go out on a limb and try new technologies, explore new solutions.

Related posts:

1. Wipro to ‘green’ the development of ‘green’ telecoms products
2. The biggest challenge for green telecoms – exponential traffic growth
3. 2007 Review: the year IT and telecoms woke up to climate change
4. We know telecoms, we know energy – NSN
5. Telecoms in the age of US$100 oil

Tags: AT&T, BT, carbon reduction, Climate change, CO2 emissions, Conferencing, Data centres, energy efficiency

Category: Applications, Conferencing, Featured articles, Green ICT, Mobile, Networks