According to news report, the same rules will be expanded to 75% of rural towers and 33% of urban powers by 2020.

The move is targeted at reducing the country’s reliance on diesel generators, which currently power about 60% of all sites in the country. If enforced, the new regulations will be first in the world to require mobile operators to deploy renewable energy to power its networks.

Telecoms operators will get some support from the government in the form of the Universal Services Obligation fund. The regulations are not specific to onsite renewable energy systems however, and do not exclude renewable power sourced from India’s burgeoning renewable energy sector.

As part of its statement, the DoT estimates that renewable energy generation makes up about 11% of the country’s entire power base.

The methodology has also just been included in the ITU’s standard ITU-T L.1410 ‘Methodology for Environmental Impact Assessment of ICT Goods, Networks and Services.’

The GSMA developed its methodology as part of the Mobile Energy Efficiency (MEE) Network Benchmarking service, launched a year ago at Mobile Asia Congress 2010. As a methodology, the MEE Benchmarking service provides detailed analysis of the relative performance of an operator’s network benchmarked against a dataset from anonymised sources. It also ‘normalises’ the data from any operator to a common layer for like-for-like comparison, and provides high level insights to improve energy efficiency. Participants also get to track their energy efficiency progress and get data to demonstrate their successes.

To leverage the results of the MEE Benchmarking service, the GSMA has launched a new service, MEE Optimisation, which undertakes a detailed bottom-up analysis to identify and assess the inefficiencies of a network, to then provide operators with a cost-benefit analysis of specific solutions that can be considered to improve network energy efficiency.

The MEE Optimisation service develops detailed action plans aimed at reducing operators’ energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. To do this, the GSMA partners with third parties such as equipment vendors to deliver the MEE Optimisation service to operators. The GSMA is currently piloting the first MEE Optimisation project and is in discussions with several members about rolling out the service more widely.

The site, to be located in the city of Hohhot, is expected to cost 12 billion yuan, or US$1.9 billion. The operator has already signed a MoU with the regional government for the project, according to chairman of its board, Wang Jianzhou.

One reason cited by the report in the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, is the region’s abundant wind and coal power supply, which ensures supply for the data centre.

The centre will support the operator’s pending roll out of 4G, or TDD-LTE, services in the coming year. China Mobile has more than 630 million subscribers, making it the largest mobile operator in the world by the number of subscribers.

The deal is worth more than $100 million and includes Emerson’s portfolio of products, including high-efficiency power systems (Trinergy and ASCO); Liebert precision cooling systems and SmartAisle optimisation; SiteScan infrastructure monitoring and management; and fully integrated, factory-tested modular housing systems. The products are complemented by Emerson’s in-house integration expertise, combining solution engineering, end-to-end project management, global supply chain and logistics, and site civil works (via partnerships with Silcar and Greenbox Architecture).

The solution will power a series of facilities that will serve as equipment hubs, operational depots and training facilities for the NBN.

The solution, based on Flexenclosure’s E-Site, will allow Airtel to harness solar and wind energy at the sites to minimise diesel consumption – and yes, CO2 emissions.

According to Flexenclosure, Airtel has been testing its solution in Kenya for the last two years and has achieved demonstrable results, including a substantial reduction in diesel consumption compared to previously 100% diesel powered sites.

In addition to optimised solar and wind generation systems and a bank of batteries to storage energy, E-Site solution also includes sophisticated control system that ensures maximum power is captured from the renewable energy sources and that the use of the battery bank is highly efficient, the company said.

Under the agreement, Ericsson will be responsible for implementation and maintenance services for all the sites.

Simply by shrinking an entire DWDM system into a package smaller than a pack of Kitkats, the DTN-X solution offers efficiency and power gains already. However, the fact that the system integrates the optical switching, and integrates wavelengths, means that it also offers significant efficiency gains because it eliminates fibre connections, according to Michael Capuano, vice president, Corporate Marketing at Infinera.

The company went as far as to ask two university professors to model a network in North America built with the DTN-X platform and one built using the company’s competitor equipment.

“What they found is that the number of modules and cards decreased by 69%, that’s a step function decrease in the number of modules. If you think about it, our competitors put out 100G per module while we put up 500G, so it’s kind of intuitive. The next thing is, every one of those modules and cards have to have one, or two, fibre connections – we decrease the number of fibre patches by 60% – that’s maintenance, tracking, sending people out to make those connections,” said Capuano.

“Then we look at the number of chassis – we decrease the number of chassis by 67% – every chassis needs to be configured, managed, powered and maintain. To be fair, our competitors have a half rack chassis, we have a full rack chassis, but even if you look at space, the sheer number of chassis is meaning because of the management – we still decrease the number of racks by 33%.”

Even with some margin of error, the calculation yields significant efficiency gains with the DTN-X, he continued.

“In terms of power, the DTN-X platform delivers the same amount of capacity, at 50% of the power – another big issue especially as we see everything moving into the cloud.”

The sugarcane used is this plant plastic is a rapidly renewable agricultural crop and replaces nearly a third of the fossil fuels traditionally used in this accessory packaging with material made from plants.

The adoption of the new plastic is part of AT&T’s broader overall commitment to minimize its environmental impact. In March of 2010 the company announced its plans to slim down their accessory packaging; in 2010 and 2011, the company eliminated the use of over 500 tons of paper and plastic in that packaging.

The new packaging is expected to hit AT&T stores by 2 October 2011.

“As a company we are committed to minimizing our own environmental impact, and we see the introduction of this plant-based plastic as an important step in the right direction,” said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president for devices, AT&T. “We are excited to be the first U.S. telecom company to use this plastic in our packaging and we hope other companies will join us in finding ways to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We are actively working with our accessory suppliers to incorporate both less packaging and more sustainable plastic and paper.”

The first ever ITU Green Standards Week, head in early September, held a particular emphasis on a globalised methodology for assessing the environmental impact of ICTs globally.

“ITU has been working with industry and government members aiming to achieve agreement on an internationally recognized set of methodologies to be approved by the end of the year. Included is a methodology which ICT companies can use to measure their own carbon footprint, as well as a way to estimate the considerable savings in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy that can be achieved in other sectors through the use of ICTs,” ITU said. “A single global methodology will give credibility to the various claims currently being made about the benefits of ICTs in addressing climate change and energy issues.”

Other topics discussed at the event include reducing e-waste and the use of submarine cables for climate change monitoring and disaster warning.

Green Standards Week, jointly organized by ITU and the Italian Ministry for Economic Development, and hosted by Telecom Italia, took place in Rome 5 to 9 September 2011. The event was also supported by Huawei, Research In Motion, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, VRM Italy and Microsoft. The goal was to raise awareness on the role of ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and in particular how standards can help to achieve this.

The body of the talks comprised three workshops: Methodologies for Environmental Impact Assessment of ICT, jointly organized with the European Commission; and Moving to a Green Economy through ICT Standards, jointly organized with Telecom Italia. The third workshop, Submarine Cables for Ocean/Climate Monitoring and Disaster Warning: Science, Engineering, Business and Law was organized with WMO and UNESCO and proposed the use of submarine communication cables for ocean and climate monitoring and disaster warning. For more information, see ITU’s Technology Watch report. Workshop participants called on ITU, UNESCO and WMO to establish and coordinate a joint task force composed of world renowned experts from science, engineering, business and law to intensify study on the use of submarine networks and to explore engineering and business potential in this realm.

According to the report, NBN Co., the company rolling out the NBN, is working closely with its supplier of wireless technologies, Ericsson, on energy efficient sites, including a trial of solar power for at least one site. NBN will also deploy “cluster base stations” to further drive efficiency.

While Ericsson did not clarify what “cluster base stations” are, it sounds very similar to the baseband hotel concept described by Nokia Siemens Networks’s Asia Head of technology, Mike Murphy. The idea is to have all the processing of a mobile network centralised in cluster locations in order to maximise scale and efficiency. The concept also reduces trips sites since any upgrade and maintenance can be taken care of with a few trips, instead of thousands of trips in previous network sites.

“We are deploying in a group, in one particular area, between 20 and 60 base stations at the one time to leverage off efficiencies of workforce and minimising the deployment of vehicles, crane, etc, so there’ll be huge reductions in travel and deployment of equipment,” NBN Co wireless project director Joe Prelc told CommsDay.

As SAIC deploys Smart Grid as a Service (SGS) for utility customers, this agreement will enable the companies to offer complete system solutions to address all aspects of the Grid, from Smart Meter/AMI to Distribution Automation and risk mitigation applications.

SAIC sounds a lot of a system integrator that is focusing on smart grids, and delivers end-to-end solutions that includes systems engineering, IT, communications, data analystics, and cybersecurity to power utilities. The adoption of On-Ramp’s technology will allow SAIC to tap into the growing number of endpoints supporting the ULP, as well as leverage that wireless technology that is costs a “fraction” of competing systems, the companies said.

“The ability to remotely monitor devices across large geographic areas and challenging radio environments is a key requirement within the Smart Grid,” said Mark Fronmuller, SAIC’s Energy IT and Smart Grid operations manager. “Our combined offering will help address coverage and capacity challenges that are common with Smart Grid installations.”

“Joining forces with SAIC and tapping into its world class capabilities reinforces On-Ramp’s strategy to build a strong ecosystem of industry leaders, capable of delivering complete solutions based on ULP technology,” said Joaquin Silva, President and CEO of On-Ramp.