For telcos, green digitalization must start at home

Omdia view

Summary

On March 19, major European telecom operators and suppliers joined the European Green Digital Coalition, which aims to promote digital technologies to improve the energy efficiency of sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture, and construction. 5G is considered a key enabler of such digitalization through remote monitoring, telemedicine, and smart city congestion reduction. However, there are concerns that 5G could lead to an increase in the telecom sector’s energy consumption. Omdia’s research suggests that operators have several options to keep their electricity usage under control as 5G traffic starts to grow, including retiring legacy technologies and optimizing energy usage through better network management.

Major communications service providers (CSPs) commit to the European Green Digital Coalition

Digital Day is an EU event that aims to promote the “digitalization” of EU economies and societies. Initiatives resulting from previous Digital Days include the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), and 5G cross-border corridors for connected and automated mobility.

The 2021 event took place online on March 19. Member states were asked to sign commitments on data, startups, and a green and digital transformation of the EU. CEOs from the ICT sector were also invited to sign a declaration committing to a greener digital future. In total, 26 CEOs of companies operating in the EU signed up to the European Green Digital Coalition.

The coalition members have committed to

• Invest in the development and deployment of digital technologies and services that are more energy and material efficient
• Collaborate with other organizations to better measure the net impact of digital technologies on the environment
• Cocreate guidelines for the green, digital transformation of other sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture, and construction

Signatory companies from the telecom sector include A1 Telekom Austria, Deutsche Telekom, DNA (Telenor’s Finnish subsidiary), Liberty Global, NOS, Orange, Proximus, TDC, Telefónica, Telia, and Vodafone. Omdia noted the absence of Italian incumbent operator TIM from this list. From the network infrastructure side, signatories include Ericsson and Nokia, Europe’s main suppliers.

The EU believes that digital technologies are crucial for it to meet its goal, set in the European Green Deal, of becoming climate neutral by 2050. The EU has proposed a European Climate Law to turn this political commitment into a legal obligation.

The EU estimates that the ICT sector accounts for 5–9% of electricity use and over 2% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The EU believes that, if left unchecked, the ICT footprint could increase to 14% of global GHG emissions by 2040.

However, the EU also estimates that the use of digital technologies across other sectors could reduce emissions by up to 15%. It can also lead to better policymaking through the use of AI and supercomputing to improve analysis and decision-making.

The circular electronics initiative involves improving rules to make electronic devices such as smartphones last longer and make them easier to repair and recycle. The EU estimates that extending the lifetime of all smartphones in the EU by one year would save 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030, the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road.

Another EU Green Deal initiative is to make data centers and ICT infrastructure climate-neutral by 2030. They are expected to achieve this by becoming more energy efficient and using more renewable energy sources. According to a study of European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) members, over half of their energy supply already came from renewable sources in 2019.

Mobile network modernization is key to improving the telecom industry’s energy efficiency

Telecom operators have a major role to play in enabling other sectors’ energy consumption reduction. Examples include using 5G-connected unmanned aerial vehicles to perform remote plant inspections, supporting remote medicine (avoiding unnecessary journeys), and enabling smart cities (reducing congestion, etc.).

Telecom operators themselves are responsible for around 20% of the ICT industry’s electricity consumption. Data center operators consume more electricity than mobile and fixed operators combined, while the operation of user devices (PCs, smartphones, etc.) consumes more still.

Operators have begun rolling out 5G, so there have been concerns that their electricity consumption would begin to rise dramatically, undoing their efforts to reach carbon neutrality. However, as explored in Omdia’s recent report, Telecom Energy Efficiency: Capping Electricity Usage Through Mobile Network Modernization, retiring legacy technologies, adopting Single RAN, using small cells, and optimizing energy usage through better network management could lead to RAN energy consumption being maintained at pre-5G levels or even reduced.

Omdia’s findings are supported by a recent Nokia announcement (2021) that improved sleep mode software and system-on-chip (SoC) designs would enable it to halve the average power consumption of its AirScale 5G mMIMO base station by 2023. Nokia notes in the press release:

There are several energy-saving features at the radio base station and network levels, such as 5G power-saving features, small cell deployments and new 5G architecture and protocols, which can be combined to significantly improve the energy efficiency of wireless networks.

Reducing energy consumption in the RAN as the industry moves toward 5G is by no means a foregone conclusion, but neither is the inexorable increase that some have predicted.

Appendix

Further reading

“Nokia to halve 5G base station power consumption by 2023,” Nokia, https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2021/03/17/nokia-to-halve-5g-base-station-power-consumption-by-2023/

Telecom Energy Efficiency: Capping Electricity Usage Through Mobile Network Modernization (March 2021)

Author

James Crawshaw, Principal Analyst, Service Provider Operations & IT

[email protected]