Mobile operators globally recorded a 8% drop in operational carbon emissions from 2019 to 2023 despite growth in connections and data traffic, But while that trend is set to continue, more needs to be done – especially in developing countries, and even more so within supply chains globally – to keep the global mobile sector’s net-zero goals on track, according to a new GSMA report.
Preliminary 2024 data from the GSMA’s fifth annual Mobile Net Zero report – launched Wednesday at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Shanghai – found that mobile operators may have cut GHG emissions another 4.5% for that year.
Regionally, Europe has made the most progress with a 56% reduction in GHG emissions between 2019 and 2023, followed by North America (44%), and Latin America (36%).
Operators in Sub-Saharan Africa reduced their emissions by 25%, led by large reductions in Scope 2 emissions from MTN and Safaricom. However, Scope 1 emissions from the region increased by more than 60% between 2019 and 2023, driven by increased use of diesel generators, the report said.
Meanwhile, emissions from operators in the MENA region fell 13%, while those from the Asia Pacific region decreased 5%, although Japan’s four operators reduced their combined emissions by 40%, offsetting large increases in other parts of the region.
While Greater China recorded a 7% rise in emissions from 2019 to 2023, preliminary data for 2024 shows the region is on track for its first decrease at 4%, alongside a more than quadrupling of renewable energy use. (Note: for the GSMA report, Greater China includes operators in Taiwan and Hong Kong.)
Much of the reductions are being driven by improvements in network energy efficiency and transitions to clean energy, including solar and battery storage. The report found 37% of electricity used by operators that disclosed data to CDP came from renewables in 2023, up from 13% in 2019, which in itself cut 16 million tonnes of emissions.
But while the findings are encouraging in the sense that the mobile sector has been reducing emissions since 2019 while overall global emissions have grown 4% in that time, it’s not enough to reach the GSMA’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
According to the report, hitting that target means cutting emissions by at least 7.5% per year until 2030 – more than twice the average annual rate achieved so far.
Supply chains and AI data centres
One key issue is that operator emissions are only part of the problem. Scope 3 emissions – which come mostly from supply chains and manufacturing – account for more than two-thirds of the industry’s total carbon footprint. It’s also the hardest category of emissions to measure accurately, although the report says transparency is improving.
This is a major challenge for the 81 mobile operators that have set or committed to near-term science-based targets (SBTs) under the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) as of April 2025, since those targets require reductions across full value chain emissions, the report said.
“Emissions are trending in the right direction, but the pace of progress must now double,” said Steven Moore, head of climate action at the GSMA in a statement.
Moore said that to accelerate and sustain progress, the mobile sector needs better access to renewables, more policy certainty, and stronger collaboration across the ecosystem.
“Supply chain emissions, which make up most of our industry’s footprint, must also be addressed – and climate transition plans will play an increasingly important role in navigating what comes next,” he said.
While the rise in demand for AI-capable data centres has raised concerns about energy usage and carbon footprints, the GSMA report said the impact of AI on mobile network usage would be relatively limited “within the context of other more significant drivers of data traffic and connections such as streaming video, IoT and extended reality.”
The GSMA report noted that AI and machine learning applications “could help to improve the energy efficiency of network operations.”
A report issued earlier this month from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) found that electricity consumption by data centres increased by 12% annually from 2017 to 2023, four times faster than global electricity growth. That’s being increasingly driven by demand for AI, with four big-name AI-focused companies seeing their operational Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions increase 150% on average since 2020.
The 164 digital companies that reported electricity consumption for the report accounted for 2.1% of global electricity use at 581 terawatt-hours (TWh), with ten companies responsible for half of that total.
