Access to telecommunications services is increasingly viewed as a basic right, and consumers – particularly in the developed world - often take for granted the availability of these services without considering the ramifications.
The amount of energy required to bring us on-demand services, 24 hours a day, is something many would not take the time to consider. However, energy typically represents one of the largest areas of total expenditure for network operators, and efforts to reduce these costs have brought energy efficiency to the forefront of the industry’s lexicon.
While reducing costs is a primary motivation for many, energy efficiency is increasingly being touted as a means of reducing a company’s carbon footprint, and making the industry as a whole ‘greener’. The energy consumption that is required to power constantly available telecommunications networks represents a growing proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, providing operators with a second incentive to increase energy efficiency.
Currently, global communication networks produce around 300m tonnes of carbon emissions per year. This amount is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 50 million cars, and the figure has risen significantly in the past few years due to massive surges in data usage - which corresponds to the shift in global perceptions of telecommunications as a fundamental right. Understandably, this rise shows no signs of slowing, and is projected to continue across the next decade.
Although the notions of energy efficiency and green energy have not yet been adopted as a key priority by the industry, their importance is increasingly being acknowledged, and initiatives and programmes geared towards reducing emissions and saving energy are being launched by many firms and organisations.
One example of this comes in the form of an initiative pioneered by Bell Labs, the research division of Alcatel-Lucent. Entitled Green Touch, the programme brings together a consortium of vendors, academics and operators – among them AT&T, China Mobile and Telefonica - with the aim of creating solutions through technology that will allow global telecommunications infrastructure to become more energy efficient.
The stated goal is staggering: Green Touch has the remit of reducing energy consumption by 1000 times. To make the magnitude of this task clear, Bell Labs President Jeong Kim compares the stated goal to the present fact: a thousand-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to running the world’s communication networks for three years, using the same amount of energy currently required to run them for a single day.
Green Touch acknowledges that creating sustainable networks that reduce energy consumption to such a vast degree will require a radical approach to energy efficiency, and aims to develop new technology that will enable this. Bell Labs is actively encouraging members of the technology and communications community to contribute their expertise to the initiative, with Jeong Kim saying “from time to time we need to make a system level change, and not just make incremental advancements to existing technology. But in order to do this, we need collaboration between engineers and scientists.”
A key challenge for the initiative will be to convince network operators to adopt unproven new technologies, particularly given the current priority of service providers: performance. Already, concerns have been expressed that a network optimised around energy efficiency rather than performance could result in a drop in standards or a rise in costs. Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen has addressed the anxiety over costs, stating “[the new technology] will be affordable, but not so much that this change will happen overnight” – indicating that while the development period for any new technology will likely be long, this will be due in part to a desire for the end product to be a financially viable alternative to current technologies.
Green Touch’s five-year plan appears to be largely based on developing wireless technology that meets energy saving criteria – Bell Labs’ VP of Wireless Research Gee Rittenhouse has claimed that an overhaul in wireless tech could increase energy efficiency by a factor of ten million. While a major sea change in wireless power supplies is still some way off, many firms and operators are already implementing alternate, greener power solutions.
The Indonesian operator PT Hutchison CP Telecommunications, for example, has recently installed over 150 fuel cell systems across Sumatra and Lombok. Fuel cells are used to provide reliable backup power in areas with unreliable power supplies – typically developing countries, where poor quality electrical grids are often compounded by extreme weather conditions and, in the worst cases, natural disasters. They also have the benefit of reducing an operator’s carbon footprint, as they are far cleaner – and quieter – than diesel generators, and reduce the number of batteries required on a telecommunications site.
Solar power is also on the rise, especially in emerging markets which benefit from a sunnier climate and more consistent daylight hours. Although it has previously been typically used as a supplementary source to, for example, grid-based electricity or diesel, improved photovoltaic cells and an effort to reduce base station power consumption have led to the solar becoming a viable primary power source.
The benefits of solar in emerging markets – and particularly remote, rural locations – have come to the fore recently, with Orange and Tenesol winning an award for their innovative base station design which has been deployed in Africa and the Middle East. Tenesol started out in Africa as a creator of off-grid solar solutions for rural locations, and the solution is aimed at overcoming the challenges of terrain, accessibility and climate.
ABI Research has forecast that solar powered renewable energy sites will increase to 40,000 by the end of 2013, with nearly 300,000 more base stations using solar power in conjunction with grid-based electricity.
The benefits of alternative energy are not limited to the environment. The importance of corporate social responsibility has escalated in recent years, with strong green credentials playing an increasingly major part in improving a company’s public image. Surprisingly, the global recession has proved a boon for green initiatives, with telecoms firms adopting environmentally friendly measures as a means of demonstrating to investors that they are taking action that will stand them in good stead in the future.
Despite these advances, it is clear that alternative energy sources and greater energy efficiency are not at the forefront of the industry’s collective consciousness – service provision and reliability still take top priority, even above the cost reductions that green energy can offer. However, awareness continues to spread, and as alternative power sources become more mainstream, emerging markets are leading the way in adopting the new technology - currently, the evidence suggests that emerging markets are set to overtake the developed world in their readiness to adopt alternative energy sources. However, as firms worldwide begin to recognise the importance of sustainable, environmentally sound energy, we can expect the developed world to take heed.
