For more than 10 years, Ericsson has employed life cycle assessments (LCAs) to determine the total environmental impact associated with its products and services. Jens Malmodin, senior research engineer at Ericsson Research, has worked with sustainability issues such as LCAs, for more than a decade. He says the scope of an LCA is "cradle to grave;" that is, for mobile communication it covers every phase of a system's life, including raw material extraction, production, supplier activities, transportation, terminals, radio base station (RBS) site materials, operator and office activities, and end-of-life treatment.
Malmodin says: "We at Ericsson base our statements about environmental impact on scientific methods. Recently, we have noticed a growing demand from operators for help from us in calculating the environmental footprint of their operation, so LCAs are becoming increasingly important."
Ericsson conducted its first LCA for RBSs in 1994 and 1995, and has later expanded this work to include mobile phones and core network equipment. Early on, Ericsson chose to use CO2 and CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions as preferred environmental indicators. Whereas CO2 refers to direct CO2 emissions, the CO2e figures include gases such as methane, nitrous oxides, halocarbons and other emissions/effects.
Ericsson's LCAs show that the most important environmental parameter is energy consumption, during both the manufacture and operation of mobile communications equipment.
According to Ericsson's LCAs, one new GSM subscription (2006) contributes about 24kg of CO2 per year on average, which is comparable to driving an average gasoline--powered car for a little more than one hour on a motorway.
By combining the results of several other studies, Ericsson has analyzed the CO2 emissions of the entire information and communications technology industry (ICT). These results show that the ICT sector was responsible for only about 2 percent of global CO2 emissions in 2006, with about one-tenth of ICT sector emissions caused by mobile telecommunication.
Over the past few years, Ericsson has initiated several projects meant to reduce the energy consumption of the company's product portfolio. The Ericsson Tower Tube, for example, is a new concept for building sites that have less impact on the environment. Similarly, Ericsson's new GSM BTS Power Savings feature cuts energy consumption by disabling transmitters during low-traffic hours.
Other R&D activities at Ericsson have further contributed to the reduction of energy consumption. For example, on average, the WCDMA RBSs produced in Q4 2006 are 35 percent more energy-efficient than their counterparts from 2005. The goal for year-end 2008 is 50 percent. A comparison of the 2008 target value with the actual performance in 2001 shows an 80 percent improvement in energy efficiency.
Malmodin says: "Ericsson is confident that the ICT industry has a great possibility to reduce activities such as transport and travel, even the need for building space, and thereby reduce society's energy consumption and CO2e emissions, for instance through e-commerce, tele-presence, m-health, e-learning and m-working."
