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- 2009 /
- April-June 09 /
People, planet and profit drive sustainability
Telecoms can deliver solutions that can assist the transition to a global low-carbon economy and help tackle climate change by helping reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions in other sectors.
Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility at Ericsson points out that sustainability should be looked at not only in terms of environmental impact but also social and economic development.
“It is the combination of the triple bottom line – people, profit and planet – that makes an industry sustainable,” she said.
Ericsson and others estimate that societal behavior changes using telecommunications could be 10 times less than the amount of energy required to produce and deliver telecom services.
With 4 billion mobile subscribes around the world, the ICT sector represents 2 percent of global CO2 emissions. Weidman-Grunewald says that ongoing technological development will help reduce not only the industry’s own energy use, but that of other business sectors as well.
She added: “We need to continue with technology efficiencies, especially in mobile and fixed broadband. We have to look within our own sector, but also apply the smart use of ICT to other sectors to help them meet their energy consumption targets. The business opportunity is to use broadband as the technology to help offset the other 98 percent of global emissions.”
Ericsson for more than a decade has been using life-cycle assessment and in-house competence to develop environmental understanding and measure improvements in the energy-efficiency and overall environmental performance of its products and solutions.
“A subscriber on an Ericsson mobile network emits 25 kilograms of CO2 per year, which has been reduced from 180 kilograms in 1985 for subscribers in first-generation networks,” Weidman-Grunewald says.
She adds that to address climate change a coordinated, multi-stakeholder approach is needed. Consumers, operators and vendors have a key role to play, but without the support of policy makers and regulators, together with the use of technology, the problem will not be solved.
“Ericsson is committed to taking complex telecommunication systems and optimizing energy use at every step, focusing not just on any one product, but on helping operators reduce the overall total cost of ownership of their operations, with the lowest possible energy impact and carbon footprint and encouraging sustainable development and access to communications for everyone everywhere.”
