Green G: The Path Towards Sustainable 6G

[MP_odini]

Green G: The Path Towards Sustainable 6G white paper has been published!  

With global CO2 emissions rebound by 5% in 2021 , 5G deployments accelerating and mobile traffic sky rocking over expectations with the pandemic, the need for carefully tuning and optimizing network energy efficiency is becoming critical not only because of the increasing energy costs but also to limit the environmental impact of ICT.

With internet access becoming a human right and all of us spending more and more time using our smartphone, it is difficult to talk about sobriety and reducing our footprint. However we all need to think about the dramatic impact we have in our day to day on CO2 emissions and consequences on climate change and temperature increase as reported by latest IPCC report. One of the key findings of this report is that the initial threshold of 1.5°C set by the Paris Agreement will lead to serious and irreversible consequences including droughts, fires, water scarcity, food production drop, ice cap melting, ocean rise, etc. More dramatic is that this level of warming could already be exceeded in 2030, 10 years sooner than anticipated by last IPCC report.

Innovation alone will not solve climate change. All states and companies must contribute actively to change our production and consumption model.

Concerning the mobile industry, a large number of operators and ICT vendors are committing to carbon neutral by 2040 or sooner. This implies that 6G has to be much more efficient than 5G.  the Next G Alliance white paper that we just published on Green G, describes different aspects of the mobile network but also mobile devices that can be improved to not only reduce CO2 emissions, but also water consumption or material use and evolve to circular economy with sustainability in mind during design phase and then along the life cycle. This involves more recycling but also working with the overall ecosystem to achieve scope 3 reduction, making sure suppliers and customers also apply major changes to their respective models. The paper emphasizes also that Mobile communication has proved to help other industries reduce their environmental impact and will continue to explore new use cases that can help the transition to more sustainable life.

I invite you to read the Green G white paper, but also join the NGA Green G working group and act at your level on reducing environmental impact !

This blog is a follow up from Blog#1 on Green G and Telecom sustainability.

Marie-Paule Odini, NGA Green G working group Chair