Tackling climate change with technology
My posts on here are usually fairly light-hearted (in fact, one recent comment suggested maybe they are not serious enough). I like to focus mainly on what I enjoy about technology – which is really its sheer variety. Often impressive, awesome or inspiring, with the ability to change lives for the better. But sometimes wacky and maybe even a little ridiculous. I love it for all these reasons.
This time the topic is a more serious one. I have been reflecting more and more on the ways that technology can be used for good. One area where it’s clear to me that we need to make more progress, and urgently, is its impact on our climate.
The COP21 forum was widely talked about at the end of last year, and with good reason. The effects of climate change on our world are real, they’re significant and they are not going away. It’s an interesting topic in the telco world, and something of a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, a lot of studies and reports – such as Ericsson’s latest mobility report – suggest that ICT could help to clean things up. They estimate that technology could enable a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. As the report points out, that’s more than the combined carbon footprint of the European Union and the US! Pretty impressive.
However, on the flip side, the very nature of the industry means that it also contributes many of those CO2 emissions that are so damaging to the planet. Just think of the billions of connected devices that are out there.
It’s easy to forget that the shiny smartphone in your hand packs a lot of power. And even easier to forget that, with fast, reliable networks driving consumers and businesses to use more and more data, smartphone use is still on the up. Cisco predict that global mobile data traffic will be 30.6 exabytes per month by 2020. To put that in perspective, it was 3.7 exabytes per month at the end of 2015.
Sitting behind all that traffic - the calls we make, the tweets we share, the photos we upload, the music and movies we stream and download - is a huge power infrastructure that relies on electricity. That’s what a network really boils down to.
So what can network operators and other technology companies do?
One step is to become carbon neutral. There are various ways to work towards this, of course – from measuring your carbon footprint including all utility usage, business travel and waste, as well as the electricity that is consumed. (As an aside, this type of measurement can be more revealing than you might think. One EE investigation started after a spike in our power use at a cell site was picked up. Our team found that a local ‘entrepreneur’ had managed to hook up his burger van to the power outlet! You have to admire that kind of audacity in a way.)
Reducing and offsetting emissions is equally important. For mobile networks, this has to focus on ways to counteract or replace a power-hungry hardware infrastructure. It’s also possible to invest in voluntary projects to reduce emissions that are outside of that backbone.
I still feel that as an industry we need to do more. Perhaps it’s time to look for more innovative solutions, like the portable solar network that has been developed in Pakistan for use in emergencies or disaster zones. If it can be done in a portable way, why not in a fixed way? Food for thought.
I certainly don’t have all the answers. But it’s such an important issue. What are your thoughts on how ICT can target climate change?
Photo credit: Paul VanDerWerf
Founder at Clean Energy Risk LLC
8 年Olaf, technology solutions are there. Now action is needed from businesses to start saving on their energy usage. This means they can NOT require 2-5 year paybacks as they normally do for their investments. If lucky this is still achievable sometimes but 7-9 is more realistic. EE and others could follow the steps Apple and the like. Issue a green bond raise the money and transform all your data centers / offices to a CO2 neutral footprint. We need to stop talking and start doing! That is just one of my thoughts.
Founder & CEO at Consensium
8 年Hi Olaf. At FoodCloud (food.cloud) we use mobile technology to match retailers with surplus food with charities who need it. We're working hard to scale the solution globally. Let me know if you think EE could help!
Architect and Design Consultant
8 年Hear! Hear! Tony. I'm still waiting for Mr Swantee to reply to my twice-sent letter about why Orange has been charging my elderly mother almost ￡3000 (yes, three thousand pounds) per gigabyte of mobile data!
CEO/Chair/NED/Advisory
8 年Perhaps you could give as much thought, time and effort to getting basic customer service right at EE - getting the foundations of your business right (where EE are way off the pace and don't even have the basic human courtesy to engage properly with their customers) should be a focus before pontificating on subjects like this.
Innovation, transformation, change, and sustainability advisor. Communications and strategy pro and service provider. Partner and program architect. Mentor. NED. Community development doer.
8 年Olaf, it’s reassuring to see a growing number of captains of industry such as yourself raising these questions and actively engaging in pursuit of workable solutions. Thankfully, we are finally at a place where there is (nearly) unanimous consensus that climate change is happening and that we collectively need to address it. For a very long time, the activities contributing to climate change were what economists call “externalities” and there was no accounting on the balance sheet for their consequence. ICT has arguably transformed every facet of our personal and professional lives, and society as we know it. But it’s not happened to the same impact and at the same speed across all geographies, industries and sectors. Despite rapid advances, much of our global economy and our daily lives run on 20th Century energy. Serious investment and commitment to Innovation is the short answer to how ICT can help us address climate change, but as Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Innovation is no longer about dreaming up the best solutions in the startups in Silicon Valley and distributing said solutions throughout the rest of the world. The real breakthrough in innovation is happening where a diverse cast of civil sector players (including government, NGO, and academic players) and private sector players—from developed and emerging markets-- are actively collaborating to create better solutions. And this applies equally to clean energy innovation, to ICT innovation (e.g. lower energy consumption ICT without performance sacrifices), and to innovation in the myriad of other sectors and ICT and energy both fuel. I am cautiously optimistic that audacious coalitions such as the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (https://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/) signal the scale of investment and commitment we need to genuinely address climate change. The B Corp movement (https://www.bcorporation.net/) is another strong signal of accountability and commitment by the private sector to it role in society. Perhaps more pragmatically though, I am most enthusiastic when I see the breakthrough innovation happening ‘at the coal face’ in communities and then cultivated and taken to scale. The empowerment of individuals, families, and communities to create vibrate, sustainable lives and economies is a direct consequence of accessibility to and utilization of ICT. There are many great examples of how this is happening within the ranks of the Skoll Foundation (https://skoll.org/community/awardees/ ) and the Schwab Foundation’s ( https://www.schwabfound.org/ ) social entrepreneur communities to highlight just a few. A final point with consideration is challenging our assumptions about expertise and where solutions to climate change and other weighty problems will come. Without trying to sound cliché, Youth are our future, and actively engaging young people and providing the opportunity for them to actively contribute is a growing yet still underutilized asset. From such initiatives as Shell’s Eco Marathon ( https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/shell-ecomarathon.html ) to movements like Coder Dojo ( https://coderdojo.com/ ), the opportunities are many. Like any issue, acknowledgement of the problem and the need to change is the first step. Thankfully, while ICT is indeed partly accountable for our climate change problem, it's also at the heart of the solution if we step up and genuinely support collaborative, multi-sector innovation.