Contents
 Foreword
 ICTs and climate change
 ITU and climate change
 ITU and the UN
 ICTs as a clean technology
 Monitoring climate change
 Adaptation
 Mitigation
 Remote collaboration
 Events and glossary

 ITU elected officials

ICTs as a clean technology

The key to combating global warming is to stabilize and eventually reduce GHG emissions. The main output of the ICT sector is information rather than physical goods (“bits”, not “atoms”), a concept sometimes referred to as “dematerialization”. Thus, ICTs can contribute greatly to developing new efficient technologies and to reducing the global GHG emissions that emanate from other sectors of the economy.

Reducing carbon emissions will require changes in lifestyle and behaviour, but changes in management practices can also have a positive impact. ICTs can help with this, either:

directly, by reducing the ICT sector’s own energy requirements;

indirectly, through using ICTs for carbon displacement, or

in a systemic way, by providing the technology to implement and monitor carbon reductions in other sectors of the economy.

ITU has already demonstrated its interest in climate change and environmental issues, for example with the approval, in 1996, of Recommendation ITU–T L.24: “Classification of outside plant waste”. This Recommendation recognizes the effects which “exotonic” waste products could have on human beings and nature, and suggests studies of alternative materials that would respect the environment.

In December 2007, ITU–T’s Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) advised the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) to provide, in a systemic way, the necessary standards to implement and monitor climate change, including through carbon reduction in other sectors of the economy. Moreover, TSAG encouraged the drafting of a Question relating to the reduction of GHG emissions through the implementation of ITU–T Recommendations for the 2009–2012 quadrennial, together with a draft resolution on ICTs and climate change, for consideration by the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in October 2008.

All ITU–T study groups are encouraged to evaluate existing and new Recommendations to identify their impact on climate change and demonstrate, in a way that is measurable, how such Recommendations contribute to the reduction of GHG emissions in the production and use of equipment.

One good example is provided by next-generation networks (NGN), a new type of communications network that has been a major focus of ITU’s work in recent years. NGN are expected to reduce energy consumption by 40 per cent, compared to today’s PSTN technology. The savings will be achieved in a number of ways, including:

A significant decrease in the number of switching centres required.

More tolerant climatic range specifications for NGN switching locations.

Implementation of standards, such as the “very high speed digital subscriber line transceivers 2”, or VDSL2 (also known as Recommendation ITU–T G.993.2) which recognizes the need for devices to have three power modes (full, low and “sleep”), rather than being fully powered all the time.

The ICT industry is already taking steps to reduce CO2 emissions. For instance:

BT plc, the host of the second of the two ITU symposia on “ICTs and Climate Change”, has already achieved a 60 per cent reduction in 1996 CO2 emissions, an annual saving of almost one million tonnes of CO2, and has committed to reducing them by 80 per cent by 2016.

Members of the European Telecommunication Networks Operators’ association (ETNO) have succeeded in reducing their overall carbon emissions by 7 per cent and their carbon intensity (per unit of turnover) by 14 per cent between 2000 and 2003.

The Japanese incumbent operator, NTT, saved some 124 million kWh of electricity during 2007. It is also converting its vehicle fleet to low-emission vehicles and is experimenting with growing sweet potatoes on the roofs of its offices in order to reduce heat loss in winter and reduce heat absorption in summer.

The application of ITU Recommendations, especially those that relate to energy saving in ICT equipment, can go a long way to generating savings of greenhouse gas emissions in the ICT sector. ITU–T Study Group 15 has developed an energy-saving checklist for standards development. As shown in Figure 2, the transmission capacity of different generations of access network technology is doubling almost every year. The challenge is to achieve continually rising transmission capacity while stabilizing, or reducing, the power requirements.

Figure 2 — Relationship between bit rate and power consumption over time
Can we increase speed while saving power?

Note — LT stands for line termination and NT for network termination.

Source: Faulkner, David, et al (2008), " ITU-T SG15 WP/1 access network transport, energy-saving checklist", available at: www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/09/05/T09050000010007PDFE.pdf

Already, new radio technologies — such as digital modulation for broadcasting and ultra-wideband (UWB) employing extremely low power, smart antennas — are reducing power requirements and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions. All ITU–R study groups are concentrating their studies not only on increasing service quality and the efficient use of the radio spectrum, but also on energy saving and reduction of power consumption. For instance, the Regional Radiocommunication Conference 2006 (RRC-06), which involved 120 countries, developed a new digital broadcasting Plan GE06. The Plan envisages significant reduction (almost 10 times) of transmitter power due to the use of digital modulation. Moreover, the number of transmitters (there are tens of thousands of transmitters around the world with power of up to 100–150 kW each, most of them operating 24 hours a day) may be reduced due to the possibility of transmitting several television and sound programmes in one channel (instead of one television programme per radio-frequency channel).