5G is the environmental hope of those who sell internet – 03/28/2023 – Environment

Green has found room to grow among the world’s largest telecommunications companies. In discussions, 5G appears as a potential climate ally.

In addition to promising higher speeds and connection quality, the fifth generation of telephony comes with the expectation of being less polluting. The prediction of the GSMA, the entity that brings together the telecoms, is that the modality will go from the current 12% of global connections to 54% in 2030.

“It is the first wireless technology in which energy efficiency was considered during the creation of industry standards”, says the organization’s report.

The green speech also serves the interests of the sector: greater adoption of technology is providential for the pocket of those who sell it.

One of the main issues is energy. The rise in electricity prices has increased concerns about efficiency, as it accounts for 20% to 40% of operating costs for companies in the sector.

“I’ve been working in this area for 50 years and nobody talked about the cost of energy. It was 1% or 2% of revenue and it was always there. Suddenly we saw this increase. Our annual costs were SEK 1.2 billion (Rs $600m) to more than $2bn (R$1bn)”, says Alisson Kirkby, CEO of Telia, a Swedish-Finnish telecom.

About 90% of these expenses come from maintaining the telephone network and the remainder from other parts of the operation, such as offices. The data are from a report published in early March by the GSMA.

“Before this crisis [com pandemia de Covid-19 e Guerra da Ucrânia], I hadn’t realized how much energy telcos consume. We can’t turn off the lights, move the factories elsewhere. We need to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week”, said Margherita Della Valle, CEO of the Vodafone group, one of the largest operators in the world, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), a traditional congress focused on the telecommunications sector.

At the event, which took place from February 27 to March 2, in Barcelona, ​​sustainability was a highlight among the lectures. The theme was in 36 of the 158 face-to-face sessions (23%) of the event, which include debates and lectures.

In the stands, plants were the basic black of the decor and shared space with physical technological gadgets, such as robotic arms and a flying car, and virtual ones, such as the metaverse and demonstrations of artificial intelligence services.

One of the points identified as positive in 5G is the greater data traffic capacity over the network. It is estimated that the same amount passing through the 5G network requires 90% less energy than in 4G. The problem there is that transferred information should triple by 2028. In other words, electricity consumption drops on one side, but increases on the other.

Part of this efficiency is due to greater digitalization of services, with solutions to make them smarter.

Freddie Södergren, head of technology and strategy at Ericsson, which along with Nokia and Huawei is one of the world’s leading providers of telephony infrastructure, says modernization is a way to ensure that greater efficiency, while bringing better service to the user.

“We can make a traffic model to predict not only the capacity of the networks, but also how the experience of those who are connected will be. With this, we can, for example, turn off capacities, applications, connection bandwidths, without impacting who is using “, says Södergren. In kids, it’s leaving part of the equipment “sleeping” to save energy.

Carlos Lauria, government relations executive at Huawei, also mentions improvements in the architecture of the equipment compared to previous generations.

“On a base station [que faz as conexões de telefonia] from a few years ago you will see a very big and ugly tower. Below, a container with equipment and often another one next to it with air conditioning to cool it all”, says Lauria. “The newest ones are small and, therefore, consume less energy and produce less heat.”

In addition to cost containment initiatives, the GSMA study highlights the commitments of telecom companies that, together, account for 39% of cellular connections in the world for carbon neutrality (the so-called “net zero”) in own and third-party emissions by 2050 or earlier. It also lists industry efforts to adopt renewable energy (24% of the energy consumed by the sector in 2022).

Another way of looking at these numbers is to say that 61% of connections are made by companies that are not formally committed to objectives that are considered audacious, but necessary. Or that 76% of telecommunications energy consumption comes from non-renewable sources.

The report itself points out as insufficient the evolution in the energy issue, which went from 14% renewable in 2020 to 18% in 2021 until reaching the current level. “Extrapolating forward, it would mean that it would take another five years to reach 50% of consumption and 15 years (close to 2040) for 100%”, says the text.

There is still a regional discrepancy and Vodafone itself, as it operates in different continents, can serve as an example. According to Della Valle, while the energy consumed by the operation has been 100% renewable in Europe since 2021, the situation in African countries is challenging.

“Access to renewable sources is more difficult. We had to make an agreement with the government of Egypt, for example, to connect independent suppliers to the energy grid,” says the executive.

In general, points out the GSMA study, 83% of the energy consumed by telecoms in Europe is renewable, compared to 1% in sub-Saharan Africa and 23% in the region comprising the north of the continent and the Middle East. In Latin America, where there is the greatest offer, the rate is 34%.

The text indicates that political resistance, with economies dependent on oil, helps to curb adoption in some countries.

You have to be careful with these numbers. Still using the example of Vodafone, a report by the NewClimate institute positively highlights the company’s environmental commitment in relation to other large companies, but criticizes its assertions when selling cellular plans as being climate neutral.

For the researchers, there is a lack of transparency in the company’s practices for carbon offsetting (reducing emissions in one place to balance another), which prevents independent verification. Another issue is dealing with emissions from third parties, such as suppliers.

The text points out that part of the electricity classified as clean comes, in fact, from the so-called “renewable energy certificates”. In these cases, the connection is made to the local energy grid, polluting or not, but such certificates are also purchased in other locations that have renewable energy.

“They can come from hydroelectric dams that are decades old, which do not contribute to an energy transition, or from wind farms that produced electricity in another place or at another point in time”, says the report.

The telephony sector also points to a series of challenges for a greener future, such as retiring older network equipment, 2G and 3G. “We need to work with governments to turn off things we don’t need,” said Joanna Newman, manager of technology solutions at Vodafone.

In addition, cell phones themselves bring difficulties. Last year, an initiative aimed at stretching the lifespan of phones to try to reduce their environmental impact. The GSMA estimate is that if, on average, the devices lasted one year longer, that would be equivalent to taking 4.7 million cars off the road.

The journalist traveled at the invitation of Huawei.