Green for ICT, Green by ICT, Green by Design

Climate Change

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018) “human activities are estimated to have approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” According to the IPCC (Rogelj et al., 2018), reaching the 1.5 °C can be avoided by “reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally around 2050 and concurrent deep reductions in emissions of non-carbon dioxide forcers, particularly methane. Such mitigation pathways are characterized by energy-demand reductions, decarbonization of electricity and other fuels, electrification of energy end use, deep reductions in agricultural emissions, and some form of carbon dioxide removal with carbon storage on land or sequestration in geological reservoirs.”

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations are involved to protect the planet and guarantee prosperity for all through a sustainable development program (United Nations, 2020) made up of seventeen goals (Figure 1[REMOVED REF FIELD]). Among them, the goal number twelve establishes sustainable consumption and production patterns so that a social and economic growth does not increase the pressure on Earth's resources due to the rebound effect, and the goal number thirteen constrains the global warming to 1.5 °C.

Figure 1.

The seventeen United Nations sustainable development goals - Source United Nations

The GSM Association (GSMA), an association that represents nearly 800 mobile operators and manufacturers in 220 countries around the world, endorses the seventeen goals and claims that the mobile devices are useful to achieve the sustainable development goals (GSMA, 2019a) and that the mobile industry is playing a role in tackling climate change, developing a decarbonisation pathway aligned with the science-based target initiative (Science-based Targets, 2020) and in line with the Paris Agreement target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The GSMA first main idea is that electricity being used to power the telecommunication networks, switching from fossil fuels to renewable energies to lower their carbon footprint is a realistic option (GSMA, 2020). This is done through a mix of power purchase agreements, buying green electricity with associated guarantees of origin and additional unbundled guarantees of origin, and green electricity self-generation. The second one is that improvement of energy efficiency and circular economy are not sufficient to reach carbon neutrality. Therefore, for those scope 1 and 2 emissions that cannot be avoided, carbon offsets are the only remaining option. Concerning the scope 3 emissions, it is the responsibility of each player along the value chain to contribute to climate targets.

Mineral Resources Are Scarce and Critical For Network Equipment

The issues related to mineral resource scarcity have been covered for several industries such as the energy industry (Zepf et al., 2014), for industries located in a specific country (Department of the Interior, 2018) or even for an entire supranational union industry (European Commission, 2020). All this research effort highlights that the modern industry uses more and more materials and for very specific purposes (e.g., germanium in optical fiber).

For the telecommunication industry the issue of scarce materials content in network equipment, or the different parameters to be considered when setting up a methodology on material criticality, has been discussed in (Vaija & Philipot, 2020). In these environmental assessments, the “when will it be depleted?” issue is examined for mineral resources. It is handled on one hand with the life cycle assessment methods, such as Abiotic Depletion Potential (Van Oers, De Koning, Guinée & Huppes, 2002) which considers, for a large set of elements (for example gold, silver, copper), a ratio between the world’s annual production of a given material divided by the size of its world reserves. On the other hand with methods that allow to classify raw material as “critical”; these ones focus on parameters such as reliance to imports, capabilities to substitute the material by a non-critical one or recyclability rate.