This morning’s session on Green ICT at the ITU World Telecom Conference (Geneva) was hosted by an exceptional panel of international business leaders including the CEO of Ericsson Mr Hans Vestberg. The discussion converged rapidly to two main points: (a) ICT itself, as an industry sector, can contribute to global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and (b) ICT can help facilitate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through more effective and intelligent energy management applications.

Efforts made by the telecommunication carriers to reduce their carbon footprint have been significant but more is yet to be done, according to Vestberg. Ericsson cites that around 8-10% of an  mobile carrier’s operational expenditure is attributed to powering base stations. Over the last 10 years Ericsson cites a drop in energy consumption of their base stations by as much as 90% through an intentional tactic to use energy more efficiently and to introduce more energy efficient radio equipment. Another carrier cited their commitment to power 118,000 US base stations with alternative energy over the next 3 years. Rajiv Mehrotra, CEO of VNL Technologies, a company which has pioneered the fully solar powered base transceiver station (BTS), cites that a zero-emissions BTS is possible. Their flagship BTS product can be installed by two people in under 6 hours from 6 boxes – the CEO likening the process of setting up the green BTS to assembling IKEA furniture! Another cited example of how ICT can enable energy efficiency among all industry sectors was the use of teleworking, teleconferencing and telepresence. A typical NY to Geneva flight produces 1000 times more carbon than a week long videoconference according to Robert Conway, one of the panel members. Vestberg made it clear that green ICT and eocnomically and socially responsible ICT are one in the same, all members on the panel agreed.