Page 21 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

ICTs for a Sustainable World

DECOUPLING ECONOMIC GROWTH FROM CARBON EMISSION GROWTH
Hossein Moiin

Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Nokia Mobile Networks
Nokia Corporation
Finland

For years there has been an implicit assumption that from design to end-of-life. For product efficiency,
the economic growth is dependent on emission the in-house design of key components is in focus
growth. However, ICT has the potential to reduce whereas for system efficiency it is necessary to have
energy consumption of almost all other industries. holistic view of the network to identify opportunities
GeSi SMARTer2030 (2015) report shows that ICT for reduction of power consumption. A simple
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has the potential to enable a 20% reduction of global example is to put cells that are not needed into ‘sleep’
CO2 emissions by 2030, thus holding emissions at mode during off peak periods.
2015 levels, and demonstrating that judicious usage Networks evolution fueled by the growing traffic
of ICT could effectively decouple economic growth volumes, gives the industry an opportunity for
from emissions growt. continuous improvement of network level energy
In addition, we must do more to ensure that the efficiency. We are enabling mobile networks to use
energy consumption of the networks that carry the smaller and smaller cells to reduce the energy
traffic is minimized. While we know that the use of consumption. A small cell close to a user, with clean
ICT will continue to grow we must find ways to line of sight taking advantage of several antenna
manage this growth in a sustainable manner. As an elements to improve the quality of the radio channel
example consider that by 2017 the volume of mobile can achieve much higher spectral efficiency than a
traffic will be 85 times greater than in 2010 . This large high power cell. For the same energy
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creates a challenge: how to ensure that the energy consumption, far more bits get transmitted.
footprint of tomorrow's networks doesn’t grow?
Today Nokia leads the global development of 5G, for
At Nokia we are committed to combat climate the future mobile technology enabling the industry to
change and to ensure the sustainable use of natural continue taking steps in energy efficiency and
resources. Many telco operators, who are our transform other industries. It is in this domain, the
customers, are now spending more money on impact to other industries, that the greatest potential
electricity to power their networks than they are able for decoupling of economic and emission growths
to invest in expanding and upgrading networks to lies. The transformative nature of the ICT industry is
meet the ever-increasing demand for mobile data the key enabler for this decoupling. However,
usage. We see it as an economic imperative to enable technology alone cannot ensure that such decoupling
operators to expand their networks and serve their takes place. To do that we need the right enabling
customers, while minimizing their total cost of policies and regulations. We should all join forces:
ownership of their networks through lower energy industry, policy makers and international institutions
consumption and CO2 emissions. like ITU, unified by the goal to decouple economic
growth from emission growth through ICT.
In Nokia we believe that environmental impact must
be considered in all product life cycle phases starting

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1 http://gesi.org/portfolio/file/1 2 Report ITU-R M.2370 indicates, based upon data from
Nokia