Guidelines for Environmental
Sustainability for the ICT
Sector
Sustainable Services
Keith Dickerson & Dave Faulkner
Directors, Climate Associates Ltd
Contributors:
BBC, BT, Climate Associates, EBU, Imperial College, ITU,
Microsoft, PE International AG, Telefónica, Thomson Reuters,
Vodafone Ghana, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Pisa), GHG
Management Institute (GHGMI)/ ClimateCHECK
International
Telecommunication
Union
Committed to Connecting the World
Sustainable Services
 Providing both best practices and a checklist.
 Users of checklist will be designers of services and
organizations involved in marketing, transmission and use of
services.
 To increase awareness of GHG emissions and impact of
introduction and use of a service (e.g. increase or decrease of
carbon footprint).
 To record measures taken to minimize GHG impact of service.
 Key consideration is switch from one system to another and
its consequences for the carbon economy (e.g. TV
programmes delivered by broadcast network versus download
via telecoms network).
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
International Standards
 BSI PAS 2050: “Specification for
assessment of life cycle greenhouse gas
emissions of goods and services”
 ITU-T Rec L.1410 “Methodology for
environmental impact assessment of
ICT goods, networks and services”
 ITU-T Rec L.1420 “Methodology for
energy consumption and greenhouse
gas emissions impact assessment of
ICT in organizations”
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Definition of a Service
Has ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’ elements:
activity performed on a consumer-supplied tangible
product (e.g. automobile to be repaired);
activity performed on a consumer-supplied intangible
product (e.g. income statement needed to prepare a tax
return);
delivery of an intangible product (e.g. delivery of
information in context of knowledge transmission);
creation of ambience for consumer (e.g. in hotels and
restaurants);
software consists of information and is generally
intangible.
Use phase specifically includes provision of service.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Questions
 How to apportion energy used by a
platform (e.g. circuit switch, packet
switch or broadcast network)?
 How does energy required grow to meet
expected demand (e.g. increasing
number of users for a new service, file
to download or stream)?
 How do alternative solutions for service
delivery compare on carbon emissions?
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Categories of services
 Telecommunications services:
 voice, video and data services,
 interactive services (e.g. telephony, text, web-based
and IPTV),
 on-demand services.
 Broadcast services:
 analogue/digital, satellite, terrestrial and point to
multi-point.
 Software services:
 cloud and server/data center services.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
How Green is VoIP?
 In c/s VoIP systems with always-on hardphones, total




power consumed is dominated by consumption of
hardphone – typically 5W.
PSTN typically uses 0.3W for line card + 0.05W per
handset, so average power per PSTN line is 0.34W.
Therefore, basic PSTN is 5-10 times more energy
efficient than VoIP.
However, many users have cordless handsets which
typically consume 3W including charger.
Therefore, energy consumption of VoIP and PSTN are
comparable.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Best Practice
 If user does not have a broadband service, then using




PSTN is most carbon efficient solution.
If country has PSTN with capability to serve all users,
then all users should use PSTN as most carbon efficient
solution.
If country scales back PSTN to match actual use, then
all broadband users should use VoIP as lowest carbon
solution.
If 20% of lines are voice only, it would save GHG
emissions to close down PSTN and give all customers
broadband for voice.
For voice only users, a network PSTN to VoIP conversion
would be best solution overall, as this saves on new CPE
(embodied carbon) for those users.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
(UK) Digital TV Switchover
 Changeover from analogue to digital TV
distribution will raise emissions initially
by 10W per user: +200MW overall.
 Total ERP of broadcasters will reduce by
75%: -60MW overall.
 As TVs are replaced by more efficient
sets with integrated digital tuner,
emissions will drop to +40MW overall.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Comparison of DTTV and VoD
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Cloud Computing
Key Carbon Abatement Mechanism
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Potential carbon abatement
enabled by Cloud Computing
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
Cloud: Best Practices
 When enterprises switch to the Cloud, their
redundant on-premise servers must be
switched-off.
 Applications need to consider small/micro
sized firms:
 Nearly 60% of the savings potential relates to
small/micro sized firms.
 Energy mix has more impact than Power Use
Effectiveness (PUE):
 Where a Cloud data center is located is more important
than overall efficiency of data center (measured by its
PUE) - a cleaner energy source will deliver better carbon
savings than investing in efficiency.
November 2011
Committed to Connecting the World
More information
 Contact: Dave Faulkner:




davewfaulkner@googlemail.com
Contact: Cristina Bueti: greenstandards@itu.int
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/climatechange/ess/index.html
Columbia Study on VoIP:
www.cs.columbia.edu/~salman/publications/greenvoipgn10.pdf
Ofcom Study on Digital Switchover:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/tvresearch/cost_power.pdf
BBC Study on DTTV vs VoD:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdffiles/WHP189.pdf
November 2011