Sustainability Is More Than Being Green – It Also Makes Perfect Business And Social Sense
This post is based on earlier writings when I was leading www.GreenTouch.org
At the time when I was offered to lead GreenTouch, a Bell Labs initiative in the information and communication technology sector proudly, it seemed the right thing to do. Leading a consortium of top companies and academics with top talent working on dramatically improving energy efficiency in communication networks was a great challenge. And after all, as my kids said, green is cool. After successfully concluding this initiative, I have to say that this was much more than just being ‘cool’. This was not only a feat of collective disruption but also a great example of environmental leadership, profitable business and social good.
It all made a lot of sense: environmental, business and social sense. The discourse has become a much more rational one.
At its conclusion, GreenTouch showed the world that there is a portfolio of proven technologies, architectures, protocols and algorithms that allow communication networks in 2020 to consume way less energy when compared to the 2010 situation and this whilst supporting a continuous increase in enterprise traffic combined with dramatic growing consumer generated traffic. GreenTouch calculated this to amount to a staggering reduction in energy consumption of 98%. Translated into laymen’s terms this would be equivalent to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 5.8 million cars – think of this as taking 5.8 million cars off the road! But it is more than ‘just’ reducing green house gases.
According to GreenTouch, supporting dramatic traffic increases with less energy (electricity) to fuel communication networks considerably reduces the energy bills of communication service providers and their overall operational expenditure. This also allows them to create more value elsewhere such as offering their customers more services.
But it also results in better products, not just more energy efficient products. Prior designs were focused on improving typical telecom features such as higher bandwidths, improved line speeds, etc. without taking into consideration energy efficiency. The research performed in the framework of GreenTouch took a holistic perspective and redesigned architectures and protocols that resulted not only in energy efficiency improvements but also in products that overall show higher performance such as higher bandwidth and increased speeds. Overall better products, and in some cases even disruptively better products.
But there is more. Making communication network equipment more energy efficient, also makes the use of renewable energy sources more realistic. Today, several developing countries have to rely heavily on diesel generators to fuel their communication networks due to a lack of an energy grid. With the advent of more energy efficient equipment, mobile antennae towers can be powered through realistically sized solar panels or wind turbines. Once you have these energy autonomous cell towers you can more easily deploy a communication infrastructure independent of an electricity grid. Think about it, this allows to connecting the next billion people. Now that benefit to society, that really makes a true difference.
And finally, I want to stress that being able to work on an activity that makes business, environmental and social sense was a huge motivating factor for all involved: from the members of the board, the leadership, the researchers up to all the stakeholders. Nothing could beat that sense of ownership and purpose!