How can companies be more sustainable in the mobile economy?

By Gerrit Jan Konijnenberg, Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) who looks at the mobile economy.

When discussing the climate crisis, many direct a great deal of criticism towards the aviation industry – it is responsible for about 2% of all global emissions. But that is also the figure for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. And as cloud-based services and storage increases, emissions caused by data centres will also increase.

How can companies be more sustainable in the mobile economy?

However, the mobile ecosystem can prevent itself from becoming the new villain of the piece by exploiting its unique ability to aid other industries reduce their emissions through the development of new technologies that result in companies and consumers save energy, perhaps leading to a reduction in emissions of around 12.1 gigatonne of CO2 (GtCO2) by 2030. So, the mobile and ICT industry has the potential to become a net negative sector.

What is the mobile economy doing to reduce emissions?

Mobile operator groups representing more than 50% of mobile industry revenues (and 30% of mobile connections globally) have committed to taking accountability for their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and developing plans to reduce them as much as possible. This includes lowering power usage for computers (etc) and buildings, reducing data storage in energy-consuming data centres, mobile device production and disposal, and limiting travel for conferences, trade shows and meetings in general.

Complete lifecycle assessments of your different products and services is important. Identify any carbon-heavy or wasteful aspects, looking at raw materials and energy use in both production and disposal of old devices.

Innovations in recycling and reuse often come about by identifying wasteful or energy-intensive parts of a product’s lifecycle. And a welcome benefit of reducing environmental impact is businesses saving money – for example rather than disposing of its old infrastructure, a data centre may be able to recycle and/or reuse in other areas of its business.

Additionally, telecom consumers should be made more aware of the implications of data waste. Regular file cleanups can reduce emissions and improve efficiency because everything that is stored in the cloud uses energy. It all adds up.

Reducing carbon emissions

Defining a roadmap for repeated reduction in emissions is vital. That starts with knowing what your current impact is. That allows you to set your target(s). Then the scale of your task will be a lot clearer.

Your targets don’t need to be perfect. At a recent INSEAD Climate online seminar (during COP27), Al Gore said: It’s better to have targets that are 80% correct than not have any climate targets at all.

Offset your unavoidable emissions

With a climate plan defined and annual reduction targets identified, you then need to consider offsetting unavoidable emissions. It is not reasonable to expect a company to achieve a sudden cut of all emissions. Time is required and there will be some emissions that will always remain. Those emissions can be offset, which means paying for the removal of carbon elsewhere.

There are options for this, for example, Direct Air Capture devices that run on renewable geothermal energy in Iceland are built by Swiss company Climeworks. These devices suck air through specialised filters which capture and safely store atmospheric carbon underground. Alternatively, the CO2 can be captured and reutilised, as Co2Value.eu promotes.

Integrating with a nearby geothermal power plant provides Climeworks with the renewable energy required as well as a method for long-term carbon storage – they pump the carbon deep into the earth as part of the renewable energy-creation process.

Carbon removal projects are important because even if we were to reduce our emissions to zero, there would still be legacy atmospheric carbon to remove. In other words, stopping making a mess doesn’t absolve us of cleaning up the mess we have already made.

Talk about your efforts and successes

Communicating your climate action has many benefits. Not talking about your efforts is the PR equivalent of leaving money on the table. But beyond this, combating climate change requires belief, motivation, and knowledge, and communicating your positive efforts and successes helps to inspire other businesses to take actions of their own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gerrit Jan Konijnenberg is Special MEF Board Advisor and Initiator of sustainability activities at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF). MEF is a global trade body established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across the world. As the voice of the mobile ecosystem, it focuses on cross-industry best practices, anti-fraud and monetisation. The Forum provides its members with global and cross-sector platforms for networking, collaboration and advancing industry solutions. 

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