Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability for the ICT Sector

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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
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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).

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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Comparison of DTTV and VoD
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Cloud ComputingKey Carbon Abatement Mechanism
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Potential carbon abatement enabled by Cloud
Computing
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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.

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More information

• Contact Dave Faulkner davewfaulkner_at_googlemail.c
  om
• Contact Cristina Bueti greenstandards_at_itu.int
  http//www.itu.int/ITU-T/climatechange/ess/index.h
  tml
• Columbia Study on VoIP www.cs.columbia.edu/salma
  n/publications/greenvoip-gn10.pdf
• Ofcom Study on Digital Switchover
  http//stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research
  /tv-research/cost_power.pdf
• BBC Study on DTTV vs VoD http//downloads.bbc.co.
  uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP189.pdf