At the Customer Strategy & Pain Point Analysis (CSPA) conference by Huawei, Mr. John Giusti, GSMA Chief Regulatory Officer, shared the progress in reducing global carbon emissions and the ICT industry’s efforts to achieve the carbon neutrality goal.
With the use of mobile and network services for digital transformation, the mobile industry is helping other industries to reduce their carbon emissions. Research conducted by GSMA with the Carbon Trust found that the industry enables carbon reductions in a 10 times larger amount, equivalent to approximately 4% of global emissions.
GSMA has set up different initiatives to help the mobile industry in the journey to net-zero. In 2019, GSMA agreed to align its targets for the mobile industry to be net-zero by 2050. It has initiated three steps for this target: encourage more climate disclosure amongst members, create the ICT sector pathway to net-zero emissions, and support members to align their science-based targets.
Under GSMA’s initiatives, the mobile industry is transitioning to renewable electricity, one of the effective pathways to net-zero. Today, nine operator groups are members of the global RE100 campaign, and many operators have committed to renewable energy targets. GSMA is also helping the industry to achieve energy efficiency in networks. Many operators have been running energy efficiency programmes for years. For instance, Huawei promotes its PowerStar Solution to mobile operators, which won the GSMA’s 2020 GLOMO for ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Climate Action’ award.
Telecom Review believes digitization supports decarbonization. Carbon reductions are being enabled across the economy through smart technologies in various sectors, like smart cities and traveling. Climate change is real and happening, the mobile industry must bolster the efforts until the net-zero targets have been achieved.
