Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability for the ICT Sector

1. 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

2. 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).

3. 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”

4. 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.

5. 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?

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. (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.

10. Comparison of DTTV and VoD

11. Cloud ComputingKey Carbon Abatement Mechanism

12. Potential carbon abatement enabled by Cloud Computing

13. 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.

14. More information • Contact: Dave Faulkner: davewfaulkner@googlemail.com • Contact: Cristina Bueti: greenstandards@itu.inthttp://www.itu.int/ITU-T/climatechange/ess/index.html • Columbia Study on VoIP: www.cs.columbia.edu/~salman/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