Telco suppliers ramp up efforts to reach net zero

Communications service providers (CSPs) and vendors are ramping up efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, reflecting the growing importance of sustainability credentials to winning contracts.

Nokia, for example, has advanced by ten years its goal for reducing total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to net zero. Describing net zero as a business priority, the company now aims to attain it by 2040 instead of 2050.

Cisco and Orange Business meanwhile have signed a Memorandum of Understanding which they describe as a first of its kind to help reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improve the sharing of data. Orange Business plans to use data gathered to provide customers with an estimate of the GHG emissions from their products and solutions based on Cisco technology.

This makes sense on several counts. Our recent report The sustainable telco: navigating the maze of Scope 3 emissions found that sustainability practices and reporting have helped telcos win large enterprise contracts, while enterprise customers increasingly request information about GHG emissions in RFPs.

A focus on sharing data also allows Cisco and Orange Business to go some way to addressing a major stumbling block on the road to net zero, especially when it comes to Scope 3 emissions, which are indirect emissions including those from the production, use and disposal of purchased goods and services.

Scope 3 emissions are by far the largest source of GHG emissions for most CSPs. They are also on the rise, according to 53% of 68 sustainability executives, working for 50 principally large telecoms operators worldwide, who took part in a TM Forum survey for The sustainable telco: navigating the maze of Scope 3 emissions.

CSPs are taking Scope 3 emissions seriously: 45% of those surveyed said they are planning to invest heavily or moderately over the next three years in new technology or processes to better understand and manage Scope 3 emissions. Only 6% are not planning any investment.

Telco vendors therefore have much to gain from helping them. Nokia’s efforts to reduce customers’ Scope 3 emissions, for example, include a target to achieve 95 percent circularity by 2030 in relation to operational waste, which comes from offices, labs, manufacturing, installation, and product takeback.

Some of the data-related obstacles telcos face include a lack of data with which to track progress, the number of diverse data points they have to draw on, and a lack of industry standard reporting for suppliers, as the chart below indicates.

Nonetheless, there are indications that digital transformation programs to improve data management, as well as network upgrades, are helping telcos get to grips with analyzing and addressing Scope 3 emissions