IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i5p2637-d757563.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electricity Consumption and Operational Carbon Emissions of European Telecom Network Operators

Author

Listed:
  • Dag Lundén

    (Telia Company AB, 169 94 Solna, Sweden)

  • Jens Malmodin

    (Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB, 164 83 Stockholm, Sweden)

  • Pernilla Bergmark

    (Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB, 164 83 Stockholm, Sweden)

  • Nina Lövehagen

    (Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB, 164 83 Stockholm, Sweden)

Abstract

This study presents operational electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for named European telecom network operators during 2015–2018. These results are also compared to data for 2010–2015. The study provides an extensive primary data set, collected from European Telecommunication Network Operators (ETNO) members, covering operations in Europe and beyond, providing data with higher granularity than publicly available sources. The collected data set corresponds to roughly 36 percent of European subscriptions and 8 percent of global subscriptions. This data set was used to calculate the aggregated annual electricity consumption for the assessed operators, as well as associated subscription intensities, in total, for Europe and per network type. Moreover, aggregated electricity-related carbon emissions and emissions from other sources were calculated. Finally, estimates were made for the overall network operation in Europe for 2018 and 2020. The study concludes that the electricity consumption and number of subscriptions for the reporting telecom network operators remained nearly constant (+1 percent and −3 percent, respectively) between 2015 and 2018, while data traffic increased by a factor of three. For the extended period of 2010–2018, the electricity consumption per subscription remained quite stable, slightly below 30 kWh/subscription despite substantial data traffic growth (by a factor of 12).

Suggested Citation

  • Dag Lundén & Jens Malmodin & Pernilla Bergmark & Nina Lövehagen, 2022. "Electricity Consumption and Operational Carbon Emissions of European Telecom Network Operators," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-27, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:5:p:2637-:d:757563
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2637/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2637/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zagdanski, Jakub & Castells, Pau, 2023. "The impact of spectrum policy on carbon emissions," 32nd European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2023: Realising the digital decade in the European Union – Easier said than done? 278024, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    2. Ogutu B. Osoro & Edward J. Oughton & Andrew R. Wilson & Akhil Rao, 2023. "Sustainability assessment of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband megaconstellations," Papers 2309.02338, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    3. Edquist, Harald & Bergmark, Pernilla, 2024. "How is mobile broadband intensity affecting CO2 emissions? – A macro analysis," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:5:p:2637-:d:757563. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.