Page 49 - European Energy Innovation - summer 2019 publication
P. 49
Summer 2019 European Energy Innovation 49
COMMUNICATION
ICT product energy efficiency
as a science-based
emissions-reduction target
By Dr. Klaus Grobe, Dir. Global Sustainability, ADVA Optical Networking SE
The Science Based Targets initiative use mode is 24/7 always-on, and growth that requires more powerful
is the most important global initiative use phase often exceeds 10 years. equipment in terms of its throughput.
for companies to commit to carbon- Second, the equipment is subject Over the next couple of years, this
emissions reductions. By now, more to the quickly growing ICT bitrates. target will drive our ecodesign
than 550 companies have committed, This growth eats most of the gains activities, leading to most energy-
with more than 200 having set targets. in energy efficiency, making the efficient products. This is supported
Participants must define Scope-1 related target challenging. In addition, by improving emission factors, i.e.,
and Scope-2 targets according to company growth must be considered, the amount of carbon emitted by
the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and especially for target runtimes of 10 or kilowatt-hour consumed.
in case their total emissions are more years.
dominated by Scope 3, they must Next to the increasing ICT bitrates
define a related Scope-3 target as ADVA submitted the three targets which made the Scope-3 target
well. In many cases, the first two in September 2017. After several challenging, there is another ICT
targets relate to owned transport (e.g., rounds of fruitful discussions with aspect worth considering in this
a company car pool) and purchased the initiative (and related changes context. Proper use of ICT services
electricity, respectively. Scope-3 and intensification), the targets were can enable decarbonization in other
targets, however, tend to being approved in April 2019. For Scope-3, areas, e.g., in transport, smart grids
sector-specific, and their approval we committed to 3% total reduction etc. We sometimes call this Green
may consume considerable time. of the use-phase emissions of all by ICT. In a global context, this could
products sold in the target year 2032, mean that ICT may be given a certain
Any targets must align with climate compared to the base year 2016. This emissions allowance to support this.
science, i.e., they must support the seems to be low, but the reduction The question for now remains how
limitation of global temperature has to work against both, company to do this in a fair and scientific way.
increase compared to pre-industrial growth (i.e., more products sold) Perhaps, this is for future rounds of
time. In no case, absolute emission as well as the sustained ICT bitrate the initiative. l
increase is allowed. This again
may make certain Scope-3 targets Energy efficiency (W/Gbps)G/bps] 33
challenging. [W
cneiciEffeygreny 22
ADVA decided to commit in 11
November 2016. We did this in 00
order to set environment-related
targets that the company can 1100 110000 1100000
follow strategically over a period
of 10 or more years. Our emissions BBiittrrate [GGbbppss]]
are dominated by sold-products
use-phase emissions, a Scope-3 Example for ICT energy efficiency: development for fiber-optic
contribution. These emissions transport in dependence of the bitrate. Strong efficiency improvement
are caused by the electricity can be seen.
consumption, and they can be
influenced by ecodesign focusing
on energy efficiency. The use phase
of our products is dominant for two
reasons. First, as ICT (information
and communications technology)
core-network equipment, the typical
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