Mobile Carbon Impact: How Mobile Communications Technology is Enabling Carbon Emissions Reduction

In 2015, GeSI commissioned the Carbon Trust to complete the first ever bottom-up quantification of the significant areas of carbon emissions abatement enabled by mobile communications technology across the USA and Europe.

The analysis found that currently, annual savings are in excess of 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Comparing the annual saving with the emissions resulting from mobile networks, means that the carbon emissions abatement enabled by mobile communications technology is approximately five times greater than the carbon emissions associated with mobile networks. .

The research identified ten categories where mobile communications technology is having a material carbon emissions abatement impact. Within these ten categories over one hundred individual mechanisms were
identified, of which some sixty mechanisms were analysed in detail as they were shown to have a clear abatement mechanism with credible data to support the carbon abatement calculations.

The findings showed that the use of mobile communications technology is having a substantial positive influence on reducing global carbon emissions, which is far greater than the direct emissions related to providing the technology. It is having a net positive impact and there is a clear potential for the power of this abatement effect to continue multiplying.

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