Reader Forum: Mobile jumps in where COP15 stalls

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@ardenmediaco.com or tford@ardenmediaco.com.
Despite the hype, hysteria and hapless outcome of the recent COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen, the world continues to turn. Some things do not change. The global population is growing at 1.1% gross per annum. Based on today’s population of 6.8 billion, that equates to 75 million new mouths to feed this year.
A lack of global coordination continues such that carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is set to rise from 390 parts per million today to 500 parts per million by 2050 or so. To prevent climate catastrophe, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends the maximum limit of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere should be 350 parts per million. Europe believes 450 parts is the maximum threshold if we are to keep to global warming to 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial global temperatures. But with no deal sealed, no global market for the price of carbon established, no cap and trade system in place, such calculations and predictions are little comfort or use. As global citizens, we appear to be tying our feet together as we start a marathon race to cope with a warming planet.
Where will the race take us? What can be done to stop CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere from rising to 500 parts per million, or 1,000 parts? Well, we have three levers to play with: a hop, skip and jump if you will.
First, the hop: energy providers could generate power from non-carbon sources, such as solar, wind and other renewables but to achieve affordable scale and deliver the amount of power demanded by 7 billion-plus people, the champion here is nuclear. But a nuclear solution is weighed down by a ton of political baggage and shackled by security concerns limiting its availability to certain parts of the world.
Second, the skip: carbon capture and storage solutions are emerging as a viable means of reducing carbon leaked into the atmosphere from traditional energy sources. But CCS can be very costly and, like nuclear but for other reasons, is limited in its geographic scope, making it less viable in certain parts of the world where perhaps it is needed most.
Finally, the jump: as global citizens we can look to lower our energy use and change the way we live, work and play by leveraging technology. Smart mobile solutions designed to lower emissions in other sectors can have the same impact as taking one in every three cars off the road. For example, Isotrak’s fleet management system is designed to cut fuel costs, lower CO2 emissions, reduce fleet size and save staff time. Using standard SIM cards to transfer data over Vodafone’s network, U.K. supermarket chain Asda’s fleet saved 29 million road kilometres, or 28 Kt CO2, and cut fuel costs by 23% over three years. Add in broader ICT solutions and collectively the enabling impact could be equivalent to shutting down more than 4,500 coal-fired power stations by 2020.
The mobile and ICT sectors are delivering carbon saving solutions around the globe. But to realise the full enabling potential – around 20% of global emissions – governments need to catalyse additional demand by taking a holistic approach to ICT policies. Smart mobile and ICT solutions must be included in government policies and investment programmes across all sectors with the range of government departments responsible for energy, transport, buildings, healthcare and education all incentivised to leverage technology to improve energy efficiency and extend access of services to those underserved. Governments must also support the development of open standards, especially for machine to machine communications, so that interoperability is achieved and unit costs are lowered from scale efficiencies. In addition, a common framework to measure energy and environmental performance needs to be facilitated by the public sector which should also support broadband infrastructure deployment.
Whereas COP15 focused on a top down target setting agenda, government support for the mobile and ICT sectors as described above will accelerate a sustainable bottom up approach to lowering carbon emissions. By not answering industry’s call, there is a risk that the top down aspirations and targets of world leaders will remain just that.
The ICT industry is delivering many solutions to fight climate change now and is investing in more for tomorrow, for example programmes in smart metering, grids, buildings, transportation and logistics. The key to achieving massive global scale required to stop climate change rests in government hands. Time is running out. Governments must to do the right thing and unlock our green future and unleash the rainbow of problem solving talent inherent in human kind.