Rise of the machines (again)

John C. Tanner
03 Sep 2009
00:00

Sidebar: How M2M could save the planet

Accenture and Vodafone are touting M2M's green credentials as a way to reduce CO2. But it's no silver bullet, writes Ovum's Jeremy Green

A recent detailed study by Accenture and Vodafone builds on earlier modeling to reveal concrete and credible examples of how mobile communications can help to reduce carbon emissions. The study claims targeted implementation of wireless communications could save 113Mt of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, including other greenhouse gases), reduce spending on energy by E43 billion, and require around a billion connections for mobile operators by 2020 within the EU25 countries.

The study covers 25 EU countries, and also provides some consideration of Australia and India. Eighty percent of the identified carbon savings would be enabled by M2M services. Some 80Mt of CO2e could be saved in India through the application of M2M in the electricity generation, transmission and consumption sector alone, says the report.

The report consciously builds on the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) report Smart 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age, which argued that ICT could deliver 7.8Gt of CO2e savings, representing 15% of total CO2e emissions in 2020. However, it differs in that it takes a much more detailed and concrete approach, and focuses exclusively on select mobile technologies rather than ICT as a whole.

It finds that mobile technology could reduce CO2e emissions by 2.4% of EU 2020 totals - a smaller proportion than the GeSI report, but much more closely tied to actual data, and therefore much more credible than the slightly Panglossian tone of the earlier document.

The Accenture-Vodafone analysis breaks down the possible carbon-reduction opportunities to a shortlist of 13, organized into the broad categories of smart logistics, smart grids, smart manufacturing (i.e. real-time monitoring of high-value equipment) smart cities (i.e. advanced traffic management) and dematerialization (remote working schemes, video conferencing and e-commerce).

However, it is clear that neither wireless M2M nor ICT in general can be a silver bullet that can solve the problem of how to reduce emissions without impacting on growth. The study finds savings of up to 2.4% of EU25 emissions in 2020; by way of a comparison, it says that a 'business as usual' scenario will deliver reductions of 8.8% by 2020 against 1990 levels. The 2.4% savings would bring the EU25 somewhat closer to its target of a 20% cut in emissions by 2020, although some other authoritative sources suggest rather higher levels are required.

To the authors' credit, the report contains detailed and strong recommendations as to what should be done to encourage and stimulate the deployment of technology-based approaches to emissions reduction. It rightly gives first place to the need to "deliver an effective price for carbon".

-Jeremy Green is the Mobile Practice leader at Ovum
 

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