With rising concern over the lasting impact of climate change, the need to transition to a more sustainable future has never been greater. This has created a tremendous opportunity for CSPs because they have a presence with enterprises across industries, billions of customers and thousands of suppliers. This puts them at the epicenter of commerce and everyday life. Leveraging this position provides them with a unique role that can help address the challenges the world faces today with climate change.
To understand how impactful CSPs can be in building a net zero economy, just take a look at social media surfing. As outlined in a blog by sustainability solutions provider Greenspector, a typical social media surfer in 2021 using an internet search provider (ISP) network generated the equivalent of 60 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions a year by surfing the 10 most popular social media apps. This is about the same amount as a 535km car trip. When extrapolated across the market of 4.3bn global mobile users, the total is equivalent to 262m tons of CO2 emissions annually - or slightly more than the total yearly emissions generated in Spain. [i]
Many CSPs have already begun efforts to reduce their carbon footprints and through their products and services, have supported broader sustainability achievements. Leveraging their experience, core capabilities and growth ambitions, CSPs can continue the momentum toward a truly sustainable model for themselves, their partners, consumers, and communities. This requires putting sustainability at the forefront of daily business and investment strategy, as well as adapting their key performance indicators (KPIs.)
New roles for CSPs
There are three pivotal roles CSPs can embrace to help lead the world towards greatly reducing CO2 emissions while maintaining profits and driving growth for their organizations.
- Sustainability Leaders who set an example for their internal and external stakeholders. These companies set bold environmental goals, invest in sustainable infrastructure and tools, and create new ways of working and products geared towards sustainability. Sustainability Leadership for CSPs is about setting a bold ambition for carbon reduction and executing aggressively through continuous integration of climate considerations into their products and services across lines of business. For example, in addition to adopting cloud technology, a CSP might directly focus on reducing energy consumption. This could involve proactive network monitoring and maintenance with artificial intelligence, minimizing new material usage through circular economy principles, and expanding the use of renewable energy.
- Ecosystem Enablers who set new standards for peers and influence infrastructure. Ecosystem enabler stewardship for CSPs reduces emissions across the value chain and helps partners and adjacent industries to innovate and develop new sustainable products and services. Their focus extends beyond in-house emissions to product and service downstream emissions and further opportunities for carbon abatement. Ecosystem enablers further develop the business need for responsible business by implementing sustainable standards and requirements for their vendors, partners, and peers. Moreover, they capitalize on sustainability impact on a far larger scale. Technological innovations in connectivity and ICT services, when implemented with the environment in mind, will change the world’s energy consumption habits.
- Consumer Champions who innovate their products and services. The Consumer champion role calls on CSPs to use their influence, resources and relationships to educate consumers of all types on the environmental impact of their activities. They can identify ways to reduce that impact and drive improved sustainability outcomes in their communities. CSPs’ products, services and initiatives can help support better, more informed consumer choices and can drive consumer behavior change.
By adopting these roles, CSPs can solidify their position at the forefront of environmental leadership. Innovation and commitment are key to building a sustainable global society, as well as driving profitable revenue growth and business services. By showcasing their efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in their day-to-day operations and delivering products, services and guidance to address sustainability more broadly, they can help position the communications industry as the standard-bearer.
Sustainability and digital transformation
Embarking on this journey towards sustainability is similar to CSPs current journey of digital transformation. In fact, by addressing digital and sustainability transformation simultaneously, CSP executives can define what is possible and lead in the market. As the below figure highlights, a 2020 Accenture study of 4,050 senior executives across industries found that companies pursuing a simultaneous “twin transformation” of digital and sustainability goals are two-and-a-half times more likely than other firms to be among tomorrow’s strongest-performing businesses.
Action Items for CSPs
CSPs that pursue sustainability quickly have the chance to define the new market opportunity and build advantages before slow-moving peers even get started. Below are a few things to start investing in today to start the journey.
- Operations and hardware: Strategic investment in newer, more efficient chips, network infrastructure and other materials (when necessary) integrating sustainability into daily business decisions.
- Circular economy and supply chain optimization: Investment in products, procurement, innovation and supply chain to infuse sustainability in the full lifecycle of a product inclusive of end of life.
- Energy management: Investment in consolidated data-driven tools that can provide a holistic view of energy sources, pricing and utilization. These tools also generate insights about the overall organization of the network and network operating expenses and help find opportunities to integrate more renewables, remedy inefficiencies and optimize buying schemes.
In addition, CSPs should also find new ways to work in the following areas:
- Organization, Processes and Reporting: Many CSPs have convened some form of internal leadership on sustainability. These internal leaders focus on building new capabilities around sustainability, guiding and offering teams ongoing support during the process. They also champion investments in the right tools, data management and enterprise processes necessary to boost sustainability so the workforce is equipped to implement change. Sustainability metrics need to be engrained into overall business metrics, like net subscribers, to become a core tenet of a company. A pragmatic, widely visible sustainability change management roadmap, aligned with CSPs emission reduction long term plan, drives change, as does quarterly accountability.
- Innovation: As organizations recognize savings, new investments increase and as employees learn more about sustainability, new ideas grow. Further, as tools and data tracking investments mature, new opportunities are identified. A sustainably oriented approach to creative development and problem solving will continuously drive new ways to change practices, processes and products and services. This will help move a company closer to or even beyond the net-zero goalpost.
The road to a net-zero economy
By embracing the new environmental stewardship roles outlined above, CSPs have a unique opportunity to help themselves and the environment. At the same time, they can also position the telecommunications sector as a major source of sustainability transformation and innovation.
Sources:
[i] "What is the environmental footprint for social media applications?", Kimberley Derudder, Greenspector, October 26, 2021
