Is mobile technology energy efficient? | Huawei European Talks

ANGELIKI

Hello everyone and welcome to another Huawei European Talk. My name is Angeliki Dedopoulou and I am working for the Policy to Market team for the Brussels office, focusing on policy topics around artificial intelligence and new technologies. Today, our guest is Mr Joop Hazenberg, director of EU external affairs at GSMA.

Hi, Joop.

JOOP

Hello! Hi!

ANGELIKI

So my first question to you will be: how digital technologies can contribute to the Green Deal priorities of the European Commission?

JOOP

So, the most important thing about ICT is that it enables other sectors to reduce emission and mobile technology (which is 5G and 4G) is able to connect everything and everyone. Like in 2025, we will probably have 25 billion devices on the planet connected to each other. And that will lead to enormous efficiency gains and also much more savings. And already, we have this effect, this ‘enablement effect’. We see that the current 4G networks can result in 10 times more savings in sectors, in terms of energy efficiency, than without those technologies.

ANGELIKI

Indeed. These priorities are very important in the context of the Green Deal and this leads me to the second question which will be: How ICT solutions to network contribute, in general, to achieve climate neutrality?

JOOP

Well. Yeah, let’s first start with the big picture. So by 2050, the European Union wants to be climate neutral. So we won’t emit any CO2 anymore. And for that we need to change our economies and societies drastically. So we really need to innovate and change our systems.

And ICT can help with that. For instance, with self-driving and electric cars, automated farms, also with working from home as many people do now in this Covid crisis. And we need to get smart grids, so decentralised energy systems full of renewable energy. And for all the systems to thrive, you need ICT and you need mobile technologies, in particular to process all these amounts of data and make those new systems work. So ICT is really an indispensable and crucial part of the transition to a climate neutral Europe.

ANGELIKI

Thank you very much, Joop. I would like now to ask you about GSMA’s recent study which is about the deployment of new network technologies, such as fibre and 5G. And you specifically mentioned in this report that these new technologies will further improve the energy efficiency of telecom operators. Could you please elaborate a bit further on this?

JOOP

So, 4G is energy efficient but if you look at 5G, it has the potential to – in the next ten years – become up to twenty times more energy efficient compared to 4G, per gigabyte transferred over the network. And that is important because with the advent of 5G in our world, we will see an enormous boost in the traffic of data. And of course, in the last ten years, we have seen it with 4G and the introduction of video, WhatsApp and other apps. So, there was already an enormous surge but that will go on even further. So, with 5G you can make networks more efficient without losing the ability to share so much data.

ANGELIKI

Thank you very much Joop for this answer. I would like to ask you: according to you what is the role of the telecommunications sector in the circular economy? Can you name three to four good practices of the sector that EU policy makers can take into consideration to better define future policies?

JOOP

So, the most important one is actually the ‘Take-back’ scheme that the European Commission wants to have for mobile phones. And many of our members already have such systems where customers can bring back their old mobile phones and swap them for a new one. So that we make sure that all these phones are recycled and that we retrieve all the, for instance, very expensive metals that are in these kinds of devices. So, that is a really important contribution to the circular economy by the mobile sector.

ANGELIKI

Thank you very much indeed, Joop. And, I would like to ask you now, leading to this question, and more in the context of Green Deal: What should be the focus, you believe, of the European Commission to achieve the Green Deal during the recovery period?

JOOP

Yes, of course. We now have a recovery fund of 750 billion Euros, which is fantastic. But we really need to make sure that also investments in digital technologies are being improved. Because, we see an enormous investment gap for the role of 5G in Europe – it’s about 150 billion Euros. And without 5G, we cannot really make a transition to a better economy which is less damaging for our environment when it comes to climate or nature. So, we really to go to this next level of the networks.

ANGELIKI

Indeed. Connectivity plays an important role when we want to deploy important technologies, like, for example, artificial intelligence and also explore these technologies also in the context of the EU Green Deal but also in other sustainability practices in the context of the EU.

Thank you very much, Joop. It was great having you on Huawei European Talk today.

JOOP

Thank you, Angeliki and have a good summer.