Batting for greater use of non-conventional energy resources in telecom and how pollution still can be further lowered; the telecom industry's who's who gathered for the 2nd International Conference on Green Telecom in New Delhi recently.
“The forum presented by the 2nd International Conference on Green Telecom provides the telecom industry an opportunity to discuss innovative ways to reduce energy spend and carbon-dioxide emissions through effective resource utilization alongside smart and holistic network design,” said Samar Mittal, head of global services sales India region, Nokia Siemens Networks.
Mittal while giving the keynote address of the conference, estimated that the telecom industry's energy needs will be 60,000 MW by 2050. ''Energy costs are rising,'' he warned. Alternate energy sources like solar panels were expensive and raise operational costs. Networks used 80% of the total energy in the industry. He quoted data to show how energy efficiency in 'mature markets' was almost three times that in emerging markets like India.
However, Rajan Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators' Association of India, revealed that a joint study of EMF of telecom equipment in hundred locations conducted by telecom operators, IIT Madras and Madurai Engineering College found that in each site the level was a thousand part of what international standards mandated.
“The total pollution level from the entire ICT industry was only 2% of the pollution in this country. As telecom industry forms less than 50% of the ICT total, the pollution from it alone could not be alarming,” he contended.
“Both globally and in India, our comprehensive range of energy efficient and environment friendly end-to-end solutions and our Flexi Base Stations are proven to consume exceptionally low power, and together with its small size contribute significantly to environmental performance and low CO2 footprint. Nokia Siemens Networks is constantly working on minimizing its carbon footprint as well as helping infrastructure companies' communication service providers in utilizing energy most efficiently. Nokia Siemens Networks were experimenting with new renewable energy technologies and that had saved 1.7 GHz of energy in twenty-five countries,” added Mittal.
Highlighting the lack of regulations on radiation and other pollutants from telecom towers and equipment, Rajiv Mehrotra, president of Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association (TEMA) said, “One telecom tower company uses 2 bn liter of diesel. In the West, they do not radiate at such high power in the tower,” he added. He also raised the point of danger from huge use of
diesel. “One base station leaves 60 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The numbers already installed spew 6 mn tons of CO2 every year-more cells, more noise and more radiation,” he remarked recalling that cell phones and towers would reach out to 6 lakh villages soon. His remark that sparrows die from radiation from these towers raised a stir in the audience of telecom operators and executives. “There is no law to regulate this,” he regretted. He called for immediate government action to enforce international standards here.
Adding to that, Gopal Das, CMD, BSNL, said,“Government must give power to towers and base stations to reduce use of diesel.” Government support was also needed to offset the high cost of using alternative sources of energy like solar panels. USO fund administrator Ajay Bhattacharya wanted the industry to come out with a fresh set of guidelines to reduce costs of energy use in every sector. The fund was now assisting the industry in extending its reach to rural areas. “Going green must bring economies in operation,” he stressed.
“Mobility being the major driver of communication in the country with wire lines very much limited, the cell phones were seen as having a disproportionate impact on pollution,” Mathews contended. Another major reason was the extremely limited availability of spectrum in India as against the wider range allotted in the
developed countries. This forced the Indian operators to install more cell sites to reach out to larger populations with lower allocation of spectrum.
Another cause was license requirements for a certain level of roll out of the service. “The operators have no choice but to make the best use of the lower spectrum resources,” the COAI DG pointed out. However, the operators were now moving from passive
infrastructure sharing to active infrastructure sharing. To reduce pollution, operators were using base stations that do not require air-conditioning. Diesel gensets were being substituted with hybrid ones. “We are aware of our responsibility,” he stressed.
According to H L Gupta, head, operations in networks, Bharti Airtel, the number of towers would go up from 3.4 lakh now to 4.6 lakh by 2015, base stations from 5.5 lakh to 10.7 lakh, the minutes of usage was rising even as average revenue per use was plunging. Use of green technology in 'each and every area of operations' was inevitable. The present situation where 60% of the energy came from diesel and 40% from the grid needed to be changed to at least half-half of energy from the two sources to reduce pollution. He suggested a mix of solar, wind and biomass for substituting diesel.
Dr Bibek Bandyopadhyay, advisor, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy , detailed government support for these technologies. Though initial costs of solar panels was high, the life cycle costs were economical and new materials like titanium dioxide in place of highly pure silicon were being tried that would reduce costs significantly. “We are working out cost reduction techniques in use of renewable sources,” he revealed.
Akanksha Singh
akankshas@cybermedia.co.in
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