6.3. Industry initiatives

As mentioned, the ICT and E&M sectors face various challenges to decarbonise. However, through the power sector and purchases of renewable electricity, ICT is well positioned to keep pace with future targets. In the past, the ICT sector has responded proactively to address its emissions challenge and unlock opportunities for greater energy efficiency across the sector. Leading players within the ICT sector have increased their climate ambition. In the last 10 years, the sector has been taking steps to decarbonise, through accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, implementing energy efficiency programmes, and incorporating the use of renewables into the energy grid (GSMA, Climate Action Handbook, 2019). This GSMA handbook is ‘designed to be a high level guide to climate change for anyone working in or with the mobile industry. It explains the need for timely and decisive action, how emissions are categorised and the related terminology, before focusing on how the mobile industry is responding and potential next steps'. The ICT sector is making positive strides to address its energy consumption. ICT companies, specifically data centre operators such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Equinix, along with network operators, continue to increase their share of renewable electricity, through the procurement of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Leading by example, ICT companies have been responsible for over 50% of corporate renewables procurement, globally, in the past five years (Kamiya, 2020; BloombergNEF, 2020; Financial Times, 2021).

Overall, the ICT sector has the means at its disposal to achieve deep decarbonisation, through energy efficiency and use of renewable electricity. However, there is a need for industry-led reporting and increased transparency of ICT companies’ energy and carbon impacts. The following section will outline several industry challenges and opportunities to tackle the associated emissions for video streaming of data centres, networks and end-user devices.