Working with others
Climate change is a global challenge and cannot be resolved in isolation. We are working with others in our industry and beyond to understand and reduce our impact.
Industry partnerships
Vodafone is part of both the UK and EU Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, working in partnership with governments and other leading businesses to support international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The UK Corporate Leaders Group is facilitated by HRH The Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment Programme and the University of Cambridge Programme for Industry.
Vodafone is a member of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) Climate Change Working Group (CCWG). The CCWG focuses on quantifying the overall impact of ICT on greenhouse gas emissions and developing measurement systems that will help monitor the effectiveness of solutions. The CCWG is developing a web-based initiative that will convert energy and materials expended by ICT to CO2-equivalents to enable these emissions to be ‘balanced’ through offsetting programmes.
While the ICT industry will continue to emit greenhouse gases, its products, such as video and teleconferencing, will help society reduce carbon emissions. The CCWG also plans to promote the inclusion of video and teleconferencing offset credits on existing carbon exchange markets or voluntary regimes that include travel. This will help promote ICT services that can be used to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Vodafone, with other GeSI members and The Climate Group commissioned a study from McKinsey about the climate impacts of ICT and the potential for using ICT to help other industries reduce their carbon footprint, see Using our products to reduce climate impact. The findings will be released in June 2008.
In February 2008, Vodafone joined the Green Power Market Development Group to share good practice on renewable energy. The Green Power Market is a joint initiative between The Climate Group and World Resources Institute.
Vodafone contributed to a technical report by the Environmental Engineering group of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) entitled, 'The reduction of energy consumption in telecommunications equipment and related infrastructure'. This document brings together ideas from operators and manufacturers to increase the energy efficiency of telecommunication systems -providing useful technical guidance.
Vodafone is a founding member of a working group to define a Code of Conduct for the energy use of data centres in the EU. The Code of Conduct is a voluntary initiative designed to bring interested stakeholders together to raise awareness of energy efficiency in data centres and promote best practice.
We also worked with China Mobile – in which we have a minority stake – to agree a set of common specifications for equipment energy use, and to develop renewable energy solutions for use in our networks. This is helping to promote the development of efficient base stations in China.
Engaging with experts
We organised a workshop in March 2007 for nine experts on climate change – representing government, NGOs, industry and investors – as part of our series of Vodafone CR Dialogues.
The experts believed that we are in a position to make a significant contribution to a low-carbon economy and could demonstrate real leadership on this. We used their feedback to inform our strategy on energy and climate change.
The experts welcomed our Group target to reduce network carbon dioxide emissions per unit of data transmitted by 40% but suggested that an absolute target would be more effective. We have now set an absolute target.
They thought our strategy to reduce our own emissions is on the right track but that we should also help our customers reduce their emissions. We plan to hold another focus group in 2008/09 on how customers can use our products to reduce their carbon footprint.
Working with suppliers
We are working with our suppliers to improve the energy efficiency of network equipment (see performance).
Vodafone has recently joined the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Supply Chain Leaders’ Collaboration and will be working with approximately 250 suppliers to measure their carbon footprint as a part of a cross industry pilot to create a standard approach to measuring carbon in the supply chain. See a comment from the Carbon Disclosure Project on our approach to climate change and supply chain.