Sustainability for telecoms is a journey without end

ADVA has set itself ambitious carbon emission reduction targets. The policy serves its long-term business interests, it says, as doing nothing will be very costly.

ADVA became, in 2019, only the fourth company in Germany to achieve approval for its emissions target to limit global warming to 2oC above pre-industrial temperatures. 

Klaus GrobeLast year ADVA adopted more stringent emissions targets to limit global warming to 1.5oC, with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) organisation approving its programme.

Trimming half a degree centigrade may sound minor but the resulting targets become far more challenging, says Klaus Grobe, director, sustainability at ADVA.

“Since there are massive non-linear physical processes in the background, that leads to massively more aggressive reduction targets,” he says.

If ADVA’s 2019 targets required a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from its car fleet and electricity needs, now they are to be reduced to a third by 2032.

“It’s a huge step,” says Grobe.

Motivation

Some 500 companies worldwide have SBTi-approved targets and another 500 companies are committed to getting approval, says Grobe. ADVA is a relatively small firm but it is part of what he refers to as the green 'Fortune 1000'.

Meeting the targets has a cost but the company's motivation is simple: “The cost of doing nothing will be much, much higher,” says Grobe.

Global warming's impact on supply chain management is one example, given that certain of ADVA's suppliers are in regions susceptible to rising sea levels.

ADVA is obliged to perform materiality analysis as part of its non-financial reporting. This is a complement to the risk analysis that companies report. "We have been doing this for four years and there is a persistent outcome: global warming ends up being the most pressing and relevant thing," says Grobe.

The goal of meeting more demanding targets is backed by ADVA’s top management. “It is something we want to do,” says Grobe. “It is also something some of our customers want us to do.”

Targets and Scopes

The company has until 2032 to meet its emission targets. "The SBTi is in favour of targets with a long run-time," says Grobe. The company has metrics that it will track and that will be externally checked.

Grobe says it is likely that as ADVA progresses with the targets, newer targets will be set. These could be related to global warming or other issues such as water, resource depletion or social domain issues. Social domain issues include corporate social responsibility (CSR), aspects in sustainability-related supply-chain management, modern slavery and conflict minerals.

"If you ask me, I expect it will be global warming," says Grobe.

To meet its targets, ADVA needs to address three greenhouse gas protocols, known as scopes.

Scope 1 refers to the company's car fleet while Scope 2 addresses the company's purchased electricity emissions. Scope 1 can be reduced by encouraging less driving and purchasing hybrid and electrical cars. For Scope 2, the strategy is to purchase more green electricity. Already ADVA's UK site in York uses renewable electricity only.

Scope 3 emissions refer to activities associated with a company. For example, the emissions attributed to ADVA's customers using its telecom equipment. Grobe says product emissions are by far its biggest Scope 3 contributor. Grobe adds that the power consumed by its products - a Scope 3 emissions issue for ADVA - is a Scope 2 issue for its telco customers.

ADVA is addressing multiple aspects that contribute to its Scope 3 emissions. One example is the carbon footprint associated with the production of components used in its products. Others include transportation logistics, business travel and employee commuting.

"Almost no one else does this to this level of detail with trackable numbers," says Grobe.

Equipment emissions

The emissions of telecoms equipment are directly influenced by the huge traffic growth over the years.

"The capacity of WDM [wavelength-division multiplexing] equipment has increased massively, some 100x, over the last 20 years," says Grobe. "The energy increase has been perhaps between 2x and 4x, certainly not 100x, so in this case it is difficult to reduce emissions."

To counter this, electricity emissions factors can be used such as renewable sources of electricity.

Grobe says ADVA's target for Scope 3 emissions reduction is 3 per cent only: "I say 'only'; it is a very, very aggressive target."

Grobe says he works with ADVA's CTO office to understand future component and product roadmap trends.

Looking out to 2032 requires a crystal ball, he says, but certain trends are clear. Moore's law is slowing down, as is the area shrinkage needed for bit storage.

"We are approaching quantum mechanics realms; we are some two orders of magnitude away from very definite physical limits," says Grobe.

This means that over the next two decades either the bit rate growth associated with the internet will slow down or it will become the biggest energy-consuming machine on earth. "The likelier case is the slowdown caused by higher energy cost," says Grobe.

However, ADVA stresses it isn't meeting energy but emission targets and it is confident they will be met. "If the internet used renewable energy exclusively, it may use a lot of energy but it would not produce emissions," says Grobe.

ADVA applies an eco-design guide to its hardware and platform designs that offers guidance for energy-efficient designs and how to design products for a circular economy.

In 2020, ADVA saw its business travel decline by 85 per cent while employee commuting was down by 70 per cent. The company is also transitioning from using air freight to sea freight and in 2020 the resulting emissions dropped a quarter. "That is massive," says Grobe.

Sustainability

Despite having fewer than 2,000 staff, ADVA believes it is one of the leading system vendors in terms of its sustainability policy.

Overall though, sustainability in the telecoms industry is very much being led by the operators. "It seems that the incumbent network operators - the BTs and Deutsche Telekoms - are in the lead," he said.

Grobe also cites the work of other systems vendors such as Ericsson and Nokia. Component vendors, however, are doing less. "The smaller component firms are reluctant to do more than they have to," says Grobe.