A manufacturer's view on sustainable ICT

Ulrich Barth Alcatel-Lucent ulrich.barth@alcatel-lucent.de

Global warming and other environmental issues have brought sustainability high up on the political and socio-economic agenda. Thus, sustainability is also an important topic for the ICT industry. As a leading manufacturer of ICT equipment Alcatel-Lucent is committed to doing its part in tackling global environmental challenges by driving an eco-sustainable communications transformation that will yield tangible business benefits.  

The company’s holistic eco-sustainability programme focuses on designing and deploying intelligent, environmentally responsible access, transport and core networks, with a structured framework based on innovation at multiple levels. 

In addition to its cutting-edge technology, Alcatel–Lucent helps businesses and consumers reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carbon-reducing communication applications and professional services to assess, upgrade and manage multi-vendor service provider networks to maximum efficiency. The company also has developed and implemented corporate strategies and practices to reduce the environmental impact of its own operations.  

Sustainability covers several areas

Alcatel-Lucent is delivering eco-sustainable products and services in five areas:

1. Delivering energy efficient products at all layers of the telecommunications network.

2. Delivering alternate energy-sourced products and services (e.g. solar and wind-powered product offerings).

3. Optimizing network engineering, design and other services to help customers grow networks with the least eco-impact.

4. Offering comprehensive end-of-product-life solutions that extend the life of their investments and provide product takeback and recycling services.

5. Enabling other industries and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint through smart grids, smart energy metering, building management, telecommuting and other means. 

Developing energy-efficient equipment

Alcatel-Lucent has taken on research activities targeted at developing power-efficient technologies for telecommunications equipment. This research will enable communications hardware to operate more efficiently as well as enable applications that can have an even larger impact on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. On the equipment side, engineers are conducting research in areas that reduce the power required to transmit information over wires, fibres and through the air. For example, in the mobile communication area, research is currently underway on new amplifier designs, remote radio heads and intelligent antenna arrays. New network architectures that can reduce the overall demand for power while providing increased network functionality are also being explored. For example, arrays of femto base stations combined with a few macro base stations can be significantly more energy-efficient than networks based on solely one or the other technology. Additionally, increased use of photonics in components is resulting in decreased heat generation.   

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs is conducting research to identify new techniques to improve thermal management performance while reducing the energy required to cool equipment. Innovative materials and components are being developed, including thermal interface materials to conduct heat, vapour chambers to spread heat, and heat sinks to dissipate heat into the air stream. Advanced manufacturing technologies are being exploited to control material properties on the micro and nano-scale to enhance thermal contacts and optimize air flow patterns. 

International collaboration for sustainability

Through its participation in the European research cooperation framework, Alcatel-Lucent is a key partner in ADDRESS, an Integrating Project under EU Framework Programme 7 (FP7). The project is co-coordinated by Enel Distribuzione and includes 24 other partners from the energy sector, the industrial and domestic electricity technology and ICT market, universities and European research institutes. ADDRESS aims at developing the best technical and economic solution for enabling “active demand”, this means enabling consumers to proactively interact with the power system market by means of real-time interaction based on price and volume signals and by promoting the exploitation of sources of renewable energy and the development of a distributed generation model.  

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs has been preparing specific project proposals in the context of FP7 Calls 4 and 5. One of the major Integrating Project proposals under preparation and managed by Alcatel-Lucent deals with “Green Networking.” The main focus is mobile cellular networks and their evolution. The overall goal of the project proposal is to address the global environmental challenge by providing more functionality and performance at lower energy consumption. Cost-effective mechanisms will be achieved to drastically reduce energy waste and improve the energy efficiency of existing and future communication systems, without compromising the users’ perceived quality of service and system capacity.

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