This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 11, 2022 - April 17, 2022

The shift to remote — or hybrid — work and learning arrangements because of Covid-19 has increased the demand for data consumption and connectivity with zero downtime. While this has cut down carbon emissions from transportation, it is not without its sustainability challenges. 

Higher demand for connectivity means more energy has to be consumed, as a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report on this topic highlighted last June. The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is already responsible for up to 4% of global carbon emissions, which is twice that of the aviation sector. Of this, the telecommunication (telecom) sector contributes 1.6%. BCG projected that as global data use grew by 60% in 2021, the ICT industry could become responsible for up to 14% of global carbon dioxide emissions by 2040.

However, at this point when telecommunications companies (telcos) have to increase their capacity to provide the connectivity that fuels the digital economy, the industry could be in a good position to do it right without increasing its carbon footprint. 

In fact, it is a challenge that many telcos are aware of and hope to address, including those in Malaysia, observes Philip Ling, head of sustainability at Digi. 

Digi is part of the CEO Action Network, which organised a roundtable discussion for CEOs from the telecom industry last year. 

“One of the things I took away from this discussion was that policies have to come in very strongly. If your expectation is for the internet to be on 24/7, everyone has high-speed internet and 30 Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices at home, then what about the ambition for a low-carbon society? We can’t have everything,” says Ling.

This is a dialogue that stakeholders, whether it is the government or companies, need to have. To have the best of both worlds, the energy mix in the national grid will need to be clean, Ling says. 

“We started having discussions with Tenaga Nasional Bhd (Tenaga) and its counterparts in East Malaysia because that is an externality. Until Malaysia has a cleaner energy mix, there is only so much solar we can put up. It cannot accommodate the kind of energy demand we need, so there needs to be a national-level policy [to push this].”

The use of new technologies to modernise the network and make it more efficient is also needed. “Every time you invest in a new technology, like the 5G network, it’s supposed to be more energy-efficient. As we move towards that, both the economic and political systems have to be able to support the ambition of a hi-tech and low-carbon society,” Ling says.

With the higher demand for connectivity, more data centres are needed, but data centres are huge energy guzzlers. BCG predicts that they will use 8% of global electricity by 2030. This is already a concern in many countries. Singapore, for instance, lifted its moratorium on new data centre projects only in January. New projects will have to be energy-efficient. 

Again, there are technologies that can address this. Ling cites, for example, that artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems that can automatically put data centres to sleep when usage is low. “If everyone expects it to be on 24/7, then it won’t work, of course. But we know demand is low in business districts at night, so it could go to sleep,” he says.

“But as the recent Telenor Group tech trends report shows, we are also looking at edge data centres that bring the cloud closer to consumers. Less energy is consumed to transmit the data. But a lot of research is needed to find out whether it is more energy-efficient to have small-scale or huge data centres.”

It is important to note that these technologies and changes require the collaboration of ecosystem players and consumers as well, Ling adds.

The BCG report also brings up an interesting potential for telcos to help other industries become more energy-efficient by providing connectivity-related solutions, such as IoT for agriculture and logistics. 

Digital twins could also be used to simulate the performance of physical assets and processes, so companies can discover opportunities to reduce emissions. 

Carbon emissions from the use of electricity are the biggest hurdle that telcos such as Digi have to tackle. The use of diesel and petrol for off-grid sites are also a challenge. 

The company has been taking steps to address this issue. According to its 2020 Sustainability Report, Digi has a road map to adopt more solar and hybrid solutions for its remote off-grid sites, convert fuel-powered sites to grid power, and use lithium-ion batteries to replace diesel-powered generators at off-grid sites. 

In addition, the company has been modernising its network to consume less energy. An example is the adoption of an AI-based system to manage its radio access network energy consumption, which provides automated power savings during hours of low usage. 

It also invested in fibre networks, which use less energy to power the signals and require less energy for cooling. Overall, carbon emissions in 2020 decreased by 5% year on year, owing to these network modernisation and operational efficiencies. 

The impact of climate change could make things more difficult, though. The recent floods were an example.

“We’ve done a lot to minimise our petrol and diesel consumption but, when the floods came, we had to set up our portable sites to run on diesel because the grid was down [in those areas]. It’s a bit discouraging because all that we did in the past year could be wiped out in three weeks,” says Ling.

Projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Malaysia’s climate reports to the United Nations have highlighted that flooding and extreme weather events could increase because of climate change in the coming decade. These are climate risks that companies like Digi will have to assess as well. 

“How do we find better solutions to this? How do we collaborate with Tenaga to mitigate disaster risk? I’m very glad that the 12th Malaysia Plan has a long-term commitment [to look at climate change]. Hopefully, we’ll see more movements in this area,” says Ling.

While climate risk assessments are currently done within its enterprise risk management framework, he hopes to give it more focus so that the company can identify where the gaps are. 

“In the floods, we had some sites that were affected by the water, but most sites were down because the Tenaga substations were down. There’s nothing you can do about it if you have no access to electricity. These are important issues that different sectors have to wake up to. And, of course, it becomes more important if we’re talking about providing internet as a utility moving forward. How can we protect these assets?” says Ling.

To make that happen, he hopes to see cross-cutting strategies in various industries, not just on environmental issues but also on the governance and social pillars. 

“We are dependent on each other as a value chain. That’s why we need to look at governance and how the government comes in to facilitate this movement by introducing standards or best practices,” says Ling.

“The industry can no longer work in silos. For issues like this, mass and scale are where you can make a difference. We also have to be more critical of ourselves because we need to pivot. These two years of working from home has made the consumption of data rise exponentially. To stay true to the path of ESG (environmental, social and governance), we definitely need to step up.”

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