Some Emission Reduction Initiatives by Telecom Infra Cos

Some of the initiatives taken by telecom infrastructure companies to reduce diesel usage alongwith reduction in overall energy consumption thereby reducing carbon emission include:

Deployment of renewable energy solution at cell site to power the sites using solar energy, wind energy and bio-based solutions.

Conversion of indoor BTS to outdoor BTS has led to savings of more than 4 tonnes of CO2 emissions/site. With reduced load, outdoor sites have more potential for conversion to diesel free sites via battery extensions. Use of efficient battery banks. Variable DG sets. Diesel free sites; sites which consume less than 30 litres of diesel per month, which is used for maintenance and operation purposes.

On the active domain, the load per BTS has been reduced from 2.5-3kW/BTS to less than 1.5kW/BTS. This has led to a reduction of 44% in per BTS energy consumption.

Passive infrastructure sharing has led to over 25% sharing even for 2 tenancy sites over non-shared sites. This impact intensifies to almost 45% for four tenancy sites.

Newer tower configurations like distributed antennae systems have also resulted in reduced energy consumption per unit of connectivity.

Free Cooling Units (FCU) along with other technologies like Sleep mode BTS, etc. also have led to reduction in per connection carbon footprint reduction.