Cutting cost and carbon with mobile services
Going wireless has changed the way we live and work. Now, it can help us save the planet.
A recent report by Vodafone and Accenture shares how wireless telecom can help other industries reduce carbon emissions and save energy costs. The research quantifies opportunities within five key mobile service areas:
- Dematerialization – replacing physical with virtual. For example, working remotely or through telepresence instead of traveling.
- Smart grid – making electricity grids more efficient with devices that monitor and optimize energy use.
- Smart logistics – monitoring and tracking vehicles to optimize loads, speeds, routes and maintenance.
- Smart cities – improving traffic and utilities to reduce congestion.
- Smart manufacturing – putting modules in products to help predict maintenance needs.
By 2020, these mobile services can significantly cut carbon emissions — by about 113 million tonnes of CO2e in the European Union alone. And it saves €43 billion ($63.2 billion U.S.) in energy costs.
These savings will require 1 billion mobile connections, which is five times more than all the current mobile connections in Western Europe. About 87% of these would be machine-to-machine (M2M) connections.
The telecom industry has a big role to play in innovatively applying wireless services. We can live smarter and greener.
