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Orange’s Group CTO calls for collective industry action on sustainability

Michelle Donegan
26 Jan 2023
Orange’s Group CTO calls for collective industry action on sustainability

Orange’s Group CTO calls for collective industry action on sustainability

Laurent Leboucher, Group CTO of Orange and SVP of Orange Innovation Networks, shared some of the work the operator is doing to cut carbon emissions to meet its target of becoming net zero by 2040 at The Green Network Summit produced by TelecomTV. Recommended action includes addressing energy and CO2 impact directly within telcos’ OSS systems.

He stressed the importance of working with suppliers, customers, and partners; the need for reliable, standardized data collection; and collaboration through industry organisations, namechecking the NGMN Alliance and TM Forum.

“We are not alone in this sustainability journey…It’s an industry endeavor and it’s important that we solve this as a collective industry approach because it’s a huge challenge,” he said.

Reducing its carbon footprint is embedded in Orange’s Engage 2025 corporate strategy. One of the initiatives that supports the strategy is the Green ITN action plan for improving energy efficiency in networks and IT systems. Measures include sharing infrastructure where possible, using energy saving features, supplying renewable energy to radio sites, as well as leveraging data and artificial intelligence to optimize network deployment and operations, just to name a few.

Orange reported that at the end of 2021, it had reduced its own carbon emissions (that is, Scope 1 and Scope 2) by 12.1% compared to 2015 levels. The operator aims for a 30% reduction by 2025.

When it comes to reducing power consumption in its networks, Leboucher said, “measuring and getting good, accurate and actional data is of the essence.” He backs the NGMN’s recommendation for developing standardized metering at mobile network sites with a “generic unified architecture” for data collection.

He pointed to an energy management information system (EMIS) that Orange built to collect power consumption data “in a very reliable and fast as possible way” across its markets.

As detailed in the TM Forum report, The sustainable telco: engineering networks for net zero, Orange’s centralized EMIS shows how its networks use energy in each country where it operates. Data analytics and big data use cases are applied to optimize energy use across radio sites in a country. The system detects anomalies in billing, energy usage, battery temperature, and energy efficiency of individual radio sites. An optimized radio site can save a country 4% of the amount of electricity consumed by regular sites, for example.

A further step operators can take to monitor and manage energy use and carbon emissions is to rely on their well-established back office systems, according to Leboucher. He said the telecom industry has built “sophisticated network management systems” that address issues such as quality, performance, and charging.

“What we need to do now is to address energy and CO2 impact directly within our OSS systems … It should be feasible, because we have already proved that we can do it for other purposes. That should be the target of the industry. I believe there is room for collaboration between organisations like NGMN, but also TM forum, working together to address that journey”, he said.

Cleaning up the supply chain 

While Orange is making headway with cutting its own Scope 1 and 2 emissions, the indirect Scope 3 emissions are the largest part of its footprint and the most difficult to address, as they are for all operators. These are indirect emissions from production and the use and disposal of purchased goods and services – that is, all the emissions produced by its entire supply chain.

For Orange, Scope 3 accounts for about 80% of its total CO2 emissions. It has set a target for a 14% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2025, compared to 2018.

Network equipment suppliers would seem to be likely culprits for carbon contributions, but Leboucher said this is “not the most important part of Scope 3.” Rather, that distinction goes to “field operations when they are subcontracted to third parties, and we definitely need to optimize that part.”

However, it is still “extremely important” to reduce the carbon footprint of its network equipment, and he said Orange is working closely with its suppliers, focusing at first on the “main vendors” that have the “strongest CO2 impact.”

For example, Orange champions circularity and prioritizes extending the life of equipment through reuse and buying refurbished equipment. The operator has found that in many cases using equipment for longer is better from a CO2 perspective than replacing it with new, more energy efficient products.

Orange takes “circularity lifecycle analysis” into account and has added specific scoring for this in its procurement process. It is now a “very important part of our global scoring” in buying decisions, said Leboucher.

He acknowledged the impact this will have on the operator’s vendor partners in the supply chain and even on business models, which is why Orange is working with them and has found them to be supportive. “Our main vendor partners are also very serious about it, and we have deep interactions [with them] on lifecycle analysis of the networking equipment,” he said.

Here, again, data is important as Leboucher said the operator needed to work with suppliers to “ensure we have the right information from them.” He flagged the NGMN’s recommended “sourcing criteria checklist” as a useful guide from the organization’s recent Green Future Networks: Supply Chain Sustainability paper.

Operators are on both sides of the Scope 3 emissions challenge – as a buyer and as a supplier of services and equipment to customers. That means all the work that goes into creating models for Scope 1, 2, and 3 are essential not only for operator’s own emissions targets but also for those increasingly required by their business customers.

“We are being asked [by B2B customers] to provide a full set of information, a full lifecycle analysis of CO2 emissions because we are part of their scope three,” said Leboucher. He also noted that there is “growing appetite” from consumers and B2B customers for “eco-design” products and services.