Ignoring the potential

The Guardian and Mike Berners-Lee are under the impression that people should think again before using their mobile phones. Berners-Lee’s latest article, What’s the Carbon Footprint of using... a mobile phone, uncovers some interesting facts about the amount of CO2 released by making mobile phone calls. The answer they give to lowering a mobile phone’s emissions is to use it less, or to opt for texts or landlines.

“The footprint of your mobile phone use is overwhelmingly determined by the simple question of how often you use it,” Berners-Lee writes. According to his calculation, transmitting calls releases about 47kg of CO2 per year.

His glaring omission from this piece is of course a discussion about the potential that mobile phones have to reduce other’s emissions. The carbon footprint of an individual phone call is interesting, certainly, but no discussion around it should ignore the exciting potential that the mobile industry offers.

Vodafone’s Carbon Connections report from 2009 helped quantify this potential. According to the report, in 2020 the mobile industry could reduce global CO2e by 113 Mt through machine-to-machine applications that enable smart grids, smart logistics and smart cities, among others.

The simplest and most common example currently is dematerialization, where physical products and activities are substituted for low-carbon, “virtual” alternatives. Think of the emissions saved by Cisco Systems holding 28,000 meetings virtually, with no need for employee travel, which they did in 2007.

But that’s neither here nor there for Berners-Lee, who’d prefer to worry about the impact of 47kg a year. Let’s think about the bigger picture here...