Greenpeace names telecoms industry climate laggards…but are they shamed?

BARCELONA, SPAIN: Greenpeace International has used MWC to blast the telecom industry’s climate laggards. While some players among both operators and vendors have clear strategies for carbon reduction, others have shown what the NGO regards as a failure of leadership in wise energy choices, says Jeremy Green, principal analyst at Ovum.

“Bharti Airtel, acknowledged as a leader in market innovation, comes in for particular criticism; Greenpeace gives it a score of zero (out of a possible 60) for failing to disclose its carbon emissions, not setting any target for emissions reduction and not declaring a roadmap to shift away from heavy dependency on diesel.

“Bharti’s overall ‘green’ score is 6 out 60, while NTT actually manages an overall score of zero. By contrast NTT’s competitor, Softbank, achieves the highest score of 35/60 and gets plaudits for its championing of clean energy, while Vodafone scores 24/60.

“Sadly, Greenpeace appears to have compared only a few operators, and to have scored vendors ALU and Ericsson on a common scale. This makes it hard to evaluate the ratings, or to place the telecoms industry in any kind of overall context. Perhaps there is scope for a scale to rank NGO rankings too?”