Will 5G improve or worsen our digital carbon footprint?

5G¹² is a new tech­no­log­i­cal stan­dard that incor­po­rates 10 years of R&D in the field of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in terms of through­put, laten­cy, con­nec­tion den­si­ty, but also com­mu­ni­ca­tion secu­ri­ty and ener­gy effi­cien­cy (less ener­gy for a con­stant amount of data trans­port­ed). Improve­ments come from devel­op­ments in anten­nas and radio wave pro­cess­ing with new tech­nolo­gies such as mas­sive MIMO anten­nas³, which make it pos­si­ble to use radio fre­quen­cies with greater capac­i­ties in order to achieve high­er speeds, while main­tain­ing more simul­ta­ne­ous connections.

The con­ver­gence of tele­coms net­works with IT net­works is based on com­mon and stan­dard­ised soft­ware plat­forms, such as slic­ing and edge com­put­ing. Hence, 5G is a range of inno­va­tions for more reli­able and flex­i­ble uses. It brings impor­tant advances for numer­ous appli­ca­tions such as fac­to­ry or con­nect­ed cities, pub­lic or indi­vid­ual trans­port, logis­tics, etc.

Although the arrival of 5G was accom­pa­nied by con­cerns regard­ing health (expo­sure to waves) and ques­tions about secu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty, here we will focus on the key issue. That of man­ag­ing to the ben­e­fits of 5G while con­trol­ling its envi­ron­men­tal impact. In oth­er words, merg­ing dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This leads us to con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal effect of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in a more gen­er­al way.

What are the con­crete impacts of 5G on the envi­ron­ment? A life cycle analy­sis leads us to con­sid­er three main phas­es: the man­u­fac­ture of equip­ment (with an impact on the con­sump­tion of raw mate­ri­als such as water or rare resources and, to a cer­tain extent, a more or less car­bon-inten­sive ener­gy con­sump­tion gen­er­at­ing green­house gas­es), its use (main­ly con­sum­ing ener­gy) and, last­ly, the man­age­ment of its end-of-life (the pro­duc­tion of waste). For the sake of sim­plic­i­ty, we will focus here main­ly on ener­gy con­sump­tion, but we should bear in mind that this is only one facet of the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of this tech­nol­o­gy, and of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in general.

While the actu­al deploy­ment of 5G may lead to ques­tions regard­ing the non-deploy­ment rhetor­i­cal, deploy­ment and non-deploy­ment stud­ies nev­er­the­less allow us to address key ques­tions. How will we con­tin­ue to devel­op this tech­nol­o­gy? And how will we adapt it? These ques­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant while we are still faced with real dis­rup­tions such as stand-alone, slic­ing or edge com­put­ing, and the con­di­tions for deploy­ment in the 26 GHz band are still being studied.

Where are the envi­ron­men­tal effects of con­cen­trat­ed 5G?

• The deploy­ment of 5G leads to equip­ment changes. The pro­duc­tion costs of this equip­ment (espe­cial­ly those of pre­ma­ture ter­mi­nal replace­ment) may weigh heav­i­ly on the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of the technology.
• On the oth­er hand, not deploy­ing 5G would have led to the den­si­fi­ca­tion of the 4G net­work, and there­fore also to the pro­duc­tion of more equip­ment, prob­a­bly in greater num­bers for the net­works, and above all to addi­tion­al oper­at­ing ener­gy costs, because, for a con­stant vol­ume of data, 5G is more efficient.
• What com­pli­cates things is that the tran­si­tion to 5G could encour­age exces­sive use of data through a rebound effect that is dif­fi­cult to quantify.

Depend­ing on the assump­tions made, one gets rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent results.

The report by the French High Coun­cil for the Cli­mate⁴ con­sid­ers what the car­bon foot­print of the dig­i­tal sec­tor could be accord­ing to sev­er­al vari­ants of deploy­ment and non-deploy­ment of 5G. While there is con­sid­er­able uncer­tain­ty, the sce­nar­ios all con­clude that the deploy­ment of 5G will result in a sig­nif­i­cant increase in this foot­print, main­ly due to the increase in the num­ber of objects con­nect­ed to the network.

A study con­duct­ed by a com­mit­tee of experts involv­ing the main net­work equip­ment sup­pli­ers and the four met­ro­pol­i­tan mobile oper­a­tors, for which Arcep pro­vides the sec­re­tari­at, sheds more light on this issue⁵. It was not­ed that the deploy­ment of 5G allows mobile net­works to be much less intense in dense areas. How­ev­er, in low-den­si­ty areas, in the short and medi­um term, the oppo­site effect is like­ly to occur.

It is dif­fi­cult to analyse the effects of 5G in iso­la­tion from the rest of the dig­i­tal ecosys­tem because each tech­nol­o­gy, whether mobile or wired, is used in an ever-increas­ing inter­weav­ing of IT and net­works. It is the entire ener­gy con­sump­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy that must be chal­lenged. The dif­fi­cul­ty of estab­lish­ing cer­tain­ties in this area high­lights the great need for pre­cise assess­ments of ener­gy con­sump­tion. Such assess­ments are essen­tial to guide pub­lic poli­cies, but also the behav­iour of users and the choic­es of companies.

Arcep invest­ed in these sub­jects in 2020 by open­ing a plat­form “for a sus­tain­able dig­i­tal future” and by organ­is­ing a pub­lic debate as part of a process of exchange and con­sul­ta­tion with indus­try play­ers. The main tools for car­ry­ing out such assess­ments are life cycle analy­ses, which draw on all the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge accu­mu­lat­ed in a field to define robust method­olo­gies, and the data col­lect­ed to feed the analyses.

With­in this frame­work, the author­i­ty has start­ed con­crete pro­grammes, includ­ing the following.

1. A study is being con­duct­ed with ADEME to quan­ti­fy the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy today and in 2030 and 2050, with a first report to the gov­ern­ment expect­ed in 2022. The aim is to define a method­ol­o­gy and indi­ca­tors that will enable such quantification.
2. Arcep has already been col­lect­ing envi­ron­men­tal data from elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors since 2020. But data from all the play­ers in the dig­i­tal world are need­ed: equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, access providers, data cen­tre oper­a­tors, etc. It should also be not­ed that a law aimed at strength­en­ing envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion of the dig­i­tal sec­tor by Arcep, tabled by Sen­a­tor Patrick Chaize, which broad­ens Arcep’s data col­lec­tion pow­ers, has just been adopted.

Final­ly, the pos­i­tive effects of 5G must be con­sid­ered. Of course, some peo­ple insist on these “pos­i­tive exter­nal­i­ties” so as not to have to wor­ry too much about the neg­a­tive effects. But the ambi­tion of our green­house gas reduc­tion tar­gets is such that reduc­ing the ener­gy con­sump­tion of the tele­coms sec­tor is a neces­si­ty, how­ev­er impor­tant the pos­i­tive effects may be. It is up to the author­i­ties to set less ener­gy-intense objec­tives with­out hold­ing back inno­va­tion that could lead to envi­ron­men­tal gains in oth­er sec­tors that rely on dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to achieve their eco­log­i­cal transition.