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.