ATIS: Policymakers need to understand 'green' ICT

The telecom industry has both large and small steps to take in promoting greater sustainability, but one of the most important is to educate government policy makers on the role that the information and communications technologies (ICT) industry can play in helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions for everyone, the ATIS Report on Environmental Sustainability released this week concluded.

The ATIS Exploratory Group on Green was charged with determining how ATIS and its members can be “greener” in their operations but quickly concluded that “green” is a marketing term and the more important matter to focus on was environmental sustainability, as defined by the United Nations, said Tim Jeffries, ATIS vice president of technology and business development.

Most, if not all, of ATIS members have their own environmental sustainability programs in place already, Jeffries said, so the main focus of EGG was to talk about ways to share best practices and to promote the use of ICT to enable other industries to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Educating policy makers is one major effort,” Jeffries said. “There is a lot going on within the federal government and on the Hill in particular, and we want to make sure they understand the value and power of ICT in enabling other industries through smart logistics, smart grids and other uses of ICT.”

The ATIS report advocates a “multi-pronged approach” to this, with individual companies implementing their own advocacy programs and ATIS working as an organization on education as well. “We have a technical initiative on the way now in our committee to look at energy-efficiency ratings on network equipment,” Jeffries said.

Another key piece of advice from the EGG findings is that, as companies implement sustainability programs, they must remember that any successful sustainability effort has three important components, Jeffries said.