Green Telecom Part XII: NSN aims high on green effort

“We are looking very carefully into smart grids, smart buildings, working with Nokia, which just came public with Smart Home concept to expand from our traditional business to say, ‘What can we do?’” Larilahti said. NSN has been reaching out to those outside the telecom industry for some time and is now seeing that pay off. “Now we are finding we get invited into all sorts of consortiums with energy people, with construction people,” she said. “Other industries have noticed that ICT might bring some value. The European Union has been fairly vocal about that as well and has set pretty ambitious goals.”

And while use of its products comprises 90% of NSN’s carbon footprint, the company hasn’t ignored efforts to reduce its own energy consumption.

“We do a lot of things internally because with 60,000 people we are still seeing significant consumption” Larilahti said. “And it’s very important for our employees to be able to participate as well.”

NSN limits company cars to those that meet the 240 grams per kilometer European standard, and pays more of the leasing price for more energy-efficient cars, Larilahti said. “The company is paying twice as much of the leasing price at the lowest [energy consumption] class as at the highest,” she said. As a result, gas consumption was reduced by 22% between May 2008 and December.

“We also are trying to reduce travel,” she said. “We introduced virtual meeting rooms, and we are using them. It is recent, so we don’t have numbers yet.”

Previously: Part One of this series looks at AT&T’s green initiatives, while Part Two reports Callis Communications’ effort to reduce power used by voice-over-IP gear. Part Three reports on iControl’s efforts to help service providers leverage home security system sales to also promote home automation and energy savings. Part Four explores new technology from Telco Systems that uses solar power for data centers. Part Five looks at how Emerson Network Power is taking a comprehensive approach to reducing power consumption by its wireline and wireless customers. Part Six examines Verizon Business’ efforts to help its enterprise customers cut their energy consumption. Part Seven looks at Verizon’s internal efforts to build a greener network. Part Eight examines Qwest’s efforts to annually measure energy consumption. Part Nine tracks data center power consumption. Part Ten looked a Nortel’s pioneering efforts in telework. Part Eleven looked at MetaSwitch and the savings afforded by softswitches.