Green Telecom Part X: Nortel expands employee options

Nortel hasn’t stopped with exploring where people can work; the company also is looking at how they get to the office. At its Ottawa campus, which is a large R&D facility, Nortel launched a Green Commute program aimed at managing and mitigating the impact of the campus footprint and reducing the number of cars and therefore the amount of asphalt required for parking lots.

“We wanted to support and incent different behaviors,” Dunn said. “We looked at how we brought roads in and create parking lots on-site, how we integrated bike paths with the capital’s phenomenal bike paths and walking paths. We worked with the transit officials to improve public transit access, including adding bus ports with tunnel connections into buildings to facilitate that kind of access.”

Nortel added shower facilities and lockers for people who wanted to ride bikes as well as a secure area for bike storage. But then the company went a major step further. To encourage car pooling, Nortel decided to give car poolers the best parking spaces in the complex – the underground spots closest to each of the doors. During Ottawa’s long winters, those are coveted spaces.

“Normally the executives would get that, but we reversed it, and the carpoolers got the best parking,” Dunn said.

A ride-matching Web site was set up to allow people to identify potential car pool pals. The result of all this is that acres of forest land wasn’t converted to parking lots, Dunn said.

Going forward, Nortel is striving to choose new sites that are close to public transit, as its Richardson, Texas, site north of Dallas is on the DART system.

The company is now using telepresence – Dunn himself recently cancelled a trip to Beijing as a result – and other tools to attack travel costs and fuel consumption.

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.