Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General

Low-Emissions Solutions Conference - COP22 - Address: ICT Innovative approach to raising commitments towards climate

14 November 2016, Marrakech, Morocco

Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to join you here at this conference to speak on the topic of ICTs and climate change – a topic which is very close to my heart - and a topic which I have championed in ITU since I first joined ITU in 2007.

When we first published our report entitled “ICTs and climate change” in 2007, the overwhelming reaction was: what have ICTs got to do with climate change; and why is ITU getting involved in climate change?

I am pleased to say, however, we received very good support from some of our Member States and especially from some of our private sector members.

Our participation in successive COPs since then, especially through partnerships with industry members, particularly GeSI, has helped to raise awareness of the vital role of ICTs in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

So I am very pleased to be here at COP22 and look forward to taking forward our advocacy work on ICTs and climate change with the establishment of the new coalition proposed for this Thursday at the Momentum for Change event.

The ICT sector has registered very high growth. For example during the last ten years, the number of mobile subscriptions has risen from 2.75 billion to 7.38 billion. The number of unique mobile subscribers is currently around 4.6 billion people. Meanwhile, the number of connected devices is projected to reach anywhere up to 50 billion by 2020.

Although many of these devices will be low-energy, their huge number means that the overall energy consumption of the ICT sector can only grow. This emphasizes the importance of ITU’s work to facilitate access to the information and knowledge society, essential for sustainable socio-economic development.

However, to benefit from the many innovative products and services on the Internet, or more generally information and communication technologies (ICTs), requires high speed broadband connectivity. Broadband is no longer a luxury but an essential utility.
As the lead UN agency for ICTs, ITU has a major role to play. Most people now connect to the Internet through their smart phones, which means there is an increasing demand from more users wanting faster connection to download more and more data. It places great demand on the radio frequency spectrum. This has to be agreed internationally, otherwise these phones would not work when moving from one country to another, and the cost of phones would be much higher if they did not comply with global standards and benefit from the resulting economies of scale. It is only through the international treaty on the use of the radio frequency spectrum that ITU has been maintaining for the last 110 years, that this can be achieved.

All these devices need to be able to interoperate and this can only be achieved by compliance with international standards, something ITU has been pursuing for even longer. The networks carrying all this data and communications traffic rely on ITU’s international standards. The development of Internet of Things and 5G will place far great demands on the network. 

ITU is developing the international standards to help improve energy efficiency and to provide guidance on the use of ICTs to tackle climate change. For example, ITU standard Recommendation ITU-T L.1300 on “Best practices for green data centres” and L.1302 on “Assessment of energy efficiency on infrastructure in data and telecom centres” can reduce the energy consumption of a typical data centre by more than 50 per cent.

Recommendation ITU-T L.1002 is a new standard for an energy efficient universal charger for laptops and other portable devices. It is expected to lead to significant reductions in e-waste and energy consumption. It follows previous standards for universal chargers for mobile phones (ITU-T L.1000) and stationary devices such as xDSL modems (ITU-T L.1001).
ITU also has a number of standards to leverage the potential of ICTs to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change - the L.1500 series of standards.

I believe these standards show ITU’s committment to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially Goal 13 on “Climate Action”. All these standards are available free of charge on the ITU website.

Bringing the benefits of this technology to all the world’s citizens is a major goal of the ITU. Encouraging countries to adopt the policies and regulations that will provide the incentives to invest in the provision of broadband services, and help develop the necessary skills is the third pillar of ITU’s work.

National Broadband Plans outline a set of high-level policies or principles in the national approach towards infrastructure, and give governments the opportunity to underline their commitment and determination to make broadband a national priority, their willingness to consult, and provide an explanation of their intended regulatory approaches.

It is estimated that the introduction of a national broadband plan can lead on average to a 2.5% increase in fixed broadband penetration and 7.4% higher mobile broadband penetration.

Today, of the 189 countries for which ITU has data, the number of countries with a national broadband plan currently stands at 151, while 38 do not have any Plan. So we can conclude that over three-quarters of all countries now have National Broadband Plans.
Unfortunately, however, many of these National Plans do not mention or make any commitment to climate change.
Clearly, given the vital importance of ICTs to combat climate change, this needs to change and climate strategies need to be a credible part of every National Broadband Plan.

We all need to do more to bring awareness of the vital role of ICTs to address climate change, and encourage governments to urgently readdress their national broadband plans to include this important commitment.

Within a span of nearly a decade, ITU has come a long way in terms of its climate change pursuits. As Aristotle said: “Well begun is half done”, and since we started off so well with an overwhelming and positive response from the ITU membership and our partners, we hope to be able to continue our work in this area and the seamless incorporation of ICTs into climate change adaptation and mitigation systems throughout the world. I hope events such as this will help extend message across a wider global audience.

I look forward to an interesting line-up of presentations today. I hope the discussions will help define the path for the future use of ICTs in the fight to counter climate change

Thank you very much for your kind attention.