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TELCOSUS05-BP01 Establish comprehensive carbon footprint monitoring for telco networks - Telco Lens
Implementation guidance Resources

TELCOSUS05-BP01 Establish comprehensive carbon footprint monitoring for telco networks

Measuring carbon footprint across telco operations requires tracking emissions from multiple sources including data centers, network equipment, edge sites, and even supply chain activities.

Desired outcome: Achieve complete visibility of carbon emissions across network operations with automated tracking, reporting accuracy, and actionable insights that enable emission reductions aligned with Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments.

Benefits of establishing this practice:

  • Automated reporting for telecommunications environmental regulations.

  • Identify and prioritize highest-impact reduction opportunities.

  • Accurate sustainability reporting for investors and customers.

  • Demonstrated environmental leadership in telecommunications sector.

  • Link carbon reduction initiatives to operational cost savings.

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Low

Implementation guidance

Implement a comprehensive monitoring system that captures the following while providing actionable insights for reduction strategies:

  • Scope 1: direct emissions

  • Scope 2: purchased electricity

  • Scope 3: value chain emissions

Design your monitoring architecture to automatically collect energy consumption data from infrastructure components. Tag AWS resources with sustainability metadata (equipment type, location, and business function) to enable granular carbon accounting. Integrate with AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool for baseline cloud emissions data, then augment with custom metrics for on-premises equipment and network operations.

Establish automated reporting pipelines that aggregate carbon data, calculate emissions using regional grid factors, and generate reports for regulatory requirements and sustainability frameworks like SBTi or Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) climate targets.

Implementation steps

  1. Enable AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool and configure monthly exports to S3 for historical analysis and trend tracking.

  2. Implement comprehensive tagging strategy with tags: CarbonCategory, LocationGrid, NetworkFunction, and EquipmentType for AWS resources.

  3. Deploy Amazon CloudWatch custom metrics to track energy consumption from on-premises network equipment using AWS IoT Greengrass at edge sites.

  4. Create AWS Glue ETL pipelines to combine AWS carbon data with on-premises metrics, calculating total emissions using Regional emission factors.

  5. Set up Amazon Managed Grafana dashboards displaying real-time carbon intensity metrics, with drill-down capabilities by service, region, and network function.

  6. Configure Quick to generate automated monthly sustainability reports aligned with GSMA or SBTi reporting requirements.

  7. Implement Amazon EventBridge rules to trigger alerts when carbon emissions exceed defined thresholds or deviate from reduction targets.

  8. Deploy AWS Lambda functions to calculate power usage effectiveness (PUE) for data centers and network efficiency metrics for RAN sites.

  9. Use Amazon Forecast to predict future carbon emissions based on network growth projections and planned efficiency improvements.

Resources

Key AWS services: