Mobile Phone Industry Seeks To Clean Up Act

Mobile phone equipment makers are taking steps to clean up their act and tackle a goal of powering nearly 120,000 base stations in developing countries by cleaner energy sources by 2012, players in the industry say.

The GSM Association, which represents 750 mobile operators worldwide, has said it aims to power 118,000 base stations which have no reliable electricity supply by renewable energy by 2012.
This is an ambitious goal as it says currently fewer than 2,000 out of over 3 million base stations worldwide are powered by renewable sources such as wind or solar power.

Critics of the mobile phone industry argue that reducing the number of base stations built is the best way to cut harmful carbon dioxide emissions. But mobile companies say networks with high data speeds require more base stations.

Nokia Siemens Networks said renewable energy will be its first choice for powering such sites by 2011. It currently has about 300 renewable energy base stations, which the company admits is a “very small amount.”

“It is hard to get this moving forward but there are some factors helping take-up. There are more financing tools available and the business case keeps looking better when wind and solar prices are coming down,” Anne Larilahti, head of environmentally sustainable business at Nokia, told Reuters.

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