Green 5G: building a sustainable world

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The planet is facing a climate emergency which, if not tackled immediately, threatens every aspect of life. 5G is being deployed at a time when energy efficiency is a matter of life or death, and it can play a significant role in helping every industry to hit sustainability goals by enabling them to transform their processes and behaviour.

Modern lifestyles have driven a sharp increase in energy usage, 85% of which was still based on fossil fuels in 2018. Use of fossil fuels is one of the key factors driving higher emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG), which contribute to global warming. This, in turn, has multiple dangerous impacts on the environment and on human life, such as natural disasters and the destruction of human and animal habitats. GHG emissions rose by 1.5% per year between 2008 and 2018, according to the United Nations (UN) Emissions Gap Report 2019, and total GHG emissions reached a record high of 55.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2018.