Methods and standards for environmental impact assessment of mobile radio networks

Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the resulting global warming ignited an intensive debate and work on energy consumption, GHG emissions and the overall environmental impact assessment of the Telecom industry and the ICT sector. Initial studies focused on GHG emissions caused by the energy consumption during the use phase, followed by a more detailed analysis of GHG emissions during the complete lifecycle and reached now a level where the total environmental impact is addressed in 15 different impact categories from raw material extraction to end of life of a product (life cycle assessment, LCA). However, the complexity of addressing all the different categories and especially the question of how to weight the different categories is unsolved. For Telecom networks a possible solution is to focus on overall energy consumption in all life cycle stages.