ICT & wireless networks and their impact on global warming

Global warming caused many countries to call for drastic energy savings within the coming years. At the same time we see a rapidly increasing demand on Telecom services. Estimations of the future Telecom and ICT sectors´ energy consumption are varying; nevertheless all predict an increase of energy consumption. On the other hand, the ICT sector is believed to be one of the solutions on the way to a low carbon society. This paper analyses the estimates of CO₂ emissions from mobile networks and possible environmental impacts of ICT resulting from different user behavior. Finally an attempt is made to find an impact of ICT on the energy consumption of a complete nation.