‘Cool Broadband’ to cut carbon emissions by 30 per cent.

In a drive to reduce energy use by broadband infrastructure, BT has announced a trial which means carbon emissions from broadband connections could be decreased by as much as 30 per cent.

‘Cool Broadband’ is being piloted in Suffolk and is based around using more efficient algorithms. “We want to shift broadband from always on to always available," says Niall Dunne, BT’s sustainability officer. "The plan is that if the broadband line is 20Mbit/s, then it can go into a sleep mode where it is cut to 200kb/s, which is sufficient to support a phone call. Then it powers back up instantly when people want to use the full broadband connection." Despite some ‘technical challenges’, a larger trial is being planned with a mind to a full scale roll out in future years.

BT hopes to ‘green’ its infrastructure through initiatives such as this and hopes to generate a quarter of its energy through renewables by 2016. It has also begun to use a smart meter and energy management system at its offices which is hoped to cut energy use by five per cent. This is part of a drive to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2020.

The telecoms and internet services industries are key growth areas for greenhouse gas emissions and reducing emissions from these sectors will be crucial if the UK is to hit its carbon reduction targets. Google, for example, has grown in the last decade to now be using around 0.01% of the worlds electricity. With the internet a massive growth area in most parts of the world, its energy requirements will increase drastically in the coming years.