Alcatel-Lucent Sets Goal to Halve Emissions by 2020

A key part of Alcatel-Lucent’s 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report focuses on what the company is doing to reduce the impact of its products on the environment and to enable the deployment of eco-sustainable networks for its service providers and enterprise operations. The company has set a target to reduce its 2008 carbon emission in half by 2020.

In 2008, the networking giant set a goal to reduce its current global annual output of about 1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in half by 2020. To reduce energy use, the company is improving insulation in its buildings, installing more energy-efficient lighting, consolidating facilities, initiating waste recycling programs and minimizing the need for travel by improving the company’s videoconferencing capabilities.

Other environmental report highlights include minimizing the company’s carbon footprint and improving its overall environmental, health and safety performance for more efficient and eco-sustainable operations.

As an example, by eliminating the mass printing of its CSR and financial annual reports this year, Alcatel-Lucent will avoid using 748,000 sheets of paper, the equivalent of a stack as high as a 40-story building. The company says responsible management of hazardous and electronic waste is a keystone of its commitment to protecting the environment and the health and safety of all people. In the U.S., the company was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for recycling customers’ lead-acid batteries and preventing 1 million kilograms of hazardous materials from entering the nation’s waste stream.

The company also has committed to improve the energy efficiency of key products by at least 20 percent over the next two years. In 2008, Alcatel-Lucent developed eco-declarations for more than 95 percent of its product portfolio. These summarize the impact these products have on the environment, taking into account characteristics such as energy consumption, emissions, material content, packaging and disposal concerns.

The company is also developing innovative techniques to ensure network equipment uses less power with no impact on performance. For example, the company introduced the Dynamic Power Save feature for its GSM/EDGE mobile networking portfolio, which lowers power consumption when traffic drops, reducing average consumption by as much as 30 percent. This feature can be installed on all of the 500,000 base stations deployed since 1999, says the company.

Alcatel-Lucent also reports that it has set up an alternative energy lab and pilot site in France, and the company and its Bell Labs research arm is developing innovations in areas such as energy-efficient networks, solar and wind-powered base stations, smart metering, and smart power grids that help service providers, businesses, and consumers reduce their energy use and shrink their carbon footprint.