Vodafone to be 100% Powered by Renewables from 1 July 2021
Mobile operator Vodafone has today confirmed that they’re on course for their entire UK and European operations – including mobile and fixed line networks, data centres, retail and offices – to be 100% powered by electricity from renewable sources from 1st July 2021.
Last year the operator brought forward its original plan to purchase 100% renewable electricity (wind, solar or hydro) in Europe to July 2021, from its previous target of 2025, and is committed to achieving the same step-change in Africa by 2025. The programme will also help Vodafone’s goal of reducing its own carbon emissions to “Net Zero” by 2030 (i.e. removing as many emissions as they produce), and across their entire value chain by 2040.
Last year some 96% of Vodafone’s total energy use was in the form of purchased electricity, but today’s announcement means that 100% of their purchased electricity in Europe is now from renewable generation sources, including where Vodafone is a tenant on other landlord’s sites.
Nick Read, Vodafone Group CEO, said:
“From 1 July 2021, Vodafone’s customers across Europe can be reassured that the connectivity they use is entirely powered by electricity from renewable sources. This is a major milestone towards our goal of reducing our own global carbon emissions to net zero by 2030, helping our customers reduce their own environmental footprint and continuing to build an inclusive and sustainable digital society in all of our markets.”
A few more stats from the operator..
Summary of Key Figures
➤ During the last year, Vodafone reduced its total Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 30% year-on-year, to 1.37 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent),
➤ Vodafone’s energy use has remained broadly flat during the last year, despite a 47% year-on-year increase in mobile data traffic over the same period from 7,983 petabytes (PB) in FY20 to 11,714 PB in FY21 – this is due to increased use of more energy efficient mobile technology and analytics, including M-MIMO.
➤ Vodafone has invested €65m during the last year in energy efficiency and on-site renewable projects, leading to annual energy savings of 135 GWh (e.g. sourcing and deploying more efficient network equipment, gradually switching off the relatively less energy efficient 3G network and decommissioning legacy equipment etc.).
➤ In July 2020, Vodafone committed to helping its business customers reduce their own carbon emissions by a cumulative total of 350 million tonnes globally over 10 years between 2020 and 2030. Most of this saving will be made through Vodafone’s Internet of Things (IoT) service.
➤ 98.7% of Vodafone’s network waste, excluding hazardous waste, was sent for reuse and recycling during FY21, with an overall reduction in network waste year-on-year of 22.5% to 6,307 tonnes from 8,138 tonnes in FY20. Vodafone has pledged to reuse, resell or recycle 100% of the company’s network waste by 2025.
➤ Vodafone now works to re-sell and re-purpose excess stock or large decommissioned electrical items, like masts and antennae. This has avoided over 1,250 tonnes of CO2e, saving more than €10 million in the process.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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They say offices, but they also have people working from home full time. They won’t be running renewable energy?
That’s the workers choice not Vodafone’s choice. So it’s up to the home worker and their responsibilities, not Vodafone.
@Carl O – while that is sort of true, I would say that there is a moral responsibility on Vodafone to help the worker use renewable energy at home or their claims of being 100% renewable are weakened a bit. I work freelance from home and one of my customers pays for me to have renewable energy at home so that they can maintain their maintain their business claims when it comes to the environment.
“98.7% of Vodafone’s network waste, excluding hazardous waste, was sent for reuse and recycling during FY21”
It was “sent”, but sent where? and what has happened to it? Has it actually been “reuse” and “recycled”, or is it just piled up somewhere, maybe another country, just dumped and not (yet) processed at all? Just simply shipping junk off to be reused/recycled isn’t really any better than not reusing/recycling it.
This is sadly meaningless, because of how the electricity market works.
Every energy provider is required to provide a certain amount of their electricity from renewable sources, and to provide “Renewable Obligation Certificates” to prove it.
In practice, there are some suppliers which make more of their energy from renewables – maybe as much as 100%. This gives them a surplus of Renewable Obligation Certificates, so they sell them on the open market. Then there are some providers who produce less than the required amount. They meet their obligations by buying ROCs from those providers who have an excess.
This is why at retail, electricity from “100% renewable” providers costs almost exactly the same as from “non-renewable” providers. Every unit you buy from a 100%-renewable source is effectively transferring permission for a non-renewable provider to make a unit of cheap and dirty energy.
Moving your home (or business) to a “100% renewable” supplier is just virtue-signalling.
Meanwhile, over time, the government slowly increases the percentage of ROCs which are required from all providers. This is what *actually* drives the supply side towards renewable energy.