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Ericsson: Empowering an intelligent, sustainable and connected world

Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson, was founded in 1876 with a clear vision: to ensure that communication, a basic human need, is available to all. With climate change proving to be an extremely disruptive force on a global level, Ericsson is committed to using its wide reach, expertise and leadership in the telecommunications sector to enable sustainable transformation across sectors to accelerate the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.

A digital transformation is taking place in almost every industry, this disrupts current practices and can enable a sustainable transition. Ericsson is providing significant assistance in the digital transformation of global sectors. Digital solutions like 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) are here to transform our lives. According to Ericsson’s latest mobility report, by 2025, 5G will carry nearly half of the world’s mobile data traffic. Evolving networks to cater for everything from smartphones to foster IoT, like robots on factory floors, requires reliable and high-performing connectivity, like 5G, and this will transform our industries and society in a positive manner.

External positive action, Ericsson believes, cannot effectively occur without first carrying out action on an internal level.  Putting this ethos into action, the company has taken steps to improve its own operations. Ericsson has cut its carbon footprint in half from 2011 to 2017 and will reduce another 35% by 2022.  By 2030, Ericsson will be carbon neutral in its own operations. Ericsson is well placed to demonstrate the effectiveness of a carefully planned strategy for climate action. Ericsson is reducing emissions by altering its portfolio to a more sustainable model, even as it considers its services and their societal impact. Within Ericsson´s own operations, the physical uses of technology – such as autonomous mobile robots implemented across private networks – shows how Ericsson can improve its efficiency. Such internal action, Ericsson maintains, is necessary to garner the industry-wide influence to be able to encourage similar action across its sector from a position of experience.

Joining initiatives – as a key partner of the Exponential Roadmap for example, a report highlighting 36 solutions to halving emissions by 2030 across sectors – allows Ericsson to highlight its vision of driving sustainable action and to join academia with civil society and companies in pursuit of this goal. Such a project shows that transformation across societal levels can indeed align comfortably with science.

Science is an important aspect of Ericsson’s approach to sustainability. Through scientific research as provided by the exponential roadmap report, Ericsson believes in the value of exponential transformation in the struggle against the negative effects of climate change. The use of existing technology can halve emissions across sectors and will, Ericsson believes, lead to exponential growth in a positive way and make the difference between a 1.5 and a 3-degree planet. Ericsson, with its knowledge of existing digital highways, is in a prime position to make good use of such technologies. The Exponential Roadmap shows that the ICT sector, having a carbon footprint of only 1.4% of the global carbon emissions, can enable up to 15% reductions of global emissions by 2030.

However, decades of research have shown that one company cannot make a difference alone. As a result, Ericsson is pushing for industry partnerships while building new infrastructure for climate action around the globe.