Telenor highlights green transition

Green cloud, climate change-related online courses, optimisation, green influencers as well as focus on new generation are expected to be crucial technology trends that will support the green transition in 2022, according to Norway’s Telenor, the parent of major mobile carrier Total Access Communication (DTAC).

According to the 7th edition of Telenor’s “Tech Trends” report, climate change alarm bells got louder and 2021 was another year of extreme weather events and record-breaking temperatures.

Despite the gloomy outlook for climate change, technological advancements and the accelerating digitalisation of society are reasons for hope, said Bjorn Taale Sandberg, head of Telenor Research.

“People everywhere are waking up to the need to act on climate change and environmental degradation,” he said.

Mr Sandberg said the latest research covers how technological progress in 2022 can enable this green transformation.

First, the green cloud is now on the horizon. There is immense growth in data usage that drives demand for energy, the report said. Edge data centres and 5G will help make data transfer more energy efficient.

Edge computing is expected to take over some of the workload in the coming year.

“We predict that 5G networks worldwide will have the capability to do local breakout of data traffic to and from edge data centres,” said Mr Sandberg.

“We believe that energy efficient edge data centres reachable from mobile devices over 5G networks will start popping up at an increasing rate this year.”

As a result, energy will also be saved in data distribution networks since part of the data traffic and electricity will be transferred locally only.

Second lies in climate micro-degrees as employees in the companies are willing to learn.

Climate change will require people, businesses and societies to adapt to lifelong learning of sustainability.

“A growing number of businesses will implement green micro-degrees and courses as part of their ‘curriculum’ to slake the green knowledge thirst among employees,” said Mr Sandberg.

The third trend involves “optimising everything”.

“Devices consuming electricity now outnumber humans by four, and they will become even more dominant in the future. Since transforming our energy supply will take time, we need to optimise everything — not least the use of energy by our devices,” said Mr Sandberg.

The fourth trend concerns green influencers.

Telenor expects to see a new movement shape the world of social media in what is called “greenfluencing”.

“An undergrowth of climate aware influencers and activists has emerged across niches on social media, and we believe their growing follower bases will be duly noticed by the influencer universe’s established elite,” explains Mr Sandberg.

According to Mr Sandberg, companies must not lose out on the lost generation.

Companies that do not take the next generation’s expectations seriously risk facing the great resignation.

He said as the pandemic rages on, it will be tough for the young to establish and grow a personal network and acquire a general understanding of the corporate lingo and culture, as forming new social relations using only digital communication is much more challenging.

Telenor recommends firms foster social interaction, give guidance to the new employees and praise their efforts to support them.