Earth Day round-up: How ISPs are going green

• On this Earth Day, Fierce Network reached out to some of the biggest broadband providers to see how their sustainability strategies are going

• Common themes among those that answered are finding renewable energy sources, transitioning fleets to electric vehicles, etc.

• Most companies have set goals to reduce certain emissions (scope 1, 2 and 3) by a certain date

Earth Day is here, and Fierce Network is celebrating by looking into how telcos are approaching their sustainability agendas.

We reached out to several ISPs to ask how they're making their businesses more environmentally friendly. We've recorded the responses we got here. For companies we didn't hear from, we took a look at their recent environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports to check their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Scope 1 emissions are a company's direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy.

In the corporate ESG scene, "net zero" has become a buzzword added into many company's sustainability targets. Net zero emissions means there is equilibrium between the amount of emissions and extraction of greenhouse gases a company is responsible for.

Some experts have warned that greenwashy words like "net zero" may not actually be enough, since the strategy still leaves room for immense greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, there's still something to be said for forward progress. Here's what companies are doing to get there.

AT&T

Shannon Carroll, AT&T’s AVP of corporate responsibility, said the company has focused on building a more “climate resilient network,” as disruptive weather events grow more frequent.

AT&T is collaborating with Argonne National Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center, to get access to climate data that allows the company to “plan for disruptive weather effects” on infrastructure.

Carroll added AT&T established a third “emergency” pathway to each of its mobility network hubs (MTSO) – another way to combat disruptive weather as well as “[reduce] the likelihood of major outages by nearly 35%.”

“AT&T is also undergoing the largest refresh of our power backup systems in the history of our network – investing millions of dollars in generators, batteries, and systems to help keep our network up and running when there is a local power outage,” he added.

The company has yet to release its sustainability report for 2023. Carroll noted AT&T is aiming to be carbon neutral (net zero for scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions for operations) by 2035.

“Right now, we’re working on solutions to reduce emissions related to our global fleet, supporting the expansion of clean energy, and investing in innovative solutions like carbon capture facilities,” he said.

Breezeline

A Breezeline rep told Fierce Network the biggest concern for telcos and broadband providers today is green energy procurement. Namely, affordable access to 100% renewable energy within their service footprints.

Breezeline itself is working to increase its renewable energy supply by chasing down renewable energy supplier contracts for its electricity, and using Power Purchase Agreements to generate renewable energy and reduce electricity emissions. It also committed to reducing operational emissions by 65% by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The company is also focused on combustion engine conversions to electric vehicles. Breezeline began to deploy electric vehicles in 2022, and is reducing employee commuting hours through its FlexWork policy, which became effective the same year.

To reduce its non-operational emissions by 30%, it is aiming to reduce the environmental impact of equipment used in customer homes. For example, the rep said Breezeline's IPTV relies on equipment that "uses a fraction of the energy of traditional settop boxes."

This year, Breezeline activated two grid-tied solar systems at its technology hub sites in Concord and Plaistow, New Hampshire. This action aligns with the sustainability goal of its parent company, Cogeco, to have 100% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2030-2031. 

Charter

In 2023, Charter’s carbon neutral strategy included further enhancements to its scope 2 emissions reporting to align with GHG protocol, according to its most recent ESG report.

The company’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2035.

Last year Charter also continued a study into the feasibility of introducing electric vehicles to a portion of its fleet. To approach a lower-carbon economy, it is focusing on bringing up the energy efficiency of modems, routers and settop boxes used to access its services. For example, the launch of its Xumo platform in October 2023 means a more “compact and efficient” device.

Charter is looking to bring more “energy-efficient equipment and systems” across its network, the report added. “Network evolution associated with DAA is expected to reduce the total amount of hardware at an average network site and result in site consolidation in certain geographies.”

Energy efficiencies gained from distributed access architecture (DAA) in the context of total energy consumption are expected to grow as Charter expands its rural construction and spectrum expansion such as high splits, although CEO Chris Winfrey said in February that the DAA upgrades are delayed, moving the target completion date from 2025 to 2026.

Fuel consumption comprises approximately 24% of Charter’s scope 1 and 2 emissions. The company said it is “systematically” replacing older vehicles to increase the efficiency of its fleet and uses telematics devices in vehicles to optimize routing.

Comcast

Comcast’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2035 for scope 1 and 2 emissions. Since 2019, it has reduced greenhouse emissions by 38% (or 960,000 metric tons of emissions.)

Sara Cronenwett, SVP of corporate environmental sustainability at Comcast, told Fierce there are many factors beyond the company’s control including political, economic, regulatory and geopolitical forces that will affect “how quickly we can take action and access the green technologies and infrastructure needed to meet our collective climate goals.”

For example, she said transitioning to clean and renewable energy to power Comcast’s operations and network will require growing the domestic clean energy market and modernizing the U.S. electricity grid to manage growing energy demands. “Overcoming these challenges will require, among other things, increased collaboration with a range of business partners, industry peers, and governments around the world,” she said.

Comcast set a goal to double network energy efficiency from 2019 to 2030, and claims to have decreased the amount of electricity it takes to deliver each byte of data to its network customers by 36% from 2019 to 2022

In early 2023, Comcast issued a $1 billion green bond, which allowed investors to support environmental efforts that are either underway or under consideration as part of Comcast’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2035. In 2024, Cronenwett said it will continue to invest in virtual, cloud-based technologies that can improve energy efficiency — with “less hardware, less energy per byte and less disruption.”  

Consolidated Communications

In its 2023 ESG report, Consolidated recorded 2,454 metric tons of scope 1 CO2e emissions and 60,340 metric tons of scope 2 emissions. All told, its carbon emissions in 2023 totaled 62,794 – an improvement from 97,151 in 2022.

Garrett Van Osdell, chief legal officer at Consolidated, told Fierce, “Our top priority is expanding our fiber network to reach more customers and this strategic initiative, along with our other environmental initiatives, reduces our environmental impact.”

For example, Consolidated is removing copper drops in its network in Danbury and Kingston, New Hampshire. Van Osdell also noted 32% of the company’s electricity comes from renewable sources.

“We are helping our communities achieve their renewable energy objectives by participating in Community Solar projects,” he said. “We are currently participating in these programs in Maine, Illinois and Minnesota, and evaluating more programs across our service areas.”

Consolidated is continuing to upgrade its 1,800-vehicle fleet to electric vehicles. The company in its ESG report said its vehicles last year used 2,131,104 gallons of gasoline, “representing an ongoing trend of year-over-year reduction in fuel usage.”

Van Osdell added Consolidated in California met regulations to ensure all trucks and buses that operate in the state “have 2010 or newer model year engines to reduce particulate matter (PM) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions.”

“We will continue to explore economical fleet upgrades to ensure we can meet our customers’ needs while reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

Verizon

Verizon has released its 2023 ESG report, however it doesn’t include an updated GHG emissions count, which will be published later this year. Like AT&T, Verizon’s goal is to achieve net-zero scope 1 and scope 2 operational emissions by 2035.

In 2022, Verizon’s total location-based scope 1 and 2 CO2e emissions was 3,772,547 metric tons. Market-based scope 1 and 2 emissions came to 3,348,981 metric tons. As of year-end 2022, the operator reached a 23.3% reduction in market-based scope 1 and scope 2 emissions.

For its fleet, Verizon recorded 18.7 millions of gallons of fuel consumption in 2023, compared to 19.4 million in 2022 and 22.2 million in 2021.

“The lack of electric vehicle (EV) models suitable for our commercial operations poses a challenge to our fleet electrification efforts. While production of light-duty EVs has been increasing to meet a variety of consumer uses, there are few — if any — EV options for the larger, specialized commercial vehicles on which our operations depend,” Verizon wrote in its report.

“Despite these challenges, we are in the process of transforming our fleet from relying on internal combustion engines to using clean energy technologies. We are planning to electrify a substantial portion of our customer-facing fleet by replacing our oldest light-duty vehicles with EVs.”

Other ISPs will likely release sustainability reports in the coming weeks, so we'll be keeping an eye out for those. To read more about industry sustainability efforts click here.