Ericsson

Summary 57/100

Ericsson continues to provide strong leadership in advancing the measurement of IT’s carbon footprint and metrics for the reductions potential of IT energy solutions. While Ericsson has significantly stepped up its policy advocacy since Version 3, and worked to increase the profile of the IT sector as an important solutions provider in the climate and energy policy debate, the company needs to make its advocacy more specific to policy positions and directed at where those decisions are being made.

New CEO Hans Vertberg appears to be picking up where his predecessor left off in viewing IT energy solutions as a core part of its business, but Ericsson needs to improve its transparency on its own reduction efforts, and make its reduction target absolute. Ericsson will hopefully expand on its leadership and strengthen its metrics in the coming year to drive deeper engagement among the telecommunications operators it partners with.

Climate Solutions

27/40

Current Savings Calculations

17/20

Ericsson provides two very strong solutions case studies (ehealth Croatia and Spotsmedia) in their White Paper “Measuring emissions right – Assessing the climate positive effects of ICT”, which compare pre- and post-intervention data and account for embedded net emissions. Higher scores could be achieved if more case studies of this quality were submitted.

Public Metrics

09/10

Ericsson scores very high for transparent and thorough methodology, and the company is actively contributing its insights to ITU-T and ETSI standardization initiatives.

Investment

01/05

Ericsson scores low here, as the few submitted examples don’t provide enough data to offer context or scale of investment.

Future Savings Goal

00/05

No future savings goal.

Energy Impact

11/25

Reduction Target

02/05

Ericsson scores low as it does not commit to absolute GHG emission reductions, and instead has a relative goal of 40% reductions of CO2 emissions per subscriber by 2013 (2008 baseline).

Mitigation

05/10

While Ericsson estimates that a good 38% of its electricity used for production sites comes from renewable energy, it needs to provide numbers for total usage to make it comparable to others.

Supply Chain Footprint

04/05

Ericsson is doing some good things on both efficiency of hardware and an attempt to capture embedded energy in hardware. However, it needs to publish some efficiency figures -- and measure and reduce embedded energy in at least the larger parts of the company’s supply chain.

Political Advocacy

19/35

Speech

05/10

CEO, Hans Vestberg, has spoken repeatedly at high level events internationally about the ability of transformational power of ICT solutions to address poverty and cut greenhouse gases by 15-20% by 2020, but he needs to speak more directly to the change needed by governments to make that potential a reality.

Political Policy

10/15

Ericsson scores high for proactively driving engagement with the Mexican government in the lead up to COP16 in order to enhance the role that ICT will play in the global climate discussion.

Repetition Bonus

04/10

Ericsson receives a repetition bonus for additional speech and a letter to the Australian Prime Minister

Negative Lobby Penalty

0/-15

No negative lobby scored.

Ericsson's scores to date