Impact of the use of a digital teleworking solution on greenhouse gas emissions: case study of the Orange Atalante site in Rennes

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Climate emergency and digital

According to the IPCC*, implementing rapid and drastic action to reduce GHG emissions is the number one environmental emergency [1]. To respond to this urgency, the Paris Climate Agreement*, adopted in 2015, includes the objective of significantly reducing global GHG emissions so as to limit global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels [2].

How can we assess the impact of teleworking on greenhouse gas emissions?

According to the Shift Project [3], [4], the digital sector accounts for 2.9% to 3.5% of global GHG emissions. These figures may seem modest, but the digital sector’s share of GHG emissions is increasing year on year. Controlling and then reducing the carbon footprint of the digital sector represents a major challenge for the years to come. Many telecoms operators have already committed to achieving carbon neutrality* by 2040. Examples include Orange [5], Vodafone [6], British Telecom [7], Telefonica [8], Deutsche Telekom [9], Telenor [10], KPN [11], Telecom Italia Mobile [12] and MNT Group (Mobile Telephone Networks) [13].  Telia is even aiming for carbon neutrality as early as 2030 [14]. The main ways in which operators are aiming to achieve this goal are by measuring and reducing their carbon footprint, changing certain practices, technological advances and carbon offsetting*.

Digital technology, now indispensable for communicating, working and consuming, is perceived in a paradoxical way. On the one hand, it is criticized as part of the problem, due to the growing material and environmental footprint of digital infrastructures and terminals. On the other hand, digital technology is presented as perhaps part of the solution, with a growing number of economic, social and scientific organizations relying on digital technologies to respond to certain challenges, notably climatic and environmental.

The obligation for European companies to publish their carbon footprint

For companies, the assessment of GHG emissions is already mandatory in over 40 countries [15]. In Europe, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, EU Directive 2022/2464 [16]) requires all European companies with more than 500 employees, sales of €40 million or balance sheet value of €20 million (these thresholds will be gradually lowered after 2024) to produce a standardized sustainability report, starting in 2024. This standardized sustainability report uses indicators to describe how the company integrates the principles and criteria of sustainable development* both internally and in its external actions. In particular, in the section of this report dedicated to climate change, companies will be required to present their carbon footprint*.

A company’s carbon footprint is broken down into three scopes:

• Scope 1 covers GHG emissions emitted directly by the company as a result of its own activities (e.g. emissions from heating its premises or from the vehicles it owns);
• Scope 2 corresponds to indirect GHG emissions induced mainly by the purchase or production of electricity in general;
• Scope 3 covers all the company’s other indirect emissions, i.e. those not directly associated with the manufacture of its products and services: upstream, the carbon footprint of its suppliers’ and partners’ products and services; downstream, the use of its products and services, limited however to the life cycle of products and their energy consumption, which leaves aside the other consequences of their use. Scope 3 is often the largest part of a company’s GHG emissions.

A methodology for assessing the impact of ICT solutions usage on user’s activity GHG emissions.

In December 2022, the ITU-T approved a methodology to assess the impact of the use of an ICT solution on GHG emissions, as an international reference for UN signatory states committed to its application. This method makes it possible to measure the overall impact (which can be positive or negative) on a third party’s own activity of implementing an ICT solution from the point of view of GHG emissions; this impact is often called “Pillar B” to distinguish it from the “Pillar A” made up of the three scopes (1 to 3) of the company supplying the digital solution.

Recommendation L.1480 [17], of which Orange was one of the contributors, provides an exhaustive auditable result of the GHG emissions generated or avoided by the user’s use of the solution.

The methodology is based on taking into account all the effects of the ICT solution studied, described in a consequence tree:

– The so-called first-order effects induced by the digital solution. For example, in the case of telecommuting, these are GHG emissions due to the purchase of terminals made necessary by telecommuting (e.g. purchase of a second monitor or printer at the teleworker’s home), or GHG emissions from the networks used to implement the digital telecommuting solution;

– Second-order effects, induced in relation to a historical reference situation, without any acceleration in the use of telecommuting (as in the case of Atalante). These include, for example, the effect of changes in teleworkers’ travel patterns on GHG emissions (e.g. elimination of certain home-work journeys), or the maintenance of journeys previously made on the home-work route (shopping, sporting activities, car-pooling, etc.);

– Higher-order effects, linked to changes in behavior induced by the use of the telecommuting solution, for both employees and employers. These may include working some days from a second home, taking advantage of reduced commuting times to take up a new activity (sport, etc.), employees relocating because of telecommuting or, more generally, all rebound effects, etc. Other examples include shared offices set up by the employer as a result of the widespread use of telecommuting, enabling a reduction in the surface area of company premises, or the reuse of financial benefits;

The assessment of all these effects relates to the specific activity of the user of the digital teleworking solution. It therefore always concerns a particular use case, for example the implementation of telecommuting on a site, for a company and its effect on its own processes. In this example, the impact of telecommuting on GHG emissions will vary according to the site studied, each site having its own characteristics (location, size, availability of public transport, number of employees, etc.), and it will also vary according to the company studied, depending in particular on its sector of activity.

The L.1480 methodology proposes three levels of measurement, depending on the precision required: simplified for an initial estimate, intermediate for decision-making between peers (companies), and full for external communication.

It also defines scaling rules for assessing the impact in terms of GHG emissions, for example aggregated over its users, or according to a particular sector of activity of said users.

An experiment at the Orange Atalante site in Rennes

Orange has implemented the full measurement level of the above-mentioned ITU-T methodology in the specific case of telecommuting implementation at its Orange Atalante site in Rennes, on a base of 687 employees. This work was the subject of a paper [18], presented in June 2023 at the EuCNC & 6G Summit 2023 (European Conference on Networks and Communications) on the theme “6G for a Green and Digital transition”.

Assessing the overall effects of implementing telecommuting at the Atalante site required the collection of extensive data from the Orange Information System and a survey of site employees (118 complete responses, i.e. 17% of site employees). This data enabled us to determine :

– The purchase of terminals (by Orange or by employees) made necessary by teleworking (e.g. the purchase of a monitor, a second computer or a printer for the home of certain teleworkers);

– Employee travel (journeys made, means of transport used, types of vehicle used, etc.), as well as changes in travel caused by teleworking (elimination of certain home-work journeys, etc.);

– The impact of telecommuting on employees’ homes (heating the homes of certain employees at certain times, made necessary by telecommuting, or the fitting out of an office for telecommuting by certain employees at home, the extension of the home, etc.);

– Other changes in employee behavior induced by telecommuting (e.g. teleworkers working from their second homes, employees moving house thanks to teleworking, etc.).

The reduction of working surfaces by “Flex Office” – which, according to ADEME, could contribute half of the reduction in GHG emissions (excluding higher-order effects) – was not envisaged during the study by Orange Atalante site management, and has therefore not been taken into account.

These observations were then translated into CO₂-eq, according to the specific emission factor* of the associated goods or services.

This experiment on the impact of using a digital teleworking solution on GHG emissions, carried out on the Orange Atalante site, enabled us to assess the following effects over one year (see illustration below):

• 1^st order effects (effect on GHG emissions linked to the existence of the digital solution) :
  + 18,8 tonnes CO₂-eq

This means that, on the Orange Atalante site, over one year, the implementation of the digital teleworking solution emitted 18.8 tonnes CO₂-eq.

– 2^nd-order effects (effects in the transportation and building sectors):
– 135,2 tonnes CO₂-eq

In other words, at the Orange Atalante site, over one year, the implementation of teleworking has reduced GHG emissions from transport and buildings by 135.2 tonnes CO₂-eq, mainly thanks to the reduction in emissions from the use of private cars by employees (- 182.9 tonnes CO₂-eq).

– Higher-order effects :
+ 51,4 tonnes CO₂-eq

Overall, this experiment showed that the widespread use of telecommuting at the Orange Atalante site has saved 65.0 tonnes of CO₂-eq over one year (year with action: 2022)

This study led to :

1) corroborate previous results, notably those published by ADEME [19], [20] about:

– first-order effects (carbon footprint of the solution itself) ;

– and deviations from the historical reference situation (without telecommuting or with less telecommuting);

2) measure for the first time the higher-order effects resulting from the use of teleworking, which reduced the positive result by a factor of more than two, from (135.2-18.8) =116.4 tonnes CO₂-eq avoided, to (116.4 – 51.4) = 65 tonnes CO₂-eq.

The assessment of higher-order effects, designed to account for all environmental effects in terms of GHG emissions, cannot therefore be overlooked.

The implementation of the ITU-T L.1480 methodology, which includes these higher-order effects, thus paves the way for a better understanding of the impacts, both positive and negative, of digital use, and for the establishment of a consensus on these consequences with a view to effective action to reduce GHG emissions.