Thierry Van Landegem Chairman, GreenTouch, Vice President, Global Operations, Bell Labs
Green Growth, the State of Green, GreenBiz … and GreenTouch
October 25, 2013
We know that green has been the bread and butter of some dedicated groups and organizations, but now it is becoming an intricate part of company and government strategies.
Great news!
Why then is green still lacking the power to make it mainstream? Because no one single party can make it happen. Partnerships across stakeholders are the answer.
That's music to my ears because that is exactly what we do in GreenTouch.
Early this week, industry executives, government ministers, international organization leaders, university professors and high level government officials gathered in Copenhagen to push the green agenda at Global Green Growth Forum (3GF). From the onset of the event, the tone was set: the biggest risk for our environment is the risk of doing nothing. And as an important stakeholder we have to act!
So what exactly do we need to do to get green into the mainstream ?
My recipe list consists of the following ingredients:
1. Sustainability should be part of your basic company strategy – otherwise your company cannot exist in the long term.
2. Transformative partnerships are needed, that bring together suppliers, manufacturers, customers, academia and governments. These partnerships will work towards a clearly defined common goal, with industry as the likely lead.
3. Green should not be simply a specific feature on your product roadmap – it should be an intrinsic part of your product, otherwise your product can't survive in the long term.
4. Finally, green should be an intrinsic part of your product design – your customers are not willing to pay more for a green feature; but what they do want is a high-quality, high-performance product with green features.
So, if I map this onto GreenTouch, I can honestly say that we have mixed together all the ingredients and the recipe is smelling good:
· We brought together all ICT stakeholders.
· We've set a bold and ambitious goal.
· We've created a framework for research that brings to bear new technologies with clear ownership rules; and
· We liaise towards policy and standards organizations.
And it works! Our green meter announcement is a clear progress report of our work – and there is more to come.
The challenge now is to get the green meter results into products and deployments. But this is not the role of GreenTouch. GreenTouch provides the platform to create and demonstrate green technologies. Products and deployments are the role of our member organizations. These manufacturers have to include green in their product design, and network operators have to put green on their requirements list and deploy green products.