PETER DYKES SUSTAINABILITY
of our stakeholders – customers, investors, employees, local communities, and the world at large – are counting on us to do our part to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change, and Coherent is up to the challenge.” CARBON COUNTING Apart from more efficient use of fibre and the switch to sustainable energy sources, the very evolution of optical technology is having significant knock-on effects for networks and their operators. Helen Xenos, Senior Director of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena says, “There’s a lot that we can say about network sustainability, and it is a huge area of focus for us at Ciena as well as many of our customers. We’ve gone through the exercise of calculating the sustainability impacts of our coherent technology innovations and how it has helped our customers reduce greenhouse gases.” She explains, “For example, we calculated the impact of the power and space efficiencies that have been achieved with each successive WaveLogic generation that we’ve introduced over the past 10 years, which has led to a reduction of 4.5 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. So, it’s pretty significant. This includes the impact of 18 months of WaveLogic 5 Extreme shipments. The reason why we are so focused on innovating from a coherent technology perspective, is that as bandwidth grows and increasing levels of capacity are deployed each year, early adoption of new technology becomes even more important, helping customers make faster progress towards their sustainability goals as they can deploy more capacity with less power and space. When you provide connectivity more efficiently, that gives you a bigger bang at the end of the day - it helps not only in reducing energy consumption, but also has the knock-on effect of reducing cooling and leasing costs– you can see how the benefits quickly add up.” SEEING THE BIG PICTURE Obviously, different sectors of the industry will approach sustainability issues in specific ways, according to their place in
the ecosystem and ways of measuring the success of their initiatives, meaning that it’s difficult to evaluate the carbon footprint of the industry as a whole. In an attempt to arrive at an overall picture of view of how the industry is performing, in Europe at least, the FTTH Council Europe is working on a plan to provide a common method of reporting across the fibre ecosystem. Vincent Garnier, Director General, FTTH Council Europe explains, “We are starting a programme to help our members report their carbon footprint metrics and performance on the basis of comparable metrics. We would like to say, should you be a software vendor, a cable manufacturer or manufacturer of passive or active electronic equipment, a contractor, builder or an operator, we offer you the possibility to align on the way you report your carbon footprint. What we want to do is help all categories of player to talk together and be able to check and report on the progress of our industry holistically as we move forward. It’s ambitious, but I think if we don’t have common way of presenting our reports, we’re not going anywhere.” He adds, “I know that some legislation at a higher level than purely our industry is also moving in that direction and that at some point, we will certainly be obliged to report for every organisation’s carbon footprint performance. There will be a standard, in exactly the same way you have accounting standard to report on your financial situation. We are taking this step to help and also to make sure that every single member of the Council is aware of this matter. It’s a very concrete step towards helping the industry progress with a lower carbon footprint.” Garnier points out, “Carbon footprint is not only what you do yourself, but also what you generate indirectly, so you need to understand what is the carbon footprint of your supplier to be able to measure your own carbon footprint. By connecting people, we hope to also give to everyone the possibility to have a more accurate understanding of the real footprint because we will have possibility to integrate a more accurate carbon footprint measurement of all partners in the value chain.”
are now powered with 100% renewable electricity: • Semiconductor lasers (Switzerland) • Thermoelectric coolers (Texas) • Tunable optical filters (Massachusetts) • Wavelength selective switches (WSS) (California) • Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) filters (California) • Optical components (Vietnam) • Pump laser subassemblies (the Philippines) • Pump laser packaging and optical assembly (China) Richard Marino, Director of Sustainability, Coherent explains, “We are on track to have 100% renewable electricity for all of our operations in the Networking Segment of Coherent by 2025, approximately 273 million kWh per year. This includes our factories as well as our smaller locations for engineering, R&D, and sales offices. All Coherent sites, large and small, are included in this effort. This represents a very significant reduction of our environmental footprint, given that electricity usage accounts for about 90% of our total Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions.” He continues, “In addition to renewable energy contracts, we have installed an on-site solar energy system at our facility in Vietnam, and we are evaluating similar installations at other locations. Our engineering and facilities teams have achieved a cumulative energy savings of 10 million kWh per year through numerous energy efficiency projects. Our manufacturing and quality teams drive yield improvements on the production line that also correspond to reduced energy usage per unit produced, estimated at an additional 4 million kWh per year of energy savings.” On future developments, Marino says, “We will be partnering with our suppliers to drive similar carbon reduction programs in our supply chain, starting in 2023. We are excited that several of our supply chain partners already have carbon reduction programs underway, and we want to recognise and reward their progress in this area. We will work with suppliers that are not as far along to initiate similar programs as we drive to decarbonise our supply chain. All
Kelvin Hagebeuk Marketing Manager, Test & Measurement, Yokogawa Europe
Richard Marino Director of Sustainability, Coherent
Helen Xenos Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, Ciena
Vincent Garnier Director General, FTTH Council Europe
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ISSUE 32 | Q1 2023
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