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SCTE Autumn Lecture - Focus on Sustainability: what did we learn?
Urgency was a theme we heard over and over. The six passionate professionals we heard from stressed again and again that warnings issued in the 80s have gone unheeded, that there is still time to act and we owe it to future generations not to sit on our hands. We were reminded the younger generation will probably do more to solve the problems than our ‘spent’ generation will, since ‘our careers are largely over’. Ouch!
Innovation may yet save us It wasn’t all bad news though; we are making huge strides in innovation, upcycling and recycling as we heard from John Booth MBCS, CDCAP, CDCSP, Martin Bradburn and Jason Kelly. Savings are being made in the millions as kit is repurposed, sold on and given a longer life span. Immerse Compute is heating swimming pools and municipal buildings on a local level and will change the landscape considerably over the next few years. Data centres are eyeing nuclear fusion as a possible game changer and the impact on climate change will be seismic if it takes off. Regulation at home, in the EU and in the US will have a demonstrably positive impact on the robber barons currently characterising this landscape. Training and upskilling Then there is the education piece. What Dom Robinson, Anthony Daly, James Dove , Neal Romanek and Neil Howman are doing in their respective work in education, training, media and lobbying won’t be felt by most of us for a few years but their graft is quietly changing the landscape and shoring up the future for our kids. Important work all this. Perhaps the most important work there is. Thanks to all our speakers and a very engaged audience for a hugely productive day. If you missed our Autumn Lecture in person, all our presentations are hosted on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thescte
Our Autumn lecture was a fascinating cross-industry discussion about the pressure points, easy wins, big picture issues and tiny details that influence the way we view sustainability, whether at a national, regulatory level or right down to turning your TV off at the wall at night. We understood that the lack of transparency from big tech is a huge contributor to the opaque nature of energy consumption worldwide; it would seem everyone has an opinion but nobody is really reporting accurately. While that doesn’t look set to change any time soon, rapid technological developments in data centres mean that while our demand for data is increasing, the strain on the environment will hopefully be reduced.
Think globally, act locally
It is the little everyday things we do that collectively will do as much to save the planet as the US remaining in the Paris Accord, something Mr Trump has threatened to leave again now that he has been re-elected. Myths were debunked and challenged throughout the day; China has only been polluting the atmosphere since the 80s compared to the UK which was busy belching out emissions indiscriminately back in the 1800s, and while they have been aggressively building factories faster than any other territory, they are ahead of Europe in building green factories. Chinese emissions are not as bad as you think. Holding a mirror up to our own indulgent behaviour was uncomfortable but necessary; hearing about two-tonne luxury electric cars with ironic references to ‘waygu leather seats, ‘mother of pearl dashboards and and fat tires’ in the UK compared to the zippy little lightweight electric motors retailing for $3k in China was a sobering experience. We must do better than this.
Profit over people
A depressing and recurrent theme was the colossal power of big business, driving profit over everything else, unanswerable to anyone, as well as a lack of joined up thinking. We heard about the false economy facing time- poor, underpaid fibre installers unwilling to look for an appropriate length of fibre optic cable in the van, chopping up cable to size instead and causing unnecessary wastage. We learned about the inane decision- making that forces gigantic hyperscaler data centres to be located in the Arctic Circle in order to keep them cool, only to spend a fortune on central heating to keep the staff alive.
SCTE ® Presents: Rural broadband & The Last Mile Tuesday March 18 | One Great George Street | London SW1
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Volume 46 No.4 DECEMBER 2024
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