Energy-efficient communication networks for improved global energy productivity

Recently, a lot of effort has been put into research and development of energy-efficient devices and systems and into optimization of the network infrastructure with regard to energy consumption. On the one hand, reducing total power consumption of global communication networks has become an imperative and an important step towards the future highly energy-efficient Internet. On the other hand, capacity and performance of the Internet must be continuously improved in order to meet the high requirements set by the continuously increasing of both the number of broadband subscribers and the amount of user traffic. Thus, only a highly energy-efficient and high-performance network infrastructure designed to efficiently support advanced applications and services for improving energy productivity in many other branches of business and society can significantly contribute to global energy savings. This paper briefly discusses potentials and options for achieving such an energy-efficient network infrastructure. Some examples of software applications and services for global energy savings are briefly reviewed. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the need for a holistic approach to evaluate energy efficiency and to improve the global energy productivity through the use of high-performance and energy-efficient networks, services and applications.