Thierry Van Landegem
Chairman, GreenTouch
Vice President, Global Operations, Bell Labs
Speaking as a Keynote at the Green Growth Forum 2013, Dublin, Ireland
February 22, 2013
I recently had the pleasure to be invited to speak at the Green Growth Forum in Dublin, Ireland. This event organized by Silicon Republic brought together the major green stakeholders in the Irish eco-system.
With about 300 decision makers in the room representing government, financial institutions, academic research institutes and technology providers, one could feel the buzz. The Irish are definitely an interesting crowd: dynamic, team minded and entrepreneurial. All ingredients one needs to succeed.
I had the opportunity to give the first keynote of the day and set the scene. My address can be seen here: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/special-events/green-growth-forum/. Our pre-competitive collaborative research consortium bringing all relevant ICT players around the table, was seen as a clear step forward towards a greener world. There was a genuine interest of some local players and representatives of global players to join the consortium.
But what was really refreshing was to see the financial incentives created by the local government, and the openness of capital providers in the debate. Money is available for sure, but what these financiers need is a better articulation of the business opportunity – a clear message to the entrepreneurs: we need better business plans, a better articulation of the product or the service and the go to market plans. On a broader scale this also holds true for GreenTouch. Agreed, GreenTouch is all about technology, however, GreenTouch is also about how to introduce that new knowledge and technology in the market either through standardization or informed policy regulation in a pre-competitive fashion, and eventually commercially by its members. And that is why GreenTouch is investing heavily in its Services and Policy Group – this group provides a platform for discussion driving our results to the market.
Another aspect which we tend to forget in the green debate and which got quite a bit of attention in Dublin, is the people. What is the impact of green on you and me? Obviously going green is about reducing carbon emissions, which is good for the environment and therefore good for us. Talking about the carbon footprint of the transport sector is simple and straightforward (think about airplanes and cars), doing that for the ICT sector is more difficult, let alone talking about ICT in itself.
Therefore presenting GreenTouch and its ambitious goal requires a clear articulation for people to get the message. Our goal is to improve energy efficiency by a factor of 1,000. As a result the ICT sector will be able to reduce its power consumption for a given traffic, and, given the lower power needs ICT can think about using renewable energy sources which previously weren’t be possible. This greening of ICT makes it a great instrument to green other sectors which will eventually reduce further society’s carbon footprint. And that, well that is important for you and me as a human beings that wants a cleaner environment. A clean future for our kids