Helping society to decarbonise
Digitalisation and high-speed connectivity will be enablers of the global green recovery.
The EU has recognised that twin digital and green transformations are required at the centre of recovery plans for all regions, sectors and applications across the EU as they seek to drive efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint. As a result, the EU has pledged to allocate 20% of the Recovery and Resilience Facility fund to the digital transition and 37% to drive green investments.
For Vodafone, our most important contribution to tackling climate change is by enabling our customers (including businesses and governments) to reduce their environmental footprint using our digital technologies and services.
Our approach
Our global, cumulative enablement target of 350 million tonnes of CO2e over the ten year period from 2020 - 2030 will be largely delivered via Vodafone’s IoT services, including logistics and fleet management, smart metering and manufacturing activities.
We work with the Carbon Trust to calculate the total GHG emissions avoided as a consequence of our IoT technologies and services. We estimate that over 54% of our 123 million IoT connections directly enabled customers to reduce their emissions in the past year. During the year, we estimate an avoidance of 7.1 million tonnes CO2e, which is 5.2 times the emissions generated from our own operations (Scope 1 and 2).
In March 2021, we became a founding member of the European Green Digital Coalition. The coalition brings together ICT sector companies to work together with EU policymakers and experts to drive investment in—and implementation of—digital solutions in action against climate change.
Connectivity and IoT are critical enablers to delivering green impact across value chains. For example:
Smart agriculture
Lower impact on natural resources
Less emissions from fertilisers
Biodiversity restoration
Regenerative agriculture
Better animal welfare
Smaller land use
Smart energy meters
Empowerment of people to change behaviours
Reduced energy consumption
Transparency
Next generation
Smart cities
More energy-efficient delivery of services
Better traffic flows, fewer congestions
Less waste
Improved air quality (lower pollution)
Smart logistics
Lower fuel consumption
Few emissions
Continuous incremental efficiency gains
Less waste (including food)
Supply chain traceability
Smart manufacturing
Greater resource efficiency
Circular economy potential
Lower energy consumption
Less pollution and waste
Improved health and safety
Greater precision, fewer faults
Contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
We aim to build a inclusive and sustainable digital society. Through our connectivity and digital innovations (SDG 9) and through our partnerships (SDG 17) we can accelerate and scale delivery across multiple SDGs.
Vodafone is committed to continuing to make significant investments in the network infrastructure, coverage and quality, allowing individuals and businesses to connect confidently anywhere and at any time.
Vodafone’s IoT solutions help governments and businesses address environmental issues and are enabling the development of connected and smart cities, helping them to run more efficiently.
We are working to reduce the amount of energy required to run our networks and services while meeting increasing customer demand for data.
