Geo-intelligence based carbon footprint monitoring and prediction of suitable renewable energy technology system for mobile towers

Abstract

The international treaty, United Nations FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has the objective to 'stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere'. To comply with the requirements of UNFCCC, India has to mitigate the climate change and the Indian telecom industry can be a major contributor to this. The telecom industry in India has been the lifeline for connecting the people irrespective of the geographical distances between them. The 7,42,000 mobile towers in the country form the backbone of this lifeline. A substantial amount of the country's electricity is required for the operation of these mobile towers. To ensure the undisrupted operations of these, the mobile tower companies have to rely upon diesel driven generators to meet erratic power cuts in the country. These diesel generators consume more than 2.12 billion liter of diesel and emit 5.61 million tons of carbon annually. In this paper, we propose a 'Geo-Intelligence based Carbon Footprint Monitoring system to predict suitable Renewable Energy Technology for powering Mobile Towers' which is capable of monitoring the carbon footprints in the mobile network across India. This system will also predict the suitable Renewable Energy Technology (RET) like solar, wind or hybrid for powering the mobile towers according to the geography and power availability conditions of each region. Switching to RET will lead to carbon emission reduction and will be considered as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which shall earn India some Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits. A case study on a set of mobile towers in Assam state of India has been carried out.