CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENT

The telecommunications sector continues to be a key enabler of growth and innovation across multiple industries, especially when it comes to providing climate friendly solutions. In actively managing our own exposure to natural capital risks, we are also often seen as part of a solution as we support a larger community of businesses to manage their risks through our digital services and connectivity solutions. The massive shift to remote work due to Covid-19 has resulted in a huge reduction in emissions from vehicles and other sources. Specific to the telecommunications sector, a huge influx of video activities facilitated over the internet has increased data consumption and demand for digital services. New norms such as remote working, virtual learning, and businesses being forced to embrace digitalisation across their value chains has driven exponential demand for a robust network architecture with almost zero-downtime.

Governance

Environmental Sustainability is embedded into our business operations and seen in the overall context of the business. Each Division, led by the respective Heads of Divisions shoulder the responsibility of ensuring proper practices, aligned to climate and environment business decisions as stated in our Sustainability Policy and our Climate and Environment Manual. At Digi, we are managing environmental responsibilities in a systematic manner with Environmental Management System (ISO 14001:2015) including the proper management of waste, water and e-waste.

Key Initiatives

NETWORK MODERNISATION FOR SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

Key highlights for the year 2020 includes :

  • Telenor’s Asia businesses joint energy optimisation initiative aimed at displacing fossil-fuel-generated electricity with alternative energy sources towards achieving low carbon networks
  • Strategic short-term and long-term decarbonisation initiatives geared towards building a future-ready network architecture
  • Enhancing data-integrity in non-financial reporting to provide consistency and quality
  • Refined internal ESG risk management framework to mitigate rising climate impact

Adopt cleaner energy innovations and solutions

  • Pilot ZTE’s R&D expertise to adopt AI/ML-based system to manage our Radio Access Network (RAN) energy consumption including automated power savings during low-peak usage
  • Invest to expand fibre-based back haul and last mile solutions in our network and service offerings (Fibre networks use less energy to power the signal, resulting in less heat being generated, and therefore less cooling required)
  • Software upgrade to the RAN network to unlock new capabilities and features towards building open and virtualised RAN architectures

Transitioning towards data driven network planning and higher spectrum efficiencies

RAN
modernisation

Microwave to
fibre connectivity

Further details of how we manage our environmental impact via network infrastructure is available in the “Service Reliability & Quality” section.

‘GREEN’ WORKPLACE

A sustainable workplace ensures business continuity by saving or restoring natural resources and propagates improved employee productivity.

In keeping up with our headquarters and Technology Operations Centre (TOC) being accredited with Gold certification by LEEDs in 2017, and by Green Building Index (GBI) in 2012 and 2016 respectively, we are exploring ways to effectively monitor and modify our resource consumption. These includes undertaking improvement measures in the following areas:

  • Enhancing environmental co-creation of digital products and services, processes and solutions with partners, suppliers and customers
  • Innovate our way-of-work towards greater agility and flexibility via teleworking to reduce travel-related carbon emissions
  • Reducing consumption of material resources, managing waste and environmental degradation
  • Reducing pollution of air, earth and water in material sourcing and manufacturing, during construction and over the life cycle of our buildings
  • Reducing damage to natural systems and bio-diversity
  • High quality and healthy productive spaces, utilising elements such as natural light and responsive heating/cooling measures
  • Green procurement – Environmental concerns addressed as part of sourcing criteria

Performance

  • In 2020, our carbon emission has decreased by 5% y-o-y, attributed to the on-going network modernisation and operational efficiency (OE) initiatives. Employee mobility has also been reduced due to travel restrictions and remote working, attributing to improvements in Scope 1 and Scope 3. We willl continue driving low carbon solutions to achieve our joint Group’s Science-Based target of 50% reduction by 2030. In 2021, we will embark on a climate data integrity initiative to improve on our carbon and energy management, and reporting standards for Scopes 1,2 and 3.
  • Our annual GHG emissions inventory FY2020 in accordance to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard:
Digi Climate Metrics/Year 2020 2019 2018
Scope 1: Direct Energy Consumption from Fuel (GWh) 43.87 43.47 48.2
Scope 1: Carbon Emissions (Tonnes) 10,737 10,677 11,738
Scope 2: Indirect Energy Consumption from Grid
and Green Electricity (GWh)		 236.1 250.6 220
Scope 2: Carbon Emissions (Tonnes) 155,471 162,870 153,769
Scope 3: Indirect Energy from Value Chain (GWh) 3 8 9
Scope 3: Carbon Emissions (Tonnes) 745 1,653 1,728
Total Energy (GWh) 283.3 302.0 287.2
Total Carbon Emissions (Tonnes) 166,953 175,200 167,235
  • Improved Carbon Intensity per Data Usage by 31% y-o-y. This means that though the average customer is using more data, we have achieved a lower carbon footprint per unit of data consumed. Our carbon intensity is measured by tonnes of of CO2 (tCO2e) per terabyte of data.
Digi Intensity Metrics/Year 2020 2019 2018
Customer Base (mil) 10.44 11.28 11.66
Energy Usage per Customer (kWh) 27.1 26.7 24.6
Carbon Intensity per Customer 0.016 0.016 0.014
Energy Usage per Data Terabyte (mWh) 0.16 0.22 0.31
Carbon Intensity per Data Usage (tCO2e) 0.09 0.13 0.18
  • General Waste
    • Additions of recycling and food waste bins at office public areas. Food wastes are composted and processed to fertiliser
    • Stopped single use plastic – Discontinuation of water bottles and single-use plastics at Digi eateries
    • Installed hand dryers at toilets to reduce wastage of hand paper
Waste collected/Year 2020 2019 2018
General waste (Tonnes) 251 281 284
Waste generated per employee (Kg) 170 183 176
Waste recycled (Tonnes) 2 6 6
  • Water Consumption
Water consumption/Year 2020 2019 2018
Total (m3) 78,856 93,770 102,548
Water consumption per employee (m3) 54 61 63
(Note: General waste collected, and water consumption has reduced by 11% and 16% respectively due to low employee capacities in the office buildings)
  • E-Waste*
  • E-waste directly produced from our operation is managed under the Environment Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulation 2005 and our internal guidelines.
Obsolete electrical and electronic waste/Year 2020 2019 2018
Collected (Tonnes) 47 29 145
Recycled (Tonnes) 11 29 1.3
* Decommissioned network equipment constitutes the largest amount of e- waste generated by tonnes. We reuse equipment, and send those that are obsolete to recycle and disposed of safely by a licensed vendor.