Highlights From Today’s FCC Broadband Workshop

By Brad

One of today’s FCC National Broadband Plan workshops, “Smart Grid, Broadband and Climate Change,” examined how broadband has the ability to greatly help the environment. As noted during the workshop, America will not meet its goal of a 13% to 22% reduction in carbon emissions unless broadband adoption is increased. In fact, connecting the estimated 10 million U.S. homes that don’t have broadband access — along with the 40 million people who currently have access but haven’t adopted broadband—could significantly cut carbon emissions.

On the transportation side, Sheryl Wilkerson, President of Willow LLC, spoke about the need for intelligent transportation, including providing useful data to and from vehicles, bringing intelligent applications to cleaner vehicles in order to spur demand, and bringing agencies like the FCC and the Department of Transportation together with telecommunications companies and vehicle manufacturers to deploy new vehicle technologies.

Regarding businesses, Matt Bauer, President of BetterWorld Telecom pointed out that if America were to make a major investment in telecommuting and meeting technology, we could reduce our carbon footprint by 50%. Right now, just 3% of U.S. workers telecommute the majority of their time. The good news is the technology for telecommuting and remote meeting is already available.

Outside of major metropolitan areas, opportunities are also available for using broadband to cut carbon emissions. But as Maura O’Neill, Senior Advisor for Energy and Climate, and Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics noted, people in rural areas don’t just need to have access to broadband, they also need to know about the many benefits of using it — such as using high-speed Internet to give farmers tools to calculate the carbon in their soil.

Smart grids also play a major role (both in rural areas and cities), as they can provide greater energy efficiency. For example: Skip Laitner, Economic Director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy talked about the semi-conductor broadband efficiency scenario, which could allow the U.S. to use as much as 27% less electricity by 2037 — even with the expected high increase in demand.

More reports from the broadband workshops as they roll on. And speaking of broadband and the environment, IIA Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman will be taking part in the 32nd World Energy Engineering Congress on Thursday, November 5 in Washington D.C. His session will be “Plug in to Power Down: Opportunities to Reduce the Carbon Footprint Through Telecommunications-Based Solutions. More information on the event can be found on the WEEC’s website.