Telstra pioneered in measuring the impact of its digital technologies on helping its business customers reduce their carbon footprint.

In a new report released by Deloitte Access Economics, it was stated that by 2030, every tonne of CO2e Telstra emits will help their customers avoid 6.9 tonnes of CO2e emissions by using its products and services.

Head of Environment Tom Penny said that the country faces a major challenge to achieve its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by 2030.

“While many businesses have committed to reduce their emissions, only a quarter of large businesses are on a trajectory to meet these targets,” he said. 

“What we’ve found is that by adopting new technology this can contribute to their decarbonisation goals. We know that technology has a really important role there. What we don't know is how much that can contribute towards Australia's target. So that was the focus of the research.”

“From Telstra’s perspective, we want to do our best to reduce our own impact, but climate change is a global problem,” he added. 

“And we need everyone on board to be able to reduce emissions to address this.”

“The technology enabled by Telstra can save over 40 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions for Australia which is about 1% of Australia's target,” said Penny. 

“That's actually about seven times the benefit of Telstra’s own emissions. So we can help Australia seven times what we release ourselves.”

“If Telstra can provide telehealth services and connectivity to customers, whether they're in metro or regional areas, that can enable a massive reduction in travel required to get access to health – 37,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030,” he said.

“The agriculture sector contributes 15% of Australia's emissions, which is a huge amount really, and so technology can have an amazing opportunity to actually try and transform that to reductions,” he said.

“Using technology could double [the emissions savings] over the next eight to 10 years as well,” he said, adding that this was a sector Telstra had end-to-end solutions for.

The third area focused on cloud computing. “More than 50% of businesses now use some form of cloud computing and that number is increasing,” said Penny. 

“We also know that if an organisation uses cloud computing rather than doing that storage and computing themselves, they can save nearly 80% of the emissions compared to doing it themselves.” 

“HVAC systems probably contribute around 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia each year,” he said.

“The two things we're doing that are having the most impact on reducing our emissions and improving the energy efficiency of our equipment, that is, decommissioning energy-intensive, older technology and replacing that with new technology,” he said. 

“We're exploring lots of other new and innovative technologies, but we can't forget about the core things that we need to do to transform our business.”