Environment
Our greatest impact on the environment lies in the role our products and solutions play in helping to decarbonize and dematerialize other industries and cities. This is what we call our environmental handprint and is achieved through the green transition of industries and society. However, we must also constantly manage our own environmental footprint and impact on climate, biodiversity and geodiversity. Highlights from our 2022 Sustainability report, People & Planet, include:
In 2022, we introduced a new circularity metric to guide our operational circularity journey and to close the material loop. Our new target is to be 95% circular related to operational waste by 2030
We announced commercial availability of liquid cooling technology for our latest AirScale base station portfolio
We began shipping our FP5 new network processor silicon which is up to 75% more energy efficient than previous generations
We reduced our facility GHG emissions by 54% compared to 2019 and surpassed our annual target for renewable electricity in our facilities, reaching 63% globally
We launched Intelligent RAN operations which use machine learning to reduce 5G base station energy consumption
We joined the RE100 initiative and were awarded with the Best Newcomer recognition during climate week in New York in September 2022
customer deploying our Quillion-based chipset in fixed broadband solutions bringing related energy efficiency benefits
Our final assembly suppliers achieved a 39% reduction in GHG emissions compared to the baseline year of 2019
We have set our key greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target through the Science Based Targets (SBT) initiative. Our target is to reduce our GHG emissions by 50% between 2019 and 2030 across our value chain (Scope 1, 2 and 3). The reported emissions for 2022 were 37 627 000 metric tons CO2e. Our SBT is aligned with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. We were the first telecoms equipment vendor to have a science-based target accepted by the SBT initiative in 2017.
The SBT target covers the following activities:
- Scope 1: emissions from our facilities, car fleet and marine fleet
- Scope 2: emissions from purchased energy
- Scope 3: emissions from the customer use of sold products (covering almost 100% of our portfolio in 2022) and emissions from the logistics and the final assembly factories in our supply chain
We also set other short, medium and long-term targets in specific areas of our operations and value chain to drive concrete actions that support and accelerate the achievement of our targets. We have our own 100% renewable electricity target across our facilities aligned with the RE100 initiative which we joined in 2022. We have also agreed a target with our main final assembly suppliers to reduce the GHG emissions by 100% by 2030 for the portion of their manufacturing attributed to Nokia. Furthermore, we continue to advocate for greater uptake of decarbonized electricity and we encourage the use of more sustainable fuels by our logistics service providers.
Our climate targets from 2023 onwards
2023
75% renewable electricity in facilities
65% reduction of facilities' emissions
50% reduction of average power consumption of 5G mMIMO Base Station
2025
100% renewable electricity in own facilities
65% reduction of Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions, including 85% reduction from facilities
2030
50% reduction of our total GHG emissions (Scope 1, 2 and 3)
Final assembly suppliers reach zero emissions
50% reduction of suppliers' GHG emissions
73% reduction of logistics GHG emissions
95% circularity rate for waste from our offices, labs, manufacturing, installation and product takeback
Increase recyclate use in products
2050
Net zero emissions in our value chain
Our climate targets
ESG Strategy: Environment
Our technology provides the tools to help resolve the worlds fundamental challenges for industry, society and individuals.
Our ambition in the environment arena is two-fold. Firstly, we aim to be the leader in energy efficiency in silicon, software, and systems. We provide the networks and operations to scale smart energy solutions. We also intend to accelerate our ambition in energy efficiency in 5G-Advanced and 6G through early engagement in standardization and ecosystem development. Secondly, we continue to drive a circular approach, improving product circularity by introducing more recycled content into new products and expanding the circular product offering for our customers.
Reducing energy consumption in our chipsets
ReefShark: At the 2023 Mobile World Congress Nokia launched its new generation of mobile network radios, which benefit from the integration of a new generation of Nokia ReefShark System-on-Chip. This can reduce radio use-phase energy consumption by some 30% and associated material carbon footprint by 30% compared to earlier products.
Quillion: Our Quillion chipset reduces power consumption for broadband access products. Quillion-based solutions consume about 50% less power in the Optical Line Terminal (OLT) than previous generations and are two years ahead of the European Union Code of Conduct for Broadband Communication Equipment targets – helping operators to meet their emissions goals. By the end of 2022 the 150th customer deployed our Quillion-based chipset in fixed broadband solutions bringing related energy efficiency benefits
FP5: Our FP5 network processor offers a 75% reduction in power consumption compared to its previous generation. In fact, Nokia and BT are further collaborating on highly scalable, power efficient IP networks. FP5 is the new heart of Nokia’s IP service routing platforms. Nokia has also added support for high density 800G routing interfaces, new embedded line rate, flow-based encryption capabilities, and a 75% reduction in power consumption compared to its previous generation, which supports BT’s sustainability objectives to run the most power efficient network in the UK.
Maximizing our handprint
Our technology solutions make asset intensive industries more efficient, helping minimize waste and enabling greater reuse of precious resources and materials. We work with customers across asset intensive industries such as utilities, oil and gas, manufacturing, transportation, mining, agriculture as well as in other areas of business. Enhanced connectivity and new advanced digital solutions also underpin everyday life, creating more energy efficient, cleaner, less polluted cities and communities, helping to manage and reduce waste. For more see industrial digitalization section
Minimizing our footprint
We have a key responsibility to limit potential negative impacts of our business and operations. We strive to minimize our footprint by actively and continually managing that footprint. As the volume of traffic rises in a more connected, digitalized world, we must work to separate this growth in traffic from any equivalent growth in energy consumption. We also need to constantly strive to reduce GHG emissions across our operations and facilities, and work with our supply chain to help drive greater energy and resource efficiency through the whole chain.
We set externally verifiable public targets with short-, medium- and long-term ambitions, often working with recognised external expert organizations to enable greater transparency and robustness. In climate we have set our Science Based Target through which we aim to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030. This target is applied across our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (our whole value chain) and is calculated against the baseline FY2019 reported emissions. This target is in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.
Climate and our product portfolio
In 2022, 95% of our greenhouse gas emissions came from our products in use by our customers in their networks. To help minimize the emissions we constantly work to increase the energy efficiency of our products, improve software and services, power consumption, and drive innovation across the portfolio.
Below are a number of examples from our product offering which reflect this work across our portfolio.
Energy efficiency solutions
5G and climate
5G and climate
5G and climate: 5G is considered natively greener than previous generations of mobile technology and can potentially provide 100 times more data traffic with less energy per bit thanks to new standardized efficiency features. This is based on the ITU-R (International Telecommunications Union) design target for 5G radios which is 100x traffic with same energy consumption compared to 4G.
5G is the only radio technology that can help to digitalize societies while also allowing the decoupling of the growth in data traffic from equivalent potential growth in energy consumption. An energy-efficient 5G deployment strategy is the only way to build the best performing, lowest cost 5G radio networks. 5G also provides the foundation for the efficient use of other new technologies (AI. VR.AR, blockchain).
Out of the global pandemic, we have seen the emphasized need for reliable, robust networks. The benefits of these critical networks to other sectors and parts of society far outweigh any potential increases in their own network energy use. But we still drive for greater energy efficiency.
Watch the video 5G for change: a path to zero emissions
Circular practices and solutions
Around 50% of global emissions come from the global production of materials and less than 10% of materials are treated as circular. Increasing circular practices and reducing waste are therefore critical to combating climate change. For 25 years, we have had well-established circular practices that utilize the full value of our products. We look at circularity from two perspectives: firstly, how can we increase the usage of non-virgin materials in creation of new products, and secondly, how can we ensure maximum circularity of our operational value chain. This means that we embed circularity into everything we do.
Circular Products & Services
We take back or acquire excess and obsolete products from customers and markets, and then repair, refurbish these units for inclusion in the product supply chain for customer purchase or our own internal use. Products that cannot be reused are sent to recycling to Nokia authorized facilities, to generate raw material for another application or industry. For further information on how we do this you can read more on the Circular Products and Services webpage. For a recent example of what we are doing you can read about the launch of our maintenance hub in Saudi Arabia which will provide support to customers across the Middle East and Africa as well as training to local engineers.
From design stage, we are also working to increase the use of recycled material content in our products. For example, we have worked with our suppliers of cast aluminum parts to fully understand raw material acquisition practices and the potential to increase the recycled content in our components. We estimate that 45% of over 10000 tons of cast aluminum parts used in Nokia products in 2022 have recycled content in them. (Our 2030 target is to increase the recycled content of cast aluminum used in mechanical parts to 90%.
In 2022, we processed 3,450 metric tons of obsolete products and parts. Of this material, we reused 88 900 items with a combined weight of 400 metric tons, sent approximately 3 000 metric tons of old telecommunications equipment for energy and materials recovery.
Substances and minerals
Our products are comprised predominantly of metals which constitute more than 75% of the total weight in most products. Aluminum is the most significant metal, which is used in sheet metal for cabinets and chassis, and in castings for heat sinks. Plastics only comprise about 10% of our products by weight. We published an academic paper in the Going Green Eco Design conference in December 2021 to explain the material content of a 5G product in detail together with the development needed to minimize the environmental impact of the telecom product from a materials usage perspective.
Our products, including original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs) product parts, modules and components must meet the requirements stated in the Nokia Substance List (NSL).
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Compliance with relevant environmental regulations is an important part of our environmental policy. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulatory programs strive to decrease the environmental impact of covered products by making the manufacturer responsible for the entire life cycle of the product, especially end-of-life (EOL) management through product takeback.
As EPR regulations evolve globally, we continued our work on increasing product value recovery at end of life. Based on the Recycling and Reuse Metric that we pioneered with the iNEMI organization, we are now better able to evaluate new product designs with an eye towards improving materials choice, ease of parts and materials liberation, and available recovery technology in countries where the products are sold.
Operations
Circular approach
Our target is to be 95% circular in 2030. This target includes waste across our value chain: from our own operations, product manufacturing and product takeback.
We have implemented waste reduction, reuse, and recycling programs across our operations. In 2022, the total operational waste increased by 103% compared to 2021. We recycled, reused or recovered energy from 80% of all waste (80% in 2021.)
All electronic waste generated in our facilities or operations, including Asset Recovery, can only be shipped to processing facilities that have gone through our Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) Liability Assessment. The requirements for the HSE liability assessment vary based on risk, which is dependent on waste quantity, shipment frequency, waste type/toxicity, waste treatment technology, environmental management systems, location, legal requirements and prior assessments. Our goal is to maintain the minimum number of approved waste processing facilities needed to meet required services and minimize environmental liability. In 2022, we completed ten environmental health and safety liability assessments of e-waste recycling facilities located in France, Netherlands, Spain, and USA.
We aim to save space, reduce packaging materials and maximize transport efficiency, thereby reducing inbound and outbound shipments. The reuse of inbound packaging materials also contributes to reductions in CO2 emissions from outbound deliveries.
Our product packaging primarily consists of corrugated wood fiber board containing at least 50% post-consumer recycled content. We are constantly reducing the usage of virgin plastic using new packaging concepts and investigating usage of new bio-based materials in our packaging. At the same time, we are also increasing the recycled content of plastic used.
Climate
Our Science Based Target includes reducing our emissions across our operations by 50% from 2019 to 2030. This target enables us to contribute to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. We work to reduce where possible the energy use across our facilities and increase the use of renewable energy to power our offices, labs and other facilities. In 2022, our Real Estate team maintained its focus on developing and delivering energy efficient facilities in-line with our overall company goals and science-based targets (SBTs).
In 2022 we surpassed our annual target for renewable energy across our facilities globally, reaching over 63% of our purchased electricity (53% in 2021) and our Scope 2 emissions decreased by 41% from 2021 levels.
In late 2021 we confirmed our aim to use 100% renewable electricity by 2025 across our facilities (including offices, laboratories and our own final assembly factories), and in early 2022 we joined the RE100 initiative. In late 2022 we were selected as the winner of the Best Newcomer category in the 2022 RE100 Leadership Awards.
As part of our own operations emission targets we are working on fleet emission reductions, including both our company car fleet and our marine fleet. In 2022, GHG emissions from our global car fleet decreased by 8% compared to 2021 and now we are 24% less than in 2019.
Water
Life cycle assessment (LCA) shows that the predominant amount of water withdrawal results from the generation of electricity used to power our products in our customers’ networks. As our products consume electricity during their relatively long design lifetime (10 to 15 years for many of them), our biggest influence on water withdrawal is to reduce power consumption over the product’s use time, which is part of our science-based targets.
Water utilization within our facilities is typically associated with sanitary use, cleaning, and landscaping activities. In 2022, we used 907 000 m3 (1 038 000 m3 in 2021) of water in our facilities, a reduction of 13% compared to 2021. Total water withdrawal was 885 000 m3 which is less than the total water consumption as 2.5% of the withdrawn water was recycled. The reduction of water consumption is partially explained by the China Covid-19 lockdowns in 2022 requiring our China based employees to work remotely. During 2022 we identified and analyzed facilities in countries identified as being under extremely high and high baseline water stress to create an action plan to be implemented in 2023. We will also select further sites outside of water stressed countries to review for best practices.
To learn more about how we work with our supply chain, visit the supply chain section under Responsible Business.
Supply chain
Circular
Besides meeting the requirements stated in the Nokia Substance List (NSL), suppliers product documentation must also provide us with a list of any EU REACH candidate substance of very high concern present in a product. Furthermore, products, parts, modules, and components must not contain any substance listed as To be Avoided in our Substance List to the extent technically and economically possible. See more on restricted substances in our REACH declaration.
In 2021 we expanded our work on aluminum content in our products to look at the closed loop development for gold used in the products. We started working with our electronics waste recyclers in determining the destination of gold from our obsolete products and matching those companies with the ones that our suppliers use for gold purchases to close the loop. We plan to expand our program to cover copper in the next phase.
Climate
We require all suppliers, except those with very low environmental impact, to have a documented Environmental Management System (EMS) in place. We require and track that key suppliers and those with greater impacts are certified to ISO 14001. We create environmental improvement programs together to drive improvements in our upstream Scope 3 emissions through the CDP Supply Chain Climate Program.
We have detailed key performance indicators and public global targets related to sourcing activities, including new supply chain climate targets as part of our 1.5°C climate commitment. We have agreed with our key final assembly suppliers that they should achieve net zero emissions by 2030 for the portion of their manufacturing allocated to Nokia. In 2022 we continued working with our final assembly partners on the development of their 2030 roadmaps. All suppliers delivered factory level detailed roadmaps. New manufacturing facilities were also included into the program addressing climate ambitions and roadmaps. We require all suppliers, except those with very low environmental impact, to have a documented Environmental Management System (EMS). We also require key suppliers and those suppliers with greater impacts to be ISO14001 certified, which we track. We have worked with the CDP Supply Chain Climate program for more than 10 years and together create programs to drive improvements in our upstream Scope 3 emissions. We encourage our key suppliers to report their climate impacts. We set carbon reduction targets through CDP for our suppliers and create improvement programs with them to help reach those targets.
Minerals
We aim to contribute to a long-term solution to the issue of conflict minerals that ensures responsible and conflict-free sourcing via legitimate trade that brings sustainable improvements in those countries where the risks are greatest. We demand that our suppliers commit to sourcing these key materials from environmentally and socially responsible sources. We work with the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) and Public Private Alliance to increase impact through industry wide collaboration.
See our Conflict Minerals policy
Biodiversity
The high-level COP15 United Nations conference clearly showed that biodiversity loss and climate change remain two of the biggest threats to our planet. As part of our implementation of a materiality assessment in 2022, biodiversity also moved into the top quartile of the matrix demonstrating growing stakeholder interest on the topic.
Biodiversity can be defined as the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and even micro-organisms such as bacteria that make up our natural world in a particular area. Biodiversity can be considered material for every company and individual as it provides everything in nature that we need to survive food, clean water, medicine, and even shelter.
Although biodiversity is of increasing importance for our stakeholders, at Nokia we also look more broadly at our dependence on natural resources, including climate, biodiversity, and geological diversity (geodiversity). By geodiversity, we mean the earth's minerals, rocks, fossils, soils, sediments, landforms, topography and hydrological features such as rivers and lakes.
Although the ICT industry is not considered to be one of the high-impacting sectors related to biodiversity, the story may be different for geodiversity. From a geodiversity perspective, the production of ICT hardware requires various metals, minerals, plastics, chemicals, energy and water in a multi-tier supply chain. Beyond our science-based climate targets, we have now started to work to understand the impacts affecting natural capital (including biodiversity and geodiversity) across our value chain. These areas include mining raw materials and component production, final assembly production, logistics and fleet, installation and use, maintenance of sold products, and product end-of-life activities. To find out more, read Nokia's position paper on biodiversity and geodiversity.
Acting to protect
In December 2022 we protected 5.64 hectares of land that Nokia owns – Rikkisaari, in Northern Finland. This land will become a nature conservation area and falls under the Finnish government's gift of nature campaign, through which the protection decision made by Nokia means that the Finnish state protects a corresponding 5.64-hectare area. The size of Nokia's nature conservation areas will therefore increase to a total of 157 hectares.
In late 2022, we confirmed an exciting partnership with the John Nurminen Foundation to protect biodiversity in the Baltic Sea (link). A three-year joint effort is meant to combat eutrophication in the Baltic Sea and the associated risk to biodiversity. Nokia’s critical role is to support the conservation and sustainability of natural habitats by providing immediate up-to-date and constant information on the status of the environment whether on land or in the sea through our advanced technologies.
In early 2023 we announced that we will deploy private wireless connectivity, network edge equipment and analytics for The Ocean Cleanup, the international non-profit project working to develop and scale technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. 5G, private wireless, edge compute, sensors, AI-based analytics, drones and other advanced technologies will play an increasingly critical role in supporting the conservation and sustainability of our natural environment by providing immediate up-to-date and constant information on the status of the environment, whether on land or in the sea. Working with The Ocean Cleanup provides the opportunity to explore that role further.
