Building a more resilient, sustainable and equitable digital future
In a little over a week’s time, a small group of Nokians will be in Belem, Brazil for the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly known as COP30. This COP takes place ten years after the famous Paris Agreement of 2015, and is the halfway point to 2030, when countries are expected to meet their climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.
Why go?
Nokia’s networks support approximately 271 million fixed connections and 5.6 billion mobile subscriptions across 120 countries. We are the only truly global supplier of mobile and fixed networks and sustainability is a driver of long-term value creation for Nokia.
We have been to previous COPs, and as I’ve said before, the COP process is critical. Collaboration is also critical, and digital technologies are increasingly seen as a key lever in the decarbonization of the most energy intense industries. The transition to renewables and smart grids, the globally recognized future of energy, is impossible without digital technology and connectivity networks. This year in COP30, countries are expected to provide their new climate transition plans known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). It is already clear many of these plans will include increasing reference to the critical role of digitalization in achieving these plans
The Finnish Pavilion at COP will highlight themes such as decarbonizing industry, digitalization, circular and bioeconomy, and climate resilience, showcasing Finland as a technology and climate innovation hub. We will join Finnish business and industry climate leaders under Finland's delegation at the Finland Pavilion where we are hosting panels with customers and global experts on key topics including AI and sustainability, digital resilience, digital equity, and sustainable finance. We will also meet customers, partners and other key stakeholders and participate in other partner programs as well as supporting the International Telecommunication Union’s Green Digital Action track.
Digitalization’s critical enabling role
Digitalization and enhanced connectivity are a critical part of the solution to decarbonizing and dematerializing physical industries that significantly contribute to global carbon emissions. This is our handprint – it represents the enablement effect of the technology solutions we provide. We aim to maximize this handprint, as it provides our greatest potential impact on climate change.
Our recent People and Planet impact report shows this handprint in action, working with customers across different industries to help them achieve their goals. A great example here includes the ESB Smart Grid in Chattanooga, using our fiber optic network. The Smart Grid allows many processes that once required site visits to now be handled automatically or remotely, reducing EPB’s carbon footprint in 2023 by 250,000 truck miles, with a reduction of 3.6 million lbs of CO2 emissions and 915,889 lbs of waste diverted from landfill. Perhaps the biggest impact of the Smart Grid has been the reduction of power outages by 50% during severe weather events, saving customers $55 million per year. Another example is our work with CoreWeave, the AI Hyperscaler™, to build a high-performance wide area network across the US and Europe. Nokia continues to work to enable solutions that support more traffic within the same energy envelope, contributing to more efficient scaling of AI infrastructure.
Minimizing our footprint
We are doing this while also continually striving to minimize any potential negative impacts of technology. This is our “footprint”. We have both an environmental and a social footprint. We collaborate throughout our value chain to continually minimize our footprint.
As part of this process, we are working with our suppliers on reducing the embodied emissions in our products. As many customers begin to move toward renewable and sustainable energy sources in their operations, the footprint of our supply chain becomes their focus. In 2024, for example, we worked with over 9,300 suppliers globally, with 80% of our supplier spend concentrated among approximately 400 partners, all engaged through our responsible sourcing program. Over the past five years, we have reduced our total greenhouse gas emissions by 36%, including a 56% reduction among final assembly suppliers and an 85% reduction in our own facilities. Our chipsets have made significant generation-over-generation advances in power consumption, such as FP5 consuming up to 75% less power than the previous generation, and our AirScale 5G massive MIMO base stations using up to 50% less energy compared to 2019.
Sustainable value
Handprint and footprint, digitalization and decarbonization, climate resilience and adaptation are all issues that our customers and partners are grappling with. Eighty one telco operators for example, have set or committed to near-term science-based targets under the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), representing nearly half of the industry by connections and two-thirds by revenue. Seventy one of these targets have been validated by the SBTi. The benefit of being at COP is to emphasize the criticality of digitalization and advanced connectivity to climate, government and industrial stakeholders – through the meetings, and the panels that we are hosting on AI and sustainability, disaster-resilient infrastructure, digital equity, and sustainable finance. To find out more, check out our COP 30 webpage and follow our social media channels in the coming weeks to discover the key takeaways. And for those in Belem, come visit the Finland Pavilion and join in the discussions. Collaboration and co-innovation is a necessity to reach our common goals.
