Searching for sustainability: Nokia lead on 6G’s place in a greener future

We are at least five years away from the launch of the first commercial 6G services. Indeed, we’re some distance from the ratification of any kind of 6G standards. But now is the time for us all to be imagining how 6G might help reshape our troubled world for the better.

The European Commission (EC) is contributing with its launch of SUSTAIN-6G, an initiative with the mission of exploring how 6G can help build a greener future.

Nokia has been chosen to spearhead the venture and has been marshalling a consortium of “innovators”, a disparate band of operators, vendors, enterprises, and academic institutions. 

SUSTAIN-6G is initially targeting its brainpower in three areas – energy smart grids, e-health, and agriculture. Work on evaluating what is achievable in these sectors kicks off in January 2025 and is scheduled to wrap by June 2027.

Francesca Sartori is head of sustainability research and standardisation at Nokia and will be central to the project’s gestation. She notes that imagining 6G means we must think about a world 10 or more years ahead.

“It’s not about today’s needs,” she says. “We need to project forward to between 2030 and about 2040 when everything will revolve around net zero targets and the sustainability goals we want to achieve for our society. The environmental, social, and economic impacts of 6G will be important drivers in this future world, on top of more classical considerations like performance, throughput, and capacity that we’ve been focused on since the GSM standard was created. That’s why we’re combining sustainability and 6G together in this unique project.” 

Three big challenges

The first three areas of focus for SUSTAIN-6G will, says Sartori, be followed by others – but these three are big, challenging, and encompass a broad scope for the industry.

Firstly, energy, and the migration to renewable energy, is central to sustainability. But the flaw of renewable energy, observes Sartori, is that it is not, at present, as stable and predictable as energy from traditional fossil fuel sources.

“We need to make sure that renewables are as resilient as other energies, which means using ICT and connectivity to help renewable energy perform as strongly as carbon energy,” she says. “6G can help energy companies. For one thing, it can be used to check that the energy grid is stable and resilient, through sensors. Also, it can help shift energy around to where it is needed. By adding in AI, you can predict the right moment to switch a grid on and off.”

Secondly, providing healthcare to a global population that is in some regions aging and in others dramatically expanding demands the application of next-generation technologies if it is to be done sustainably.

“We need to create greater efficiency in delivering health support to that population,” says Sartori. “Older people who cannot easily go to hospital must be monitored through e-health. Where there’s a growing population you might want to deliver remote support to areas far from a hospital.”

Affordable access to healthcare means, for example, better integration between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks. 6G will offer an opportunity to achieve this that hasn’t been possible with previous generations. 6G will also be AI-native, which can play a part in deciding how and where to deploy health services in the most efficient way.

“If 6G is not helping to achieve net zero a decade from now, it may simply not be deployed”

Francesca Sartori, Nokia

Thirdly, a world population soon to hit nine billion means we must optimise how we produce food.

“Water is becoming precious, and we must find ways to optimise its usage, as well as boost the amount of food we produce,” Sartori says. “6G and AI can help agriculture act in the right way to prevent famine and disaster.”

Better ICT can help agriculture not just to use less water, but also to reduce the pollution caused by excessive fertiliser use. 6G-driven sensors can help evaluate if a proposed agricultural innovation is actually delivering sustainability, or is just greenwashing. Measurement is key to determining if there is an ultimate benefit.

If these aims are to become a reality, then the mobile industry must start by setting its own house in order, designing 6G around sustainability at network level.

“That’s part of why Nokia has been selected for this project,” says Sartori. “We all need to do better here than we did with 5G. Plus we must extend 6G beyond just the richest parts of the world. Digitalisation must be affordable everywhere.”

The infrastructure that will power 6G services will need to be part of the solution. Existing environmental commitments offer no choice.

“If 6G is not helping to achieve net zero a decade from now, it may simply not be deployed,” she warns. “If your network is generating extra carbon then you’re not helping society and you may not be the right tool. 6G must be a part of helping our operator partners to achieve their Scope 1, 2, and 3 milestones.”

Energy efficiency

James Crawshaw, practice leader with independent analyst firm Omdia’s service provider transformation team, agrees that energy efficiency, specifically reducing the amount of energy that mobile networks consume, has become a hot topic in the industry over the last few years. It is also likely to become more central as 6G takes shape.

“There’s a role for AI here, for example in deciding when to put various electronic components to sleep when they’re not being used,” he notes. “Nokia has a track record here. In its early days, a Finnish engineer came up with the idea of putting a quartz crystal in a phone that would switch its radio on and off for a fraction of a second, thus extending the life of that battery enormously. That’s partly what made their early phones so successful. On a bigger scale you can put a whole network to sleep at night if no coverage is needed.  There’s a trade-off here between saving energy and the performance of the network. AI looks at real usage and makes predictions to help you extend the time a network can be safely powered down.” 

Crawshaw would like SUSTAIN-6G, and other initiatives of its kind, to look at improved recycling of equipment as another sustainability consideration.

“We must end the old rip and replace mentality when one generation gives way to the next,” he says. Operators, he claims, are favourable to a future that minimises the need for new hardware. “They’d rather innovation came in the form of software that they can simply download. Vendors are introducing this. Ericsson recently introduced 10 new capabilities, and they are all in software, requiring no new box. There’s a virtualisation trend whereby functions come in software that can run on any computer rather than be tightly integrated into the electronics of one vendor. Software-based networks are just more sustainable. In what ways can 6G be a software upgrade from 5G?” 

Core to SUSTAIN-6G is the knowledge that if 6G is to play a meaningful part in a greener future, it must move way beyond what mobile operators can do on their own, confined by the universe of 3GPP standards. It must be about new metrics and standards, as yet uncrystallised, and new combinations of technology as yet untried. Most of all it must be about new ideas.