AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are still a dirty shade of green

Verizon eschews the pictures of dense foliage that adorn recent updates from T-Mobile US, merely slapping its unintentionally sinister, blood-red "tick" logo on the cover of its own environmental report. As for AT&T, it opts for an image of two women splayed across the floor in front of a laptop screen, giggling about the sustainability of it all. But the impression each US telco wants to convey through its reports is the same – we're greener than photosynthesis.

The reality is obviously much grubbier, and some of the important numbers have not been moving in the direction they should or that telcos imply. "In 2022, Verizon's solutions helped our customers reduce their energy consumption," said Hans Vestberg, the operator's CEO, in his latest introduction, neglecting to mention that Verizon's own energy use went up last year and that it emits nearly two-and-a-half times as much carbon dioxide as T-Mobile US.

Not that T-Mobile is better on all counts. Despite churning out presentations that appear leafier than Wimbledon, its own annual energy consumption has risen by a fifth since 2020, increasing far more dramatically than Verizon's. Whether its emissions are up or down over the same period depends on how they are measured. Only AT&T can report sustained drops in both energy use and emissions in recent years. But it's less transparent in the important Scope 2 area (more on that later), and it continues to use more energy and emit a bigger tonnage of carbon dioxide than either of its rivals.

Skepticism surrounds these corporate publications and their sincerity. It is hard to imagine companies would disclose anything were it not for pressure applied by regulators and environmental groups, along with the danger of boycotts by (mainly younger) consumers anxious about climate change.

Meanwhile, a mixture of hysteria, selective reporting and especially disruptive protests by climate groups risks alienating the mainstream public. "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years," tweeted Greta Thunberg, the patron saint of environmentalism, five years ago (he said no such thing, apparently). The UK just experienced the hottest June on record, reported the BBC during an unusually mild and wet first week of July that you'll never read about. UK climate protestors who now routinely block main roads generate little sympathy for the cause.

The problem with apocalyptic warnings is that people could shrug, reckon it's too late to prevent icecaps from melting and decide they might as well overindulge while they can. If the net result of browbeating and hyperbole is to quell general interest in the topic or make people dig in their heels (and there are plenty of other things to worry about with inflation, war in Ukraine and the rise of the AI robots), the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon will find it even easier to evade scrutiny.

The scope of the problem

Neither AT&T nor T-Mobile is currently very transparent about emissions categorized as Scope 2, which refers mainly to the energy they buy to power networks and other facilities. AT&T claims its annual Scope 2 emissions are down 39% in the last five years, even though its energy use fell just 13% over this period. Some of the difference is probably explained by AT&T's signing of power purchase agreements and – more controversially – renewable energy certificates that don't necessarily cut real-world usage. It had none of these as recently as 2018, but they accounted for 17.5% of its on-paper energy consumption last year.

T-Mobile, though, has apparently done even better out of these agreements and certificates, slashing its emissions from nearly 1.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 to zero the following year with a stroke of the pen. The explanation most sympathetic to the operator is that T-Mobile signed agreements with renewables companies to cover all its electricity needs. It may be on the hook if those companies fail, but it is not buying its energy directly from them. Instead, they sell to the grid where T-Mobile does its shopping, and that grid continues to be very dirty.

Hence, the massive difference between these "market-based" figures and the "location-based" ones that T-Mobile buries when talking about its net-zero commitments. Based on these grid-generated (ahem, more accurate) numbers, T-Mobile's annual Scope 2 emissions rose 8% between 2020 and 2022, and its total emissions were up 4%. At least it discloses details of both location-based and market-based numbers, which does not appear to be the case for AT&T (if they are available somewhere, they are well hidden).

A bigger problem, arguably, is Scope 3, the emissions generated by suppliers and customers, and T-Mobile's failure to cut these in the last couple of years when both of its rivals have made progress. After its elimination of Scope 2 emissions in one fell swoop, Scope 3 currently accounts for 99% of the emissions total that T-Mobile prefers, which means it can only improve by targeting this category.

Dispensing with data center assets, fixed-line technologies and media interests that T-Mobile never owned may have given AT&T and Verizon more opportunity to hack into Scope 3. Despite that, each one is a much bigger offender than T-Mobile in this area. Verizon's Scope 3 emissions last year were twice those of T-Mobile, and AT&T was not far behind. Unless all three companies do better, those totals will remain stubbornly high.

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— Iain Morris, International Editor, Light Reading