NEW DELHI, May 19 (UPI) -- India's telecommunications sector has emitted more than 5.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions since 2008, due to its heavy reliance on diesel for generating power, a new Greenpeace report says.
Figures from India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy show that in 2008 the telecom sector used 500 million gallons of diesel, at government-subsidized rates, to power mobile towers.
The Greenpeace report, "Dirty talking: A case for telecom to shift from diesel to renewable" said that India's telecom sector would need 26 billion kilowatts of electricity and 800 million gallons of diesel by 2012, further increasing the country's emissions.
With such massive amounts of diesel, the government is losing an estimated $578 million annually in the form of subsidies, which Greenpeace said should be reserved for the poor.
By shifting from diesel generators to renewable sources of energy such as solar power, Greenpeace said, the country's telecom operators could reduce their total costs by almost 300 percent over 10 years.
"For telecom operators, there is a robust case to switch to renewable energy," Abhishek Pratap of Greenpeace India, said in a statement. The government shouldn't be giving subsidies to telecom companies, he said, and instead the subsidies should be reserved for the poor.
Of the country's more than 400,000 telecom towers, about 25 percent are located in rural areas in which approximately 56 percent of households don't have access to electricity.
India's New and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah has said that up to 10,000 remote villages across the country would be electrified with renewable energy sources by March 2012.
A U.N. report shows the number of cell phones per 100 people in India had skyrocketed from 0.35 in year 2000 to about 45 by 2010.
"With growth, the sector's appetite for energy will increase, making it a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions unless the industry adopts and advocates renewable energy use and backs laws to cut global warming," said Mrinmoy Chattaraj, Climate and Energy campaigner, Greenpeace India and co-author of the report.
Greenpeace has called on telecom operators to publicly disclose their annual carbon emissions and shift toward clean sources of energy by powering 50 percent of their mobile towers through renewable energy by 2015.
"The telecom sector is well positioned to transit to a low-carbon growth trajectory. They must use their influence to promote policies that will allow them to grow responsibly without helping to fuel climate change" Chattaraj said.
