Technical Committee (TC) Environmental Engineering (EE) Activity Report 2022

Chair: Beniamino Gorini, Nokia

Responsible for defining equipment engineering, bonding and grounding, power supply interface and environmental aspects for telecommunication infrastructures and equipment.

ETSI’s Environmental Engineering Committee (TC EE) manages various engineering aspects of telecommunication equipment in different types of installation. These include climatic, thermal and other environmental conditions; physical requirements of equipment racks and cabinets; power supplies and grounding; Circular Economy (including lifecycle analysis) and energy performance measurement and assessment methods for different parts of radio access networks including data centres. The committee’s work also embraces innovative energy storage technologies for ICT equipment – for example to provide resilience in sustainable smart cities.

Much of our work supports European Commission (EC) policies, regulation and legislation on eco-design aspects, where we liaise with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and CEN to develop relevant standards. The committee is also in continuous interaction with ITU-T SG5 for the production of technically aligned deliverables.

During 2022 activities continued to address three key areas: measurement methods for the energy efficiency of ICT equipment with a focus on 5G; standardization on eco-design aspects of servers and storage products; and requirements for power supply interfaces of ICT equipment.

EE 01

Our Working Group EE 01 continuing to revise environmental test standards to clarify expected performance criteria, following the application of the tests and to adapt the requirements with climate change aspects and with IEC standards.

We issued a revision to the introductory sub-part of our multi-part European Standard EN 300 019-2-0 V2.2.1 on environmental conditions and environmental tests for telecommunications equipment. Work meanwhile continued on updates to further parts of this multi-part deliverable including also the revision of the environmental classes to take into account the changes on climate conditions.

The group is also developing a new European Standard on requirements for liquid cooling and high energy efficiency solutions for 5G Baseband Units (BBU) in C-RAN mode.

See the full list of EE 01 Work Items currently in development here.

EE 02

Work continued on updates to our multi-part European Standard on power supply interface at the input of ICT equipment: Published this year, EN 300 132-1 V2.2.1 covers the AC power interface, while EN 300 132-2 V2.7.1 covers -48 V DC. Revision of other parts is ongoing.

We also published a new European Standard ES 203 726 V1.1.1 that offers solutions for the progressive migration of ICT sites to 400 VDC sources and distribution, and direct use of 400 VDC powering at equipment level from 400 VDC sources.

Work meanwhile commenced on revisions to two parts of our multi-part standard describing a monitoring and control interface for infrastructure equipment (power, cooling, building environment systems etc) used in telecommunication networks.

Progress was also made on the revision of our Technical Specification describing the impact on ICT equipment architecture of multiple AC, -48 VDC or up to 400 VDC power inputs.

See the full list of EE 02 Work Items currently in development here.

EE EEPS

Our EEPS Working Group creates environmental efficiency standards for radio access networks, including ICT products that are part of network infrastructure.

In 2022 we published updates to two existing European Standards to enhance them with the 5G specifications. ES 203 228 V1.4.1 presents an assessment of mobile network energy efficiency. ES 202 706-1 V1.7.1 is the first part of a measurement method for energy efficiency of wireless access network equipment, addressing a static method. In parallel with this, work was launched on revisions to the second part of our corresponding Technical Specification that considers a dynamic method extended to 5G.

During the year progress was also made on various standards, technical specifications and reports, notably:

  • Energy efficiency measurement methodology and metrics for various server architectures
  • Eco-design specifications for servers and storage products
  • Energy efficiency metrics and measurement methods for data storage equipment
  • Assessment of the material efficiency of ICT network infrastructure goods in the circular economy
  • Requirements for a global digital sustainable ‘product passport’
  • Methodology for environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of ICT goods, networks and services
  • Study on multi-dimensional network energy efficiency metrics
  • Dynamic energy performance measurement method for 5G Base Stations
  • Report on processor power management functionality of servers.

See the full list of EE EEPS Work Items currently in development here.