Energy Management

This year:

Energy Efficiency

Energy, in particular electricity, is vital to modern telecommunications and our business operation. However, the consumption of energy (electricity and fossil fuels) comes with some environmental and social responsibilities. Find out about our:

• Electricity Consumption
• Renewable energy
• Fleet management
• Electricity Consumption

Electricity is the most significant resource we use. We are one of the top 15 electricity users in New Zealand and we actively seek to reduce our consumption. Approximately 85% of our consumption relates to running the network and fifteen per cent powers our offices through air conditioning, lighting, heating, air conditioning and appliances.

Energy Efficiency Programme

We have been running power savings programmes in corporate offices and on network operations since 2003. With over 4,000 sites to power, an effective energy efficiency programme helps reduce costs and our environmental footprint. We now consume over 230 giga watt hours of electricity. Around 93% of this powers our network and around 7% powers our offices through lighting, heating, air conditioning and appliances. Our energy demand continues to rise at over 4% year on year growth between 2005 and 2009 due to consumer demand for more and smarter telecommunications technology. Most of our electricity use is for network air conditioning to keep our equipment working at the correct operating temperatures.

This Year....

Whilst power consumption increased over the last year, the 4.4% increase this year was higher than previous years' increases. This result was primarily due to rolling out new technology like the XT Network and Fibre To The Node (faster broadband).

The power saving programmes we undertook were:

In our Corporate Offices we:

• Ensure lights and unused equipment are turned off
• Use power smart computer screens and equipment
• Improved the efficiency of office air conditioning management

On our Network we:

• Replaced old equipment like air conditioners, switchboards, UPS's and batteries
• Replaced rectifiers in exchanges with more energy efficient versions
• Undertook server virtualisation

Overall, through various initiatives this year we estimate our annualised power saving is 2.5 giga watt hours of power, which is equivalent to powering about 230 homes for a year. This represents a 67% improvement on last year.

The results we have achieved are shown on the graph below.