Energy Management

Driving efficiencies to reduce energy-related costs and emissions.

Click through to learn about our 2024 impact in action. For detailed energy management data, please see our corporate responsibility KPI webpage.

Between 2020 and 2022, electricity consumption by telecommunication operators rose by 6.9%. Recognizing the inextricable link between energy use and emissions, responsible energy management is a key lever of reducing emissions; it is also crucial to the ability to deliver a resilient, reliable network.

We take an agile approach to energy management, continuously seeking new and better ways to power our operations and network. Our current efforts focus on:

• Including renewable energy
• Driving energy efficiency across our network and operations to meet customer and regulatory demands
• Enhancing data analysis by compiling and analyzing energy-use data and to produce energy-use annual reports

To uphold best practices, we maintain energy management systems, strategies and frameworks that align with ISO 50001 principles, including:

• Identification of suitable targets for energy management
• Use of data-driven decision-making
• Critical evaluation of decision results
• Continuous improvement of, and adjustment to, policies and systems to reflect advanced energy management capabilities and adoption of best-in-class practices

Renewable Energy Use

We continually evaluate large-scale renewable energy opportunities that are financially beneficial to our company and that are good for our customers. Most of our renewable energy comes from off-site solar and onshore wind virtual power purchase agreements. Through these agreements, we acquire renewable energy credits (RECs) and retire them to reduce our Scope 2 emissions. 

We also invest in some community solar projects. These projects help increase the volume of renewable energy available to local markets, advancing access to clean energy in the communities we serve.

While we procure most of our renewable energy from external sources, we also look for opportunities to increase on-site renewables to further reduce costs and to diversify our energy mix.

Embedding Energy Efficiency Across AT&T

Leveraging lower-carbon energy sources is key to reducing our energy footprint. Just as important is identifying ways to reduce costs by using that energy more efficiently across our facilities and network.

How We Drive Energy Efficiency

Facilities

• Proof of Concept Energy Trials: Our network organization leverages internal and external resources to test ideas for scalable energy savings efforts and programs.
• Enterprise Building Management Solution (EBMS): EBMS gathers and centrally manages facility equipment performance data, helping us understand equipment performance, monitor equipment status and enhance predictive maintenance while identifying where we can potentially reduce unnecessary energy use.
• Energy Efficiency Projects: We complete hundreds of facility energy efficiency projects ranging from small-scale projects such as replacing light fixtures to complex initiatives like entire mechanical system replacements.

Network

• Transformation and Decommissioning: We decommission and remove obsolete network capacity or hardware.
• Fiber Adoption: We are transitioning our network from copper to fiber, dramatically reducing energy consumption while boosting download speeds by up to 166 times. We expect our copper-to-fiber transition will reduce our energy consumption from 2024 through the end of 2028 by 1.06 million MWh and emissions by roughly 740,000 metric tons of CO₂e.
• Cell Site Sleep: We use AT&T-patented machine learning (ML) algorithms and automation to optimize and enable select cell site capacity to sleep under low loads to conserve energy without impairing customer experience.
• Anomaly Detection: We use ML and analytics to identify cell sites and central offices that consume large amounts of energy, dispatching repair teams to improve on-site efficiency.
• Data Centers: We are working to change server settings in our data centers to allow for periods of “sleeping” and frequency reduction when central processing unit (CPU) loads are low.
• Video Optimizer: Our open-source video optimizer reduces traffic carried on global networks, helping developers optimize how applications are designed. This decreases hardware deployment and associated energy use.

Energy Management Platform

Accessible, understandable data is essential to effective management. Our energy management information platform enhances data utilization in two ways:

• Centralization and Oversight: Each month, over 300,000 utility invoices are uploaded to a centralized platform that is accessible to internal network operators, real estate managers and other employees who manage energy use. Bills are audited to identify anomalous usage and ensure proper application of all charges.
• Analysis and Optimization: The Energy team uses data from our centralized platform to benchmark energy performance, set expectations and budgets, and assess usage trends. Employees and contractors can access a dashboard with facility-level energy data and state-of-the-art management tools to inform decisions and analysis.

Energy Scorecard

Our energy scorecard provides visibility of facility energy consumption and project activity. Fed by the energy management platform, scorecards grade our top 800 energy-consuming facilities and 975 energy-consuming retail locations. They are available to facility managers to help them set goals and promote innovation through shared learning.

Energy Management Governance

In almost every operational area, we rely on energy use. As such, oversight responsibility is shared by many internal organizations:

• Board of Directors’ Governance and Policy Committee (GPC): Oversees all corporate responsibility issues, including energy management. The Chief Sustainability Officer updates the GPC periodically, receiving input on the direction of sustainability-related work.
• Corporate Responsibility Governance Council: Receives information on energy use, efficiency projects and renewable energy purchases. The council is led by our Chief Sustainability Officer and comprises senior executives and officers responsible for business areas most closely linked to our current corporate responsibility priorities.
• Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations (E&O): Responsible for network resilience and oversees the management of energy-related network operation impacts.
• Vice President of Implementation, Provisioning and Optimization: Leads the Energy Management team that sits within the E&O organization.
• Energy Management Team: Oversees various programs, including deregulated purchase strategies and regulated utility rate optimization. Also provides direction on corporate energy and infrastructure policy directives, renewable energy purchases and development and implementation of scaled energy efficiency and energy conservation measures.

Maintaining an Industry-Leading Commitment to Renewable Energy Use

During 2024, AT&T was ranked on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partnership National Top 100. Throughout the year, our large-scale renewable energy projects delivered nearly 2.8 million RECs — delivering enough electricity to power nearly 236,000 American homes for a year.¹

We signed two new long-term virtual power purchase agreements with Enbridge — one to purchase more than 260,000 MWh of electricity from their Orange Grove Solar project and another to purchase nearly 800,000 MWh from their Sequoia Solar project. We also executed agreements with 18 vetted community solar projects across four states.

Today, our domestic renewable energy portfolio produces nearly 2.9 million MWh annually, including more than 3,000 MWh from on-site sources.

Pursuing Energy Efficiency

In 2024, we implemented more than 511,000 energy efficiency and emissions reduction projects — bringing the total to more than 1.6 million since 2015. Taken together, these efforts will drive 742 million kWh of annual energy savings (nearly 9.5 million MWh since 2015) and gross annualized energy cost savings of nearly $78 million (more than $867 million since 2015). We currently also have 15 active proof of concept energy trials to test scalable energy savings programs.

The existing building, weather and utility data we compile through our systems enabled us to optimize energy use at 36 central offices in 2024, resulting in approximately $1.2 million in energy consumption savings.

In 2024, we began actively enhancing the energy efficiency of our data centers by implementing changes to Intel-based server settings, allowing for periods of “sleeping” and frequency reduction under low CPU loads. This initiative is in its early stages, with future plans to expand energy saving configurations across the company to significantly reduce energy consumption.

Driving Network Efficiency

Since 2015, network energy intensity has fallen by approximately 89% per petabyte (PB) of network traffic carried.

Throughout 2024, we continued transitioning our network from copper to fiber, resulting in savings of approximately 340,000 MWh, lowering our carbon footprint by nearly 120,000 metric tons of CO₂e.