Energy Management

Managing energy is important to our ability to provide a resilient network that can reliably connect our customers—and to operate and grow that network in an environmentally sustainable way. Our progress is based on three efforts: growing our supply of renewable energy; optimizing our network and energy use to best meet consumer demand and regulatory requirements; and making our network, our products, our fleet, and all our infrastructure and practices more energy efficient.

These energy-management efforts are important to achieving net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions,¹ part of our commitment to becoming carbon neutral across our entire global operations by 2035. Learn more in our Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas Emissions issue brief. 

For more information, see our Global Reporting Initiative Index, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board Index and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures Report.

In 2023, AT&T took a number of actions related to energy management. Among them:

• We worked with an integrated energy services provider to compile and analyze our energy-use data and to produce energy-use annual reports. The contents of those reports and all methods related to data calculation, estimation and aggregation are reviewed each year to identify opportunities for improving our energy management. 
• We issued requests for proposals for agreements to procure community solar subscriptions across multiple states. These agreements will increase our supply of clean energy and contribute to our effort to reduce CO₂ emissions.
• We implemented nearly 6,700 energy efficiency and energy reduction projects in 2023 that will drive annual energy savings of nearly 470,000 MWh and gross annualized energy cost savings of more than $45 million. We also performed proof of concept energy trials to test new ideas for scalable energy savings efforts and programs. 

Governance

We apply several oversight structures, systems, policies and procedures to manage energy within AT&T, including:

• Governance & Policy Committee (GPC): The GPC of the AT&T Board of Directors has oversight over all Corporate Responsibility issues, including energy management. The Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) engages with the GPC several times per year to provide updates and receive input on the direction of sustainability-related work at AT&T.
• Corporate Responsibility (CR) Governance Council: Information about energy use, efficiency projects and renewable energy purchases is provided to the CR Governance Council, which is composed of more than a dozen officers with responsibility for business operations and management functions aligned to our most important CR focus areas. This council is led by our CSO.
• Senior Vice President of Engineering & Operations (E&O): The Senior Vice President of E&O has responsibility for the resilience of our network, including energy and water use, and oversees the management of energy-related impacts to our network operations.
• Vice President of Implementation, Provisioning & Optimization: Located within the E&O organization, the Vice President of Implementation, Provisioning & Optimization leads the Energy Management team that oversees water and energy governance.
• Energy Management Team: The Energy Management team oversees a broad range of programs, including deregulated purchase strategies and regulated utility rate optimization. The team also provides direction to corporate energy and infrastructure policy directives, renewable energy purchases, and development and implementation of scaled energy efficiency and energy conservation measures.
• Alignment with ISO 50001: Our energy management systems, strategies and framework are reflective of ISO 50001 principles, including:
  • Identification of suitable targets for energy management, such as buildings, systems and types of actions
  • Use of data-driven decision-making
  • Critical evaluation of results of decisions
  • Continuous improvement of and adjustment to policies and systems to reflect advancement in energy management capabilities and adoption of best-in-class practices 

Renewable Energy

AT&T works with internal and external organizations to identify better ways to source energy, including purchasing renewable energy. Highlights from 2023 include:

• Renewable Energy Purchases: We continue to be one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy in the United States. At the end of 2023, AT&T was ranked fifth on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership National Top 100 and fourth in Tech and Telecom.⁶
• Renewable Energy Production: The energy production of our domestic renewable energy portfolio is nearly 3 million MWh annually, with more than 3,000 MWh coming from on-site sources.² Most of our renewable energy comes from off-site solar and wind contracts currently in production, along with hydropower received through supply contracts. In 2023, our large-scale renewable energy projects delivered nearly 3.3 million renewable energy credits to help offset our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. 
• Community Solar Projects: In 2023, we executed agreements with 42 vetted community solar projects across six states, totaling a maximum capacity of approximately 79 megawatts (MW), which are projected to save AT&T approximately $29 million. These agreements will generate nearly 1.1 million renewable energy certificates (RECs) over a 15-year term and enable the production of approximately 134 million kWh of clean energy per year. 

Learn more about our approach to renewable energy in our Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas Emissions issue brief.

Energy Efficiency

AT&T looks for new ways to enlist advanced technologies and data analytics to improve our energy management.  We increasingly rely on information flowing from fully instrumented buildings and platforms, energy-use data feeds from serving utilities, and machine learning capabilities to help steer our program direction and support our energy efficiency strategy.

Facilities

Our approach to energy consumption in our facilities is focused on:

• Proof of Concept Energy Trials: As part of our overall energy savings initiative, our network organization leverages internal and external resources to test ideas for scalable energy savings efforts and programs. In 2023, we performed more than 40 trials, and three have already moved to broader implementation.
• Enterprise Building Management Solution (EBMS): Our EBMS uses our network to gather and centrally manage performance data from facility equipment across the country. That data allows us to understand performance base years, monitor equipment status and move from reactive to predictive maintenance, while reducing unnecessary energy use. In 2023, we continued integrating EBMS across our footprint and completed deployment at more than 14 facilities. Using EBMS building, weather and utility data, we expanded the program to optimize energy use at 85 central offices in 2023. The effort included tailoring the building management system programming and ensuring critical mechanical repairs were completed.
  • By implementing these optimization efforts, AT&T realized an average of approximately 5% total building energy savings for larger facilities that required mechanical repairs. At smaller facilities, optimizing the building management system programming returned an average of approximately 2% total building energy savings.² We are continuing the facility optimization program in 2024.
• Energy Efficiency Projects: We undertake thousands of energy efficiency projects in our facilities every year. This includes modest projects, such as fixing a leaking chilled-water valve or replacing a lighting fixture with a high-efficiency model, as well as more complex initiatives, such as air-handler efficiency, controls upgrades, lighting retrofits, variable frequency drive installations, and replacement of entire systems such as chillers. We track and archive our global past, present and potential energy projects to facilitate energy reporting and analysis, project planning, energy commodity purchases and coordination of funding.
  
  • In 2023, we implemented nearly 6,700 energy efficiency and reduction projects. These efforts will drive nearly 470,000 MWh of annual energy savings and gross annualized energy cost savings of more than $45 million. 

Between 2015 and 2023, we implemented nearly 168,000 energy efficiency projects, such as the ongoing integration of our EBMS across our footprint and decommissioning obsolete portions of our network operations. Those efforts resulted in nearly 8.3 million MWh of annual energy savings and annualized energy cost savings of more than $740 million.

Network

We have opportunities to improve our energy use as we modernize our networks. Some initiatives include:

• Transformation & Decommissioning: In 2023, the AT&T network organization continued to work on several transformation and decommissioning programs. In addition to providing a better customer experience, these programs are designed to improve overall asset utilization and network energy efficiency by systematically decommissioning and removing obsolete and outmoded network capacity and hardware.
  • For neighborhoods where we transitioned from copper to fiber, we cut our energy consumption by more than 70% while boosting download speeds for our customers, with speeds up to 166 times faster.
  • Our legacy decommissioning plans for 2024–2028 are expected to cut our energy consumption by approximately 1.06 million MWh, shrinking our carbon footprint by approximately 740,000 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent per year.
• Network Projects: We continue to shift control from hardware to software to make our network faster, simpler, more efficient and more scalable. Our software-defined core network minimizes unused capacity, unnecessary energy expense and real estate square footage.
• Cell Site Sleep: We enable select cell site capacity to sleep under low loads to conserve energy. This sleep capability is accomplished through machine learning algorithms that we created to optimize sleeping without impairing customer experience.
• Video Optimizer: Our open-source video optimizer reduces the amount of traffic carried on global networks, helping developers optimize how their applications are designed. This capability reduces the amount of hardware deployed and its associated energy.
• Anomaly Detection: We use machine learning and analytics to identify cell sites and smaller facilities that consume large amounts of energy. We then dispatch repair teams to these sites to improve energy efficiency.
• Network Efficiency: All these efforts, combined with our increased use of renewable energy and improvements in energy efficiency, have led to a large reduction in our energy intensity. Since 2015, that intensity has fallen by approximately 87% per petabyte (PB) of network traffic carried.

Energy Management Platform

Making energy data accessible and understandable to energy managers across the company is essential to effective energy management. Our energy management information platform includes two components:

• Data Centralization & Oversight: Each month, more than 300,000 utility invoices are uploaded to a centralized platform accessible to internal network operators, real estate managers and other AT&T employees who manage energy use. All bills are subjected to careful audit to identify anomalous usage and ensure proper application of all charges. 
• Analysis & Optimization: The energy team uses the data from our centralized platform to benchmark energy performance, set expectations and budgets, and assess usage trends over time. Employees and contractors across all organizations can access a dashboard in the energy platform with facility-level energy data and state-of-the-art energy management tools to inform decisions and analysis.

Energy Scorecard

Our energy scorecard is central to our energy management program. The scorecard provides visibility for facility energy consumption and project activity. Two key factors in the scorecard’s impact are the usefulness of the individual scores and management awareness of the scorecard:

• Scores: Fed by the energy management platform, the scorecard generates easy-to-understand grades of our top 800 energy-consuming facilities and 1,200 energy-consuming retail locations. The grades are based on energy consumption and activity, including initiatives related to energy efficiency projects.
• Awareness: Scorecards are available to facility managers, making energy consumption performance data accessible across the team. This increased visibility helps them set goals and promote innovation through shared learning.

We continue working to transition to a more energy-efficient network and to more reliance on renewable energy. Among our ongoing areas of focus:

• Investment: We will continue evaluating large-scale renewable energy contracts that deliver clean energy to local grids and reduce our overall Scope 2 emissions.
• Reductions & Right-Sizing: We will be eliminating unnecessary electrical load to our network by removing obsolete assets and reducing less-needed capacity in ways that reflect shifting customer demands for various services, technologies and platforms.
• Optimization: We will continue incorporating energy-efficient network equipment, products, methods and practices into building and network infrastructure. And we’ll be monitoring the holistic operation and energy performance of buildings and network systems to identify and address maintenance deficiencies and other conditions that impact energy usage.

• EPA Green Power Partnership National Top 100