The Union government has approved the recommendations made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on green energy applications. Union Minister of State for C&IT Milind Deora said this the Lok Sabha March 6. Following directives have been issued to the licensees/all ILD service providers to adopt measures to green the Telecom sector setting broad directions & goals:    

At least 50 per cent of all rural towers and 20 per cent of the urban towers are to be powered by hybrid power (Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) + Grid Power) by 2015, while 75 per cent of rural towers and 33 per cent of urban towers are to be powered by hybrid power by 2020.    

All service providers are required to evolve a carbon credit policy in line with carbon credit norms with an ultimate objective of achieving a maximum of 50% over the carbon footprint levels of the base year in rural areas and achieving a 66 per cent over the carbon foot print levels of the base year in urban areas by the year 2020.    

The base year for calculating all existing carbon foot prints would be 2011, with an implementation period of one year and the first year of carbon reduction would be the year 2012.    

All service providers to declare the carbon foot prints of their network twice in a year. Further based on the details of footprints declared by all service providers, service providers should aim at carbon emission reduction targets for the mobile network at 5% by the year 2012-2013, 8% by the year 2014-15, 12% by the year 2016-17 and 17% by the year 2018-2019.