Matsuoka In November last year, the NTT Group announced THE GREEN VISION 2020, its vision for the environment up to 2020 that focuses on the three themes of creating a low carbon society, implementing closed loop recycling, and conserving biodiversity. In line with this vision, NTT laboratories have chosen the common slogan of Green of/by ICT (reducing CO₂ emissions), Green of/by Materials (reducing resource consumption), and Governance by Green (environmental management) to guide our R&D activities aimed at reducing environmental impacts.

Matsuno I have been conducting research in life cycle assessmentTerminology now for 15 years, and since 2001, I've also been studying mechanisms for implementing closed loop recycling. As such, the three themes chosen by the NTT Group are of tremendous interest to me too.

Matsuoka University of Tokyo Professor Emeritus Yoshio Tsukio says that of the three revolutions — agricultural, industrial, and ICT — brought about by humanity, the first two engendered environmental impacts that rose in tandem with GDP, whereas the ICT revolution has not had such effects. Moreover, all kinds of activities that boost GDP also generate CO₂ emissions, but the ICT industry's share of those emissions is below 2%. ICT is also contributing to raising productivity and saving energy in the industries producing the remaining 98% of emissions. To me, this suggests that increasing use of ICT across society as a whole could boost GDP and enhance quality of life while reducing environmental impacts.

Matsuno In a recent panel discussion, I said much the same thing — that ICT could suppress global warming. I'd be interested to hear about what kind of research is being carried out at NTT labs.

Matsuoka Where energy saving is concerned, for example, we're developing more energy efficient optical network units to provide our customers with. Tens of millions of our customers use such devices, and so engineering even a small reduction in energy consumption translates into a big overall electricity saving.

Matsuno How about equipment on your side? The growth of cloud computing has helped consumers save electricity, but providers have to shoulder data center power consumption.

Matsuoka You're absolutely right, and that's why we're focusing on energy saving. Air conditioning accounts for about 40% of our total energy consumption, and so we're working on technologies such as aisle cappingTerminology to physically separate cool and warm air flows, and control technology for integrating air conditioning with servers to dynamically fine-tune it according to server operation for optimum energy saving. We've also achieved an energy saving of about 15% by switching power supply feeds from alternating current to high voltage DC power supply systems. For our ICT devices too, we've achieved 30-60% energy reductions by using virtualization technology. We're now developing low-impact data centers that combine all of these technologies. Our next-generation network (NGN) also cuts power consumption markedly by integrating voice (phone), data (Internet), and video distribution networks into one network.

Matsuno Some people say that this focus on saving energy will have the effect of reducing GDP, leading to the decline of Japanese industry, but ICT is the one field that can raise GDP while lowering environmental impacts. This is very much in line with the life cycle approach that I'm trying to popularize, and so I'd like to see the NTT Group aggressively tout the benefits of ICT. Biodiversity is another area in which ICT can be very useful, isn't it? CO₂ emissions are easy to quantify, but when it comes to biodiversity, you're talking about millions, or even tens of millions of genes, and creating databases of them for research purposes couldn't be done without ICT. It would be great if the NTT Group were to build the infrastructure required for such endeavors.

Matsuoka From the perspective of ICT benefits, I think that smart grids that enable the visualization and optimization of electricity consumption have a major role to play. Particularly since the Great East Japan Earthquake, smart grid-based distributed power generation is also becoming a very hot topic because of the way that it could support business continuity.

Matsuno The disaster served to remind us all about the danger of putting all of our eggs in one basket. Deconcentrating facilities as much as possible and creating smart local networks is, I think, going to be an important part of efforts to support Japan's infrastructure. The NTT Group is leveraging cutting edge RR&D to actively implement environmental initiatives directed at both the creation of a low carbon society and the stable supply of energy, and I hope it continues to pursue those goals, if possible with a vision that takes it beyond 2020 and right up to 2050.

See the following website for the detailed dialogue

• http://www.ntt.co.jp/csr/portal/dialog/ (in Japanese only)