Special Session 6: From Principles to Practice: Embedding Sustainability in 6G Standardisation
Date, hour and room to be defined
Session chairs:
- Christoph Schmelz (Nokia Solutions and Networks, DE)
- Anastasius Gavras (Eurescom GmbH,)
- Andrea Di Giglio (Telecom Italia, IT)
- Pooja Mohnani (Eurescom GmbH,)
- Mattia Merluzzi (CEA Leti, FR,)
The transition toward 6G presents an opportunity to embed sustainability at the core of next-generation networks. As energy efficiency, lifecycle impacts, circularity, and long-term system responsibility grow into regulatory and societal priorities, the global standards community needs to define measurable, interoperable, and tangible sustainability requirements.
This special session aims to bring together leading international bodies—3GPP, ITU-T, ETSI, and relevant European thinkers—to explore how sustainability principles are being incorporated into emerging 6G standardization frameworks. Bring insights on the aligned progress, identify gaps, and outline a shared roadmap for integrating sustainability metrics, methodologies, and compliance frameworks into formal standards activities. By showcasing how sustainability considerations are converging across the ecosystem, the session reinforces the credibility of 6G as a responsible, future-proof technology platform and strengthens Europe’s leadership in shaping global directions.
The aim of this special session is to:
• Present the current landscape of sustainability-focused activities across major standards bodies and ongoing 6G research initiatives.
• Identify gaps in existing frameworks and propose concrete pathways to advance sustainability integration in upcoming 6G standardisation cycles.
• Discuss implementation challenges—technical, organisational, and regulatory—and outline strategic solutions that can accelerate harmonisation and adoption.
• Provide targeted recommendations for future research directions, coordinated contributions, and cross-SDO alignment to ensure a coherent and impactful sustainability roadmap for 6G.
Programme
Proposed Structure:
1. Welcome & Scene-Setting (20 minutes)
• SUSTAIN-6G – sustainability for 6G, 6G for Sustainability: Christoph Schmelz (NOKIA, Germany)
• Why standards integration is now essential for SNS JU: Dr. Colin Willcock (Nokia Germany)
2. Expert Keynotes from Standards Bodies (40 minutes – 10 min each Speaker(7minute Presentation+ 3 min Q&A)
• Presenter: Hanne K Hallingby, Telenor
Presentation title: Sustainable 6G business models, and 6G business models for sustainability
Short description: When 6G standards move into implementation, business and ecosystem validation and modelling becomes central for all stakeholders. Real interoperability is imperative to create sustainable 6G business models and ecosystems: it must be easy and attractive for stakeholders to undertake the task to integrate technological components for new innovations, including using 6G for social and environmental benefits. SDOs should take steps towards achieving economic sustainability via real interoperability, e.g., with phased feature releases, prioritize business ready features, implementation guidelines, or standardized MANO, OSS, and BSS.
• Presenter: Prachi Sachdeva, TNO
Presentation Title: Charting the path to sustainable future networks 3GPP
Short Description: The world today is more connected than ever before. Mobile networks have capabilities that once seemed impossible and can support use cases and applications that have opened a world of possibilities for businesses. However, this is not without cost. Enabling these networks requires ever-increasing amounts of energy, which puts a strain on our resources. In order to ensure that our technological growth is healthy, we must ensure that our future networks are built with sustainability in mind. This talk outlines the current efforts in 3GPP towards ensuring sustainable future networks.
• Presenter: Albena Mihovska, CTO @SmartAvatar B.V
Presenation Title: ITU-T Activities on Sustainability
Short Description: 6G, offers the unique opportunity to embed environmental and social responsibility into the foundational design of the 6G system. This talk will provide insights on how ITU-T addresses sustainability and its integration into measurable, interoperable standardisation frameworks.
ITU-T’s sustainability activities span across three interconnected domains. In the domain of energy efficiency, ITU-T is developing standards that aim to minimise operational carbon footprints in data centers, network infrastructure, and end-user devices, and to quantify embodied emissions across the product lifecycles. Secondly, ITU-T is advancing standards for electronic waste management, device longevity, repairability, and material recovery, supporting the design of 6G networks that are environmentally responsible. Thirdly, ITU-T has a strong focus on digital inclusion and societal impact, including smart sustainable cities, aiming to standardise accessibility features and connectivity solutions that extend the 6G’s benefits to underserved communities worldwide.
This talk aims to identify some critical gaps and outline possible pathways forward based on shared sustainability objectives across the SDO landscape towards harmonised sustainability metrics and possible alignment with the project SUSTAIN-6G core objectives.
• Presenter: Cristina Ciochina-Duchesne, Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe, France
Presentation title: Incorporating sustainability aspects in standards developments
Short description: In the context of the rapid evolution of new technologies and the current societal and technical challenges related to climate change, sustainability has become a key issue. Sensing, computing and AI services will be natively supported in 6G systems. AI is progressively becoming an integral part of all new technological and foundational economic structures . There is increased need and interest for defining concrete means for quantifying and limiting the environmental impact of new systems and services. The current keynote gives an overview of some ongoing initiatives in national, European and global standardization bodies tackling both technical and regulatory aspects of sustainability, from energy efficiency to life cycle analysis and circular economy.
3. SUSTAIN-6G approach for Sustainability alignment (20 minutes (7min Presentation + 3 min Q&A))
Key topics:
• Presenter: Marja Matinmikko-Blue, University of Oulu, Finland
Presentation Title: SUSTAIN-6G sustainability requirements definition methodology
Short Description: This presentation will introduce the sustainability requirements definition work in the SUSTAIN-6G lighthouse project including the developed methodology and resulting use case specific sustainability requirements. The approach taken in SUSTAIN-6G considers key values and needs at the stakeholder level and proceeds to sustainability requirements and their assessment. The presentation will also provide an overview on how sustainability has been introduced into the global IMT-2030 definition work for 6G at the ITU-R.
• Presenter: Laurent-Walter Goix, Nokia, France
Presentation Title: Sustainability by Design in 3GPP: Foundations and Enablers for 6G
Short Description: This presentation outlines how 3GPP integrates sustainability into 6G system design, driven by SUSTAIN-6G, extending Stage1 use case work to include sustainability impact analysis and value driven requirements, aiming at 6G to contribute meaningfully to UN SDGs and IMT-2030 expectations from the outset. The approach maps 6G sustainability aspects to UN SDGs and highlights first and second order effects across environmental, economic, and social dimensions being currently captured, as well as areas of interest for future standardization phases.
4. Closing: Joint Roadmap & Next Steps (10 minutes)
• Shared sustainability standards roadmap outline.
• Plans for follow-up liaisons and cross-SDO collaboration.
• Invitation for broader community engagement and contributions.
