Sustainability in 6G: E2E integration and assessment
Tuesday, 2 June 2026, 9:00-12:30, room M6
Organisers
- Mattia Merluzzi (CEA-Leti)
- Christoph Schmelz (Nokia)
- Anastasius Gavras (Eurescom)
- Pooja Mohnani (Eurescom)
- Andrea Di Giglio (Telecom Italia)
- Luis Cordeiro (OneSource)
- Antonios Lalas (ITI)
- Sanna Tuomela (University of Oulu)
- Mays Al-Naday (university of Essex)
- Mir Ghoraishi (Gigasys Solutions)
- Marja Matinmikko-Blue (University of Oulu)
- Luigi Briguglio (CyberSocial Lab)
- Stefan Wendt (Orange Labs)
- Tobias Hossfeld (University of Würzburg)
- Haesik Kim (VTT)
Motivation and Background
The double role of 6G as a designated sustainable technology and enabler for sustainable applications naturally triggers an end-to-end (holistic) approach that necessitates a tight collaboration between the 6G technology ecosystem stakeholders – operators, vendors, vertical sectors, device manufacturers, research community – and the society as a whole. This workshop, organized by SUSTAIN-6G in collaboration with the SNS Sustainability WG, provides a platform where the most recent insights and results towards holistic sustainability are discussed, and further enabling to raise questions for the future required R&D actions. Does 6G create more challenges or opportunities on sustainability pillars? What do we need to do to realize a sustainable 6G ecosystem? How do we prove that sustainability goals have really been achieved? How to share the responsibilities across stakeholders for managing E2E sustainability? How can this be anchored in global standardization? Which role shall regulation and policy makers play? A full analysis of the assets and services life cycle, effects in the ecosystem, and requirements of the involved stakeholders is needed to address these questions. The presenters and speakers from both academia and industry that contribute to this workshop will provide their concepts, insights and opinions towards bringing sustainability in the 6G ecosystem forwards.
This workshop aims to complement the workshop “Sustainable by Design, Sustainable in Operation: The 6G Perspective”, proposed by the SNS sustainability working group (where the scope is on specific technical solutions) by addressing the overarching ecosystem context. Both aspects share the same baseline requirements and importance, but address different perspectives. Therefore, two complementary workshops will help the community to stimulate the discussion on general questions on sustainability, and the technical solutions able to meet the respective requirements. Organizing the two workshops during two different time slots (morning and afternoon) will allow participants and speakers to get insights on the needed holistic perspective on 6G and sustainability.
Structure
- Session 1: Sustainability dimensions, vertical use cases and evaluation frameworks [90 mins]
- Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop, Mattia Merluzzi [5min]
- Keynote speech [20 minutes]
- Title: Technology challenges and key drivers for Sustainable 6G by Design
- Presenter: Christoph Schmelz (Nokia Germany)
- Contributing projects: SUSTAIN-6G
- Short description: Designing a sustainable 6G ecosystem that addresses all 3 sustainability pillars – environmental, social and economic – has and is being addressed by many research projects and efforts. The key challenge is to get these bits and pieces together towards jointly contributing to an optimal setup of the ecosystem, and thereby reflecting the potential interrelations in between the individual solutions. In that sense it is critical to not only create individual technology solutions as part of the 6G Design, but to define an overall framework where these solutions positively interact with each other during operation. The challenges hereby are manyfold, starting with the specific sustainability values that can be impacted by each technology solution, the mapping to (sustainability) performance indicators that can be quantitatively evaluated during operation, to the actual control and configuration responsibilities of the different stakeholders in an end-to-end ecosystem (end customers / device owners, infrastructure and service providers, and (vertical) application providers). This presentation details the challenges that have been identified within the work of the SUSTAIN-6G project and provides initial solution concepts to overcome them.
- Presentation 1 [30 minutes]:
- Title: 6G Verticals for Sustainability
- Presenters: Haesik Kim (VTT, Finland), Sanna Tuomela (Univeristy of Oulu, Finland), Luis Cordeiro (OneSource, Portugal)
- Contributing projects: AMAZING-6G, 6G-PATH, 6G-VERSUS
- Short description: This presentation, involving three SNS JU projects, will explain how sustainability is crucial in 6G systems to reduce the environmental footprint such as energy and resources and enhance its positive impact on vertical sectors such as smart cities to meet societal goals. 6G will be a key role to enable broader sustainability by supporting vertical industries in reducing their emissions and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 6G verticals are deeply linked to sustainability. 6G verticals for sustainability focus on using 6G networks to develop green solutions in key sectors like Health, PPDR, Energy, Transport and others, by optimizing systems and reducing emissions. In the first part of the talk, the AMAZING-6G project will discuss how 6G verticals support sustainability in terms of energy efficiency, resource optimization, industry transformation and so on. In addition, we discuss key concepts of 6G sustainability in different perspectives: minimizing the negative environmental and social impacts of the 6G networks and maximizing the positive effects of the 6G networks. Further, a reflection on two specific verticals will be discussed: a reflection on the smart farming by the 6G-PATH SNS JU project, and another one on energy use cases by the 6G-VERSUS SNS JU project. The first one will present a value-oriented methodology. The trials which are conducted in iterative phases within 6G-PATH integrate quantitative survey data with qualitative evidence from interviews and focus group discussions to assess sustainability-related outcomes such as resource efficiency, water conservation, productivity gains, digital inclusion, system reliability, and adoption potential. By bringing a smart farming perspective to the workshop, 6G-PATH aims to further support the discussion on holistic end-to-end sustainability, the role of vertical stakeholders in shaping sustainability goals, and the need for evaluation frameworks that integrate technical performance with sustainability value. The second one will present 6G-VERSUS developments across two energy-centric pilot use cases: (i) intelligent energy grid management for wind farm integration, and (ii) a remotely deployed, off-grid 6G base station located in the Arctic region powered exclusively by renewable energy sources. These pilots address complementary aspects of renewable energy utilization in future communication systems and illustrate the strong interdependencies between energy infrastructures and 6G networks. By jointly considering energy and communication systems, the pilots demonstrate how tightly coupled 6G and power infrastructures can mutually reinforce sustainability, reliability, and resilience. This work presents the anticipated sustainability impacts of the 6G-VERSUS energy-related use cases, key insights gained during pilot design and implementation, and the key values addressed by the 6G energy pilots
- Presentation 2 [20 minutes]
- Title: Sustainability Evaluation Framework with a focus on Energy Efficiency
- Presenter: Tobias Hossfeld (University of Würzburg, Germany), Fariha Mawla (University of Würzburg, Germany)
- Contributing Projects: CELTIC-Next Flagship project SUSTAINET
- Short Description: This talk presents a conceptual framework for quantifying sustainability. We introduce the framework using the example of energy efficiency in communication networks, with a particular focus on the methodological steps required for sustainability quantification. We demonstrate that the framework can integrate both value-based outputs (such as key performance indicators) and environmentally relevant inputs (such as greenhouse gas emissions). The talk aims to serve as a starting point for an open discussion on the challenges of integrating general sustainability topics in the emerging 6G ecosystem and how such a framework can support this process. Further, the presentation will address ongoing efforts to apply the ITU-T L.1480 methodology to capture first-order (direct impacts), second-order (indirect impacts from the use of ICTs), and higher-order/ rebound (impacts from changes in consumption patterns, lifestyles, and value systems) effects of digital solutions in industrial contexts. The methodology is demonstrated for real-life Passive Optical Network (PON) deployments. Overall, this study demonstrates that implementing ITU-T L.1480 for industrial PON deployments enables transparent sustainability reporting and can provide an evidence base for decision-making on 6G-relevant infrastructure.
- Presentation 3 [15 minutes]:
- Title: Sustainability KPIs in multi-domain 6G ecosystems
- Presenter: Mays AL-Naday (University of Essex)
- Contributing Projects: NATWORKS
- Abstract: 6G is evolving as an ecosystem of multiple domains, to enable user-tailored applications. Assessing the sustainability of such an ecosystem requires systematic consideration and structuring of the key performance indicators relevant to the different autonomous domains participating in the delivery of an application, their significance and impact on each other. This talk will focus on environmental and economic sustainability KPIs and how they can be impacted by cybersecurity attacks and/or solutions, particularly AI-based anomaly detection. Complementary, the talk will outline the different perspectives of some of these KPIs to the different domains in an ecosystem.
- Coffe Break [10 min]
- Session 2: Key values, social acceptance, and operator perspectives [90 mins]
- Presentation 4 [15 minutes]
- Title: Sustainability Values and Key Value Indicators: the “SNVC KVI method”
- Presenter: Marja Matinmikko-Blue (University of Oulu, Finland), Stefan Wunderer (Nokia, Germany), Katrina Petersen (PSC Europe)
- Contributing Projects: 6G-IA Vision WG, SNVC Sub-Group
- Short Description: Sustainability Values and the related Key Value Indicators (KVIs) have been introduced as a central means to identify and define sustainability needs and requirements of stakeholders towards the 6G ecosystem design, and to assess and evaluate the effects and achievements during all phases of the 6G ecosystem lifecycle. Societal Needs and Value Creation sub-group (SNVC SG) of 6G-IA’s Vision working group took the task to consolidate and drive forward the linkage between Sustainability Values and KVIs, thereby reflecting the insights and experience of the respective work conducted in SNS JU projects, and building on the baselines that have been and are created by, e.g., HexaX-II, 6G4Society and SUSTAIN-6G projects. The presentation will focus on the latest insights and achievements by SNVC, with a particular focus on the “SNVC KVI method” developed as part of the group work.
- Presentation 5 [15 minutes]:
- Title: Social Acceptance as a Framework for 6G Societal Sustainability
- Presenter: Luigi Briguglio (CyberSocial Labs, Italy)
- Contributing Projects: SUSTAIN-6G
- Short Description: Social sustainability in 6G discourse remains narrowly scoped, often reduced to a subset of aspects such as digital inclusion while overlooking broader and relevant social dimensions such as wellbeing, cultural identity, community belonging, intergenerational justice, and the right to disconnect. A critical gap remains: how to systematically identify and assess what society requires before 6G deployment gains legitimacy. The Social Acceptance of Technology (SAT) methodology offers a framework for addressing this gap. Applied to vertical use cases across sustainability-critical sectors, SAT can diagnose acceptance-related barriers (trust, data sovereignty, data protection, stakeholder inclusion, governance legitimacy), and identify which conditions may be considered during development and for deployment to proceed. SAT distinguishes between technologies users can opt out of, and infrastructures affecting everyone, whether they engage with them or not. By surfacing societal values and eliciting specific requirements and indicators, the framework offers a systematic approach for technology governance to ensure 6G development respects and addresses fundamental legitimacy conditions.
- Presentation 6 [15 minutes]:
- Title: Network Design-to-Impact: Sustainable Innovation and Digital Responsibility in Future Telecommunications
- Presenter: Stefan Wendt (Orange Labs, France)
- Contributing Projects: SUSTAIN-6G
- Short Description: Orange’s Network Design-to-Impact (NDI) framework proposes a value-driven, sustainability-first approach to future network and technology design, transforming the design from a performance-centric approach to one driven primarily by sustainability. It aims at maximizing positive societal impacts such as digital inclusion and trust, with constraints like carbon emissions, resource use, biodiversity preservation and profitability. Key levers to achieve this optimization are technical and business levers such as energy efficiency, circular economy principles, HW/SW decoupling, modularity, functional economy models…. NDI aims to guide the telecommunications industry toward responsible technologies and networks that deliver environmental, societal, and economic value while addressing trade-offs between sustainability and technical as well as business objectives. This approach advocates for a systemic, lifecycle perspective to ensure long-term sustainability and societal benefit in the evolution beyond 2030.
- Panel Discussion [45 min]: “How to weight and prioritize conflicting sustainability needs?”
- Panelists:
- Stefan Wendt (Orange Labs)
- Claudia Chiavarino (Istituto Universitario Salesiano Torino Rebaudengo)
- Luigi Briguglio (CyberSocial Labs)
- Sanna Tuomela (University of Oulu)
- Vincent Audebert (Electricité de France – EDF)
- Moderator: Andrea Di Giglio (TIM)
- Topic description: Sustainability needs are diverse and potentially conflicting across stakeholders, from all sustainability pillars perspective. Different connectivity solutions for a specific use case come with a different balance between first order (direct effects) and second order effects (indirect effect on vertical and users). How to prioritize and weight these needs is an open question. This panel brings together stakeholders from the wireless connectivity ecosystem and verticals, to discuss priorities and potential solution towards solving the issue of conflicting sustainability needs. The overarching question: “How is a solution preferred over others and based on which priorities? Who is the final decision maker/recommender?”
- Panelists:
- Presentation 4 [15 minutes]
