“6G for sustainability” addresses the contribution (benefits and challenges) of 6G to the various aspects of sustainability in vertical sectors (also referred as enablement effect). It focuses on how 6G can enable the verticals to be more sustainable, how to measure it and what research aspects still need to be tackled. This requires a deep knowledge of selected use-cases and their processes with potentially conflicting requirements (e.g. performance vs minimisation of energy consumption). Needed expertise should come from the selected sectors and stakeholders to make their processes more sustainable by means of 6G.

“Sustainable 6G” and “6G for sustainability” should be equally addressed and will be considered through three dimensions of which:

• environmental sustainability, targeting the minimisation of environmental impact, as a prominent issue
• societal sustainability, aiming at providing value to people and society also thanks to new use cases powered by 6G as well as the need to offer such services in a trustworthy, privacy-safeguarding and accessible way
• economic sustainability, where 6G will be an enabler for business value and could enable new business models

The targeted project scope includes:

• Environmental Sustainability (including energy, climate and environmental aspects)
  • Sustainable 6G: (1) Improving energy efficiency and total energy consumption. It includes network and device side, e.g. enabling more energy efficient network operations covering power usage monitoring, multi-criteria optimisation, self-diagnose & healing. Minimization of EMF effects (2) Investigating network-device performance versus energy consumption trade-offs, (3) Evaluation from a system and life cycle perspective, using environmental metrics and (4) Developing strategies to ensure that AI/ML technique to be used in future 6G networks are environmentally sustainable, (5) Address energy resilience where the network and services adapt dynamically to the availability of renewable energy. This work of technological nature will be complemented by an analysis on how to improve material efficiency and circularity.
  • 6G for Sustainability: (1) Technologies and architectures enabling use cases to be “service aware” vis a vis the network platform, such that intelligent sustainability decisions may be made at use case level (2) Propose guidelines, recommendations and good practices and (3) Evaluate potential CO2 and other GHGs reductions as well as any other (and other environmental impacts reduction) in other sectors. Such reduction, enabled by 6G, might be related, for example, to more efficient operation of large infrastructure or industrial process leading to energy reduction and/or natural resource impact. Another example could be a better lifecycle management, enabled by 6G and leading to increased lifetime and improved re-use, upcycling and recycling of specific goods. It includes benchmark and quantified indicators for selected representative use cases. It considers the broader governance and policy needs to support such actions towards sustainability.
  • Note that attention maybe paid to the rebound effects connected to the design and development of 6G systems, while considering e.g., inclusivity-coverage/production-emissions, economic viability/TCO-affordability aspects.
• Societal Sustainability
  • Improve the social footprint of 6G, such as: (1) Ensure key democracy values are preserved (Privacy, Trust, Resilience, Fairness, Digital Inclusion, Accessibility), (2) Focus on value for society and people, (3) Perform state-of-the-art analysis about the extent to which current networks and platforms address societal perspectives and (4) Elaborate on trends and drivers of societal digital inclusion with efficient solutions in all contexts.
  • Investigate how 6G can create added value for the society: (1) Considering different gender perspectives & citizens’ concerns and/or needs, (2) Answer how 6G does support social aspects, (3) Indicate 6G benefits for the end users & society and (4) Focus on inclusion and trustworthiness.
• Economic Sustainability
  • Improve the economic viability of 6G by ensuring its ability to operate with controlled deployment and operational cost to enable stakeholder to adapt themselves in accordance with foreseen value of 6G services: (1) Provide flexibility in infrastructure and resources management, (2) Evolutivity and ability to adapt to news services/requirements, (3) Follow modular architectures to ease evolutions.
  • Evaluate economic aspects of 6G to support long-term economic development of society: (1) Evaluation of 6G ability to impact economy at large considering cost and value associated with 6G, (2) Identify economic trends and drivers for 6G market disruptions, opportunity and risks, (3) Identify key stakeholders, roles, relation and business potential for 6G ecosystem in selected verticals, (4) Define business and revenue models and total cost of ownership of 6G for key stakeholders and (5) Assess business impact of social aspects and environmental sustainability, as mentioned in the above text.

This threefold approach will drive the design and integration of technical solutions into a sustainability end-to-end set of tools and solutions. The work hence covers:

• Validated technologies, systems and architectures needed to develop 6G as a sustainable platform, covering at least environmental sustainability, resource efficiency, cost, trust, security, and accessibility. Performance of key technologies in the sustainability context may be characterized as “standalone” but should preferably be demonstrated from an end-to-end perspective.
• Definition of sustainability framework as part of the network management functions capable of monitoring and piloting sustainable operations and service implementations.
• Reference sustainability scenarios and benchmarks, both for the 6G platform and for the targeted/supported use cases.
• Characterisation of sustainability KPI and KVI’s, in view of their potential use at standardization level.
• Validation of critical technologies for the sustainability solutions in experimental platforms and use case pilots.
• Definition of the SNS approach towards sustainability.
• Definition of downstream recommendations and guidelines towards sustainability implementation and operations in deployment contexts.