BT Boosts AI Carbon Tracking to Optimise Networking

BT Group, the UK's largest telecommunications provider, has expanded its carbon monitoring platform to track emissions from artificial intelligence (AI) operations in data centres.
The company's Carbon Network Dashboard, a tool that monitors power consumption across network infrastructure, now includes capabilities to measure the environmental impact of AI applications and workloads. It is also able to provide greater visibility of electricity usage, allowing data centre operators to identify areas where emissions can be reduced.
Such an expansion comes as the telecommunications sector faces growing regulatory pressure to ensure its network expansions are meeting environmental targets. In response, BT’s dashboard enables the telco’s business customers to monitor and optimise their infrastructure for both performance and sustainability.
BT targets AI workload optimisation
Carbon Network Dashboard now offers enhanced capabilities for businesses seeking to manage their environmental impact. Through detailed monitoring of network traffic patterns, the dashboard can identify how specific AI applications affect power consumption and carbon emissions.
"BT is committed to helping customers innovate to achieve sustainable growth," says Sarwar Khan, Sustainability Director, Business at BT. "With our Carbon Network Dashboard, we can help them adopt AI at scale while optimising their infrastructure to achieve their decarbonisation goals."
The system utilises NetFlow technology to analyse traffic patterns generated by AI workloads. This capability will be extended to monitor data flows to colocation facilities and public cloud services, providing insights that enable operators to optimise their network architecture.
Additionally, the platform is able to assist customers in several areas of network management, including network design and capacity, optimising AI workloads and developing distributed architectures that position AI components closer to users and devices.
- Changing network design, capacity and management
- Optimising applications and AI workloads
- Develop distributed architectures, which bring components of AI closer to users, devices and machines
Confronting increased power usage in networking
These updates from BT could not be more timely in the wider technology sector. Research in October 2024 from McKinsey indicates data centre power consumption in Europe will increase from 62 terawatt-hours (TWh) to 150 TWh by 2030. This growth is attributed to increasing AI adoption and continued digital transformation across industries.
This in turn impacts the telecommunications sector, as increased use of AI applications generate different network usage patterns compared to traditional workloads. These patterns can result in sudden increases in bandwidth demand, creating power consumption spikes that challenge infrastructure designed for more predictable usage patterns.
"AI has incredible potential but if not deployed thoughtfully could place unpredictable demands on customers' digital infrastructure causing surges in electricity use and carbon emissions," says Sarwar.
To address these challenges, BT has expanded its dashboard's monitoring capabilities to include a broader range of network equipment. The system now incorporates data from SD-WAN equipment, servers, and both WAN and LAN devices.
New features in the dashboard include automation tools for managing wireless access points and ethernet ports. The system can now automatically disable power over ethernet (PoE) ports when not in use, contributing to energy savings. It also provides recommendations for replacing end-of-life devices with more energy-efficient alternatives.
The platform's expansion reflects growing industry awareness of AI's environmental impact. As businesses increase their use of AI applications, the ability to monitor and optimise related power consumption becomes increasingly important for meeting sustainability targets.
BT: A new era of sustainable AI growth
This is not the first time BT has harnessed energy-efficient technologies to support its customers. In 2023, BT initiated tests of liquid cooling systems across its network infrastructure. This forms part of the company's environmental strategy, with network operations representing 90% of BT's energy consumption.
BT is also harnessing the power of AI responsibly to support the wants and needs of its customers.
“We are, in fact, quite ambitious,” Deepika Adusumilli, Chief Data and AI Officer at BT Group said, previously reported by Mobile Magazine. “We want to be able to use all of the data we’ve got, and Gen AI for the right sustainable purposes, efficiency purposes, productivity purposes - and we absolutely want AI to empower where we go.”
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