Energy Management and Environmental Investments

Energy efficiency is one of the key strategies to combat climate change. While mitigating the effects of the climate crisis, energy efficiency solutions will help us move towards a more sustainable future, both environmentally and financially. The Global Risk Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) provides a sobering assessment of the range of risks posed by climate change for our planet, including natural disasters, vast economic losses, food security issues, and water scarcity. These risks illustrate the complexity and far-reaching impacts of climate change.

We remain committed to combating climate change and systematically reducing our carbon footprint. In this context, we implement energy efficiency initiatives to reduce emissions and grow our capacity to use solar energy in line with our targets. We reinforce our stakeholder ecosystem to achieve our objectives and work with all relevant parties to meet current and future requirements.

Renewable Energy Investments

In 2023, we installed 0.3 MW of solar energy systems across 100 mobile base stations. With these investments, we have increased the total installed capacity of our renewable energy systems to 4.3 MW.

In line with our renewable energy investment strategy, we managed to obtain permission to install 405.8 MWe solar capacity from Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEİAŞ). The solar energy investments planned within this scope will potentially meet approximately 65% of our current electricity consumption.

Energy Efficiency Projects

In 2023, we achieved a total annual energy savings of 47 GWh from optimisation and transformation projects in mobile and fixed networks. These projects significantly help us meet our energy efficiency targets and contribute to a sustainable future.

We continue to make investments and optimise our systems for energy efficiency. We have expanded the replacement of air conditioners in fixed and mobile networks with next generation, more efficient devices and introduced free cooling box devices to ensure that mobile base stations and telecom system halls are cooled directly with outside air at a lower cost, resulting in up to 80% energy savings. These upgrades to our cooling system saved 11.7 million kWh of energy annually.

We launched our Smart Energy Management System, which provides much faster access to all energy equipment (generators, DC systems, UPS, air conditioners, digital thermostats, meters, etc.) in our fixed and mobile network. In this way, data can be securely received from devices and effectively reported to the end user by achieving operational quality and high efficiency through artificial intelligencesupported analysis. The Smart Energy Management Platform allows us to quickly and easily track the results of our efficiency and optimisation projects. In 2023, we saved 6.7 million kWh of energy and 103 thousand litres of generator fuel thanks to this platform.

To reduce energy consumption at mobile base stations, we introduced new software features that conserve power in all regions during low-traffic periods. As a result of the optimisation we carried out in 2023, we achieved annual energy savings of over 13.3 million kWh.

We saved 14.7 million kWh through technological change and optimisation, hall optimisation and consolidation, building relocations and other efficiency measures. Our renewable energy efficiency investments in mobile also resulted in 0.5 million kWh in savings.

Energy Efficiency and Optimisation Projects

Thanks to our various efficiency projects in 2023:

Additionally, our ongoing investments in fixed infrastructure for the copper-to- fibre transformation have a substantial positive impact on energy consumption. Transition from copper to fibre with Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) technology can achieve about 95% energy savings on the network. The energy efficiency projects and GPON conversions that we have been carrying out and the renewable energy certificates we purchased were the main contributors to emissions decline.

We are currently implementing more efficient cooling solutions and artificial intelligence-supported optimisation systems to enhance power usage efficiency (PUE). In our next generation data centres, we aim to attain an annual average PUE of 1.2. The average PUE value in our data centres decreased from 1.65 in 2022 to 1.55 in 2023.

*For more information, please see our Integrated Report.

Technological Infrastructure and Efficiency Projects

In 2023, we updated our technological infrastructure through system transformations such as SDH, MPLS, and DWDM when installing AC, generator, FCB, battery, UPS, and DC energy systems in the energy and cooling infrastructure. Additionally, we implemented energy efficiency projects such as the Power Saving Feature project, system room optimisation, network card optimisation, intranet AC-DC conversions, switchboard transformations, and BSC modernisation projects.

With the buyback agreement made with one of our main suppliers, Nokia, we ensured the recycling of radio equipment that had reached the end of its useful life. By preferring models that work more efficiently and reduce energy consumption by up to 15% in critical purchases like antennas, we contributed to environmental sustainability. By optimising capacitive equipment addition processes, we reduced energy consumption in the field without disrupting customer experience.

Also, by upgrading the less efficient 3G bands to 4G technology, we reduced energy consumption by 50%. In 2023, we achieved energy savings through power saving optimisation in 3G and 4G networks. We amplified savings by reducing the number of high-energy-consuming oldgeneration 2G control equipment in switchboard rooms from 22 to 7.

Electricity Bill Portal Project

With the launch of the Electricity Bill Portal in 2023, Türk Telekom initiated the monitoring and reporting of over 80 thousand monthly electricity bills belonging to Türk Telekom Group. This application enables the digital analysis and Reporting of various tasks, including detecting anomalies, reactive consumption, collective viewing of billing information, monitoring of payment status, monitoring of Municipal Consumption Tax rates, and monitoring of irregular billing using live data.

Smart Energy Management and Innovative Solutions

We use the Smart Energy Management Platform to pick and use energy-efficient telecommunication network devices. We are investing in GPON and 5G. We are also working on more efficient cooling solutions (CRAC, free cooling etc.) and decreasing PUE in our data centres. We have obtained important certifications, including the I-REC (Renewable Energy Certificate) and the ISO 50001 Energy Management System Certificate, for using renewable energy to power our data centres. We carry out energy efficiency projects by utilising more efficient network equipment, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning units, cooling, lighting, and electrical equipment. This allows us to reduce our energy consumption and carbon footprint while continuing to work towards a sustainable future.