Vodafone India says it moved 265 towers onto green technology in FY 2013

"Vodafone was first telecom operator to publish annual sustainability report in 2011. This year, we are proud to be the first one in India to publish a report based on recently introduced GRI standards-G4 guidelines," Vodafone India Chief Operating Officer Sunil Sood said while releasing the latest sustainability report Thursday.

GRI is a an independent institution that sets benchmarks and standard frameworks for sustainability reporting.

As per the report, Vodafone had 2,435 of its sites on green technologies out of 1,10,004 total mobile towers that company directly manages.

In 2012-13, the total number of such mobile towers increased to 1,15,268. The impact of deployment of green technology of company was visible with total diesel consumption of the company falling to 44,372 kilo litres compared to 46,233 kilo litres in previous fiscal.

While there was about 4 percent increase in number of mobile sites managed by company, the carbon emission from its network jumped by about 2 percent to 4.5 lakh tonnes in FY 2012-13 from 4.4 lakh tonnes in previous fiscal.

The company manages only 11 percent of total sites, and rest of the 89 percent are managed by third parties, which means the company in total operates using roughly 10.47 lakh mobile towers.

The report did not disclose the break-up of its operational base stations in rural area and urban centres running on green technology.

The carbon emission on its mobile towers managed by third parties also increased by 4.4 percent to 19.55 lakh tonnes in FY 2012-13 from 18.71 lakh tonnes in FY 2011-12.

As per telecom regulator TRAI's recommendation, which was accepted by the government, telecom companies need to move 50 percent of their mobile towers in rural area and 33 percent in urban centres to renewable energy by 2015.

The rules also mandate companies to reduce their carbon footprint by 12 percent in financial year 2014-15 from the levels they had in 2011.

The company also announced partnership with energy institute TERI that will help it deploying green technology on its network.