MegaFon takes its commitment to care about the environment seriously, seeking to make meaningful contributions to maintaining environmental balance across its footprint. By enabling optimisation of multiple key business processes our business, and new products and solutions help society as a whole to cut energy costs and reduce consumption of resources.
MegaFon’s operations do not cause direct significant damage to the environment, and we are not engaged in industries that pose a potential threat to the environment. Nevertheless, we recognize that improving the energy efficiency of our operations, resource conservation, and minimising environmental impacts are important objectives for us as a leading player in the telecommunications and IT market with operations across Russia. In its operations, MegaFon complies with all applicable environmental laws and runs various initiatives to encourage all employees to care about the environment.
When constructing base stations, we utilise advanced energy technologies to reduce power consumption and are gradually transitioning to alternative energy systems. For instance, the Company increasingly uses solar/wind power generators, mainly in the areas where arranging a connection to external power sources is a challenge. These solutions make mobile communication services accessible to people even in the most remote settlements, while at the same time the use of alternative power sources offers significant environmental benefits and helps minimise the Company’s overall environmental footprint.
We also continue to install balanced ventilation systems in base stations, which enables significant reduction in electricity costs. To reduce power consumption, our offices use heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems with recuperative heat-exchange and self-cooling functions. The Company seeks to optimise power consumption by all employees: lights and electrical appliances are switched off outside office hours, incandescent lamps are replaced with more energy-efficient fluorescent lamps. We also have in place energy saving guidelines for employees.
We seek to ensure that MegaFon’s offices provide a comfortable working environment for staff, while at the same time meeting all modern environmental standards. In 2016, MegaFon continued its efforts to ensure more sustainable use of resources across its offices and stores. We consistently pursue a policy of reducing our water and paper consumption. To optimise paper consumption, we have in place the Uniform Library module, and electronic documents and memo systems. The Company has introduced all necessary waste disposal equipment.
In 2016, the jury of Green Office environmental and information campaign organised by the Moscow Government recognised MegaFon’s Head Office to be the most energy efficient.
According to environmental experts with the
Moscow Department for Natural Resources
Management and Environmental Protection,
MegaFon’s Head Office on Kadashevskaya
Embankment meets the highest energy
saving standards. By this measure, our office
ranked first among the 80 participants of the
Green Office initiative.
MegaFon widely employs wind generators
to power its base stations. Specifically, four
such wind-powered base stations operate in
the Murmansk Region. All four are installed
in hard-to-reach, sparsely populated
areas which are nevertheless strategically
important for the region since they are host
to industrial enterprises, settlements and
highways.
Installation of alternative power sources helped resolve the issue of irregular power supply in the absence of requisite infrastructure and ensure the communication facilities’ performance at 100% capacity. Due to uninterrupted operation of MegaFon’s equipment, an area with strategically important facilities and a population of about 4,000 people benefits from stable voice service and 3G Internet coverage.
Wind power plants used by MegaFon offer improved energy-conversion efficiency and reliability. At average wind speeds of 3 to 4 m/s, they generate 300 to 400 kW per month. The stability of power supply is monitored remotely, with online data displayed at technicians’ desktops. Given the Murmansk Region’s massive wind power potential, the use of wind energy and batteries to power base stations delivers the best efficiency.
