Development of a composite index to measure environmental sustainability in the telecom sector : a comprehensive approach towards carbon emission reduction

Telecommunication provides the infrastructure to deliver core services but contributes to extensive CO2 emissions. To address the problem, this paper introduces environmental sustainability index for the telecom sector to reduce carbon emissions. The present work identifies the most critical factors that reduce carbon emission in a multiple-stage telecom supply chain through an extensive literature review, followed by developing an environmental sustainability index to measure carbon reduction efforts. A detailed survey was conducted among the personnel of the Indian telecom sector to understand the initiatives for carbon emission reduction. The study employed factor analysis and multiple regression to achieve its objectives.