Standardization Roadmap towards Sustainable 6G

Recent years have brought a consensus in the telecommunications industry that a strong reduction of overall energy consumption and CO2e emission of running networks is a critical goal that must be achieved. For this to be possible, a mindset change is necessary in the industry, in particular in the relevant standards setting organizations, such as 3GPP. A whole new infrastructure for measuring energy consumption at various levels of granularity (e.g., per service, per user), measurement data collection and dissemination to relevant parties (e.g., service users, other domains), as well as optimized usage of available energy must be in place in the networks to enable this transition towards sustainable networks. This paper presents an approach on how this infrastructure can be standardized in the context of 3GPP. We analyze the current status of sustainability related efforts in 3GPP, identify the main gaps that need to be bridged, and provide concrete steps in terms of enhancing existing technical specifications or creation of new ones, to make the said infrastructure operational. We also report on the concrete efforts made within the EU funded project EXIGENCE to realize this vision.