With 600 million mobile phone subscribers, India has the largest community of mobile phone users in the world, apart from China with 780 million. This is more than twice the number of subscribers in the US. Despite this, the market continues to grow at a rate that’s faster than almost any other telecom market. Innovative clean technology is being proposed to help the telecom industry save on the cost of energy to maintain cellphone towers while lowering their carbon footprint at the same time.

The answer, according to India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, is in solar powered cellphone towers. Cellphone towers are highly energy-intensive, and because of their remote locations, many are powered by diesel fuel.

The numbers are compelling to say the least. India has over 250,000 cellphone towers providing coverage to its vast number of mobile subscribers. Each of those towers consumes about three to five kilowatts (depending on the number of operators in the tower), and much of this power goes to air-conditioning for equipment in nearby hubs.

In order to maintain the power output, the towers collectively consume about 2 billion liters (or about 530 million gallons) of diesel in a year. With current gas prices, an investment in solar powered cellphone towers could produce savings of $1.4 billion a year, not to mention 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Currently, there are talks of making solar power mandatory for cellphone tower operators. This is in line with the ministry’s goal of generating 20,000 megawatts of solar power capacity by 2022.

India is making strides in other green tech areas as well. The country recently completed its first green housing project, and an Indian company is responsible for developing zero-waste toilets for people that do not have access to proper plumbing, especially in China and India.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about Clean Energy.