Yesterday’s annual Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference featured a keynote from AT&T’s Senior Executive Vice President for External & Legislative Affairs, James W. Cicconi, discussing how high-speed Internet is essential to an environmentally friendly future in the office and home.
 
You can watch video of his speech via NextGenWeb here.
 
From his remarks:
 
Make no mistake – harnessing the potential of broadband is indispensible to reaching our goal of a greener economy.  As the SMART 2020 study on the low carbon economy in the information age notes, by itself, large-scale adoption of broadband in the United States can reduce CO2 emissions by 13 to 22 percent by 2020 “by transforming the way people and businesses use technology.”  This will save U.S. businesses and consumers anywhere between $140 and $240 billion annually in gross energy costs if fully implemented.  More important, it will promote “green collar” employment and help lead our economic recovery, pointing the way to a more sustainable future.
Recognizing that widely deployed broadband is the indispensible platform for the more sustainable economy of tomorrow, we have invested $55 billion in our networks over the past three years, to deliver speed and mobility and to enable new and innovative applications and services.  This is more than seven times the Federal Government’s own investment in broadband and, in current dollars, one third of the cost of the 13-year Apollo program that put astronauts on the moon.