The relationship between 5G and energy efficiency has been ambivalent from the outset. There has been little clarity over how well the industry is doing, when it is all squared up, taking account of scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. We could even speculatively talk of a scope 4 classification, comprising the additional energy consumed and emissions generated from the indirect result of the higher bandwidth and lower latency enabled by 5G – such as running compute intensive AI workloads in massive data centers, albeit also aided by fixed fiber interconnects. Vendors peddle the energy saving benefits of AI, but this does not always take account of the costs incurred while training associated models, and that is before considering those…