5G has great potential, but brings power challenges at the infrastructure and board levels.

5G network capacity is predicted to increase as much as 1000-fold by 2030. That's a stunning increase that can be attributed to effects such as our digital lifestyles and digital business transformation. Clearly, our dependence on online services that are available anytime, anywhere and at full speed shows no sign of abating. The effect on global energy demand could be even more stunning. The information & communications technology (ICT) industry currently consumes about 4% of the world's electricity, and this could increase to an amazing 20% with the growth of 5G networks. In absolute terms, that's equivalent to 150 quadrillion BTU per year.

Of course, 5G is huge, in scope as well as deployment. It covers low frequency bands, up to about 1GHz, although the main benefits of 5G are its ability to carry richer services that by their nature require faster data rates. These will push the limits of Frequency Range 1 (FR1) as defined by 5G standards, up to 6GHz in the FR1 range, and even higher in FR2 that extends into the millimeter-wave bands at 60-70GHz and even beyond. While services in the FR1 bands can support data rates of about 1-2Gbit/s, the higher bands are needed to support multi-gigabit data rates and latency of less than a few milliseconds.

Connecting the world will require a better energy solution.

The early stages of the IoT "hype curve" saw some wild predictions for the number of devices that would be deployed. They're not looking so wild now, with 15 billion devices in 2020 and 29 billion expected by 2030. About 60% of these will be consumer devices, the remainder industrial, or IIoT, devices including smart meters and sensors for monitoring automation equipment, transportation infrastructures, and buildings like offices and factories.

Knowing that IPv6's 128-bit address space would permit more than 100 IP addresses for each atom on the surface of the earth, we can see that the IoT could theoretically grow well beyond even the most ambitious predictions.

While we can solve many problems by adding more of these devices, we are creating another at the same time. Each one needs a source of energy to operate and the fact that many of them will be deployed in mobile or remote locations means a battery is the most obvious power source. Already, the US alone throws away about 3 billion batteries every year and our IoT habit could add many extra tons of hazardous waste. But there are some exciting alternatives.