Comcast technology chief Tony Werner will join Liberty Global CTO Balan Nair in co-chairing the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers' (SCTE) Energy 2020 initiative.
Werner, who now operates under the title of president, technology and product for Comcast Cable, was re-elected in September for another term as chairman of the SCTE and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE).
Nair served as chairman in 2015 and has also chaired Energy 2020 since that time.
Werner and Nair will work with Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE/ISBE, as members of the steering committee for the program, which is designed to promote reductions in energy cost and consumption for the cable industry. Mark Hess, senior VP of business and industry affairs for Comcast, will serve as program technical advisor.
“One of the most important drivers of Energy 2020’s success has been the willingness of the MSO community to commit the time of some of their most talented executives to the program,” Dzuban said, in a statement. “I’m particularly grateful for the way leading technology executives—including Tony Werner, Balan Nair, and others—have pledged their wholehearted support for the program.”
RELATED: SCTE extends Energy 2020 to the cable van
Launched in June of 2014, Energy 2020 is a collaborative effort involving Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Bright House, Bend Broadband, Rogers Communications, Suddenlink Communications and Buckeye CableSystems.
Goals of the program are to reduce power consumption by 20% on a unit basis; to cut energy cost by 25% (also on a unit basis); to reduce grid dependency by 10%; to optimize technical facilities and datacenter footprint by 20% and to establish vendor partnerships that will impact hardware development by the end of the decade.
RELATED: Top Canadian pay-TV operators agree to make more energy-efficient set-top boxes
Last month, Canada’s top pay-TV operators announced they are following through on a similar energy-efficiency plan.
Operators in the Great White North will participate in a voluntary program aimed at not only reducing energy consumption from 3.4 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2016 to 2.7 TWh in 2021, but also cutting as much as 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Pay-TV service providers participating in the program include Bell, Cogeco Communications, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications and Vidéotron; collectively, they serve more than 88% of the Canadian pay-TV market. Vendors Arris and EchoStar Technologies are also signatories.