Alcatel-Lucent's Alternative Energy Program Wins European Commission's 2010 Sustainable Energy Europe Competition

PARIS, March 24, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU) today announced that its "Alternative Energy Program for Global Green Telecommunications" (http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/alternative-energy/) was named as a winner in the 2010 European Commission's Sustainable Energy Europe (SEE) campaign. Alcatel-Lucent was recognized in the "Market Transformation-Voluntary Commitments" category.

The Sustainable Energy Europe (SEE) campaign ( http://www.sustenergy.org/tpl/page.cfm?pageName=home) is an initiative of the European Commission managed by the Executive Agency for Competitiveness & Innovation (EACI), under the authority of Commissioner for Energy Mr. Gunther H. Oettinger. The winners of the annual competition were announced at an awards ceremony in Brussels on March 23 as part of the European Union's Sustainable Energy Week (http://www.eusew.eu/).

Alcatel-Lucent entry outlined its program to develop and build wireless telecommunications base stations powered with alternative energies, such as solar, wind and fuel cells. This program, announced in February 2009, is designed to enable communications service providers to extend the reach of their wireless services to areas not served by an electrical grid, making it possible to provide telephone and broadband communications services to the more than 1 billion people who are still cut off from this vital tool for economic and social development. The program will also make it possible for service providers in developed regions to retrofit their wireless base stations so that they can take advantage of advances in alternative energy technology.

The program is developing the first truly industrial solution ready for large deployments so that it would be possible to address a market estimated at more than 100,000 mobile base stations that could be powered with alternative energy solutions between 2010 and 2012, representing a yearly savings of about 7 million tons of CO2.

"The Alcatel-Lucent program is bringing the advantages of alternative energies to telecom networks, a key component in our strategy to bridge the energy and the telecom worlds," said Jean-Philippe Poirault, president of Alcatel-Lucent's Network and Systems Integration activities. "As growing telecom traffic sparks more demand for energy and as electricity transport and distribution grids face growing challenges that information and communication technologies can help solve, these two essential industry sectors have a lot to bring to each other."

The program includes the Alcatel-Lucent Alternative Energy Laboratory (http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/alternative-energy/) and Pilot Station, the world's first such facility for the telecom market. Bringing together industrial, institutional and academic partners from the telecommunications world and the alternative energy world, this laboratory has the facilities to analyse, test and validate solutions being offered by the dynamic alternative energy market and how they might meet the needs of the telecommunications industry.

In addition to the advanced research, Alcatel-Lucent is developing a multi-year roadmap to enable its telecom customers to benefit from the best possible alternative energy solutions as soon as the technology becomes available while creating a new market for alternative energy systems vendors.

"The renewable energy base stations developed by Alcatel-Lucent will result in a paradigm shift in the global telecommunications industry. Stakeholders of global IT companies will now see this as the gold standard in triple bottom line innovation. Alcatel-Lucent's proactive commitment to sustainability has resulted in a solution that will resonate in all markets improving access to global communication and internet services," said analyst Brad Allen, TBR Program Manager for Global Business Sustainability. "We believe that these base stations when fully deployed, will serve as community-based examples of the potential of progressive renewable energy applications that may promote further development of sustainable energy technologies."

Leveraging its "Sustainable Power" services suite, Alcatel-Lucent provides consulting to help operators build a comprehensive deployment plan tailored to their specific environment, and then manages design, dimensioning, installation, transformation and integration of the entire network, for new deployments or retrofit programs of any base stations.

About Alcatel-Lucent's eco sustainability initiatives

As a responsible corporate citizen and leader in the telecoms industry, Alcatel-Lucent works to enrich people's lives by transforming the way the world communicates and connects, and by acting in full recognition of its social and environmental responsibilities as a company. Alcatel-Lucent also recognizes the important role the telecommunications sector must play in the global effort to address environmental issues such as climate change. It is devoted to be an active community player and to involve suppliers and business partners in its sustainability approach. Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent's research arm, is also the lead organizer of the Green Touch(TM) initiative, an international industry consortium dedicated to substantially reducing ICT's carbon footprint by a factor of 1,000.

About Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent