Energy is an expensive commodity in long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) networks, spurring a myriad of research approaches in recent years to attempt to minimize energy consumption in LTE-A, usually from the mobile users’ perspective. In this work, the energy consumption of the network is analyzed, according to the operators’ point of view. Network sharing and self-organized network (SON) technologies are attractive solutions for cost reduction, and for the minimization of energy utilization in LTE-A network. In this paper, a novel framework is provided using a self-organized load balancing (SO-LB) algorithm for minimizing energy cost per bit based on the scope of 3GPP standardization. Obtained simulation results show that by employing SO-LB algorithm in a shared network, it is possible to achieve up to 15–20 % savings in energy consumption when compared to LTE-A non-shared networks.