Friday, October 2, 2009

IT industry to finalise global carbon footprinting standard

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Friday 2 October 2009 at 00:15:00

UN-backed agency to agree carbon measurement methodology next month

The global IT and communications industry is on track to release a new methodology for measuring the carbon footprint of a vast array of IT products designed to provide a standardised approach for tracking the sector's carbon emissions.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN agency that represents the global IT and communications industry, will next month host a meeting of one of its standardisation study groups where it expects to finalise the new standard.

"At the moment the carbon figures you see from IT companies differ as everyone is using different methodologies," said Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. "This will give the industry the credible figures it needs – we are aiming to finalise it as an ITU standard next month." …

Johnson insisted technologies such as online meeting systems and smart-grid systems demonstrated that IT had a key role to play in delivering deep cuts in overall emissions. "We recently undertook some research which showed that IT could help cut global emissions 15 per cent by 2020," he said. " We are going to Copenhagen to highlight that IT can play a key role in cutting emissions."

IT industry to finalise global carbon footprinting standard

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