IT industry to finalise global carbon footprinting standard

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."

The new standard is part of a push from the agency to promote the role ICT can play in developing a low-carbon economy and ensure that sector is recognised in the upcoming Copenhagen agreement.

The IT industry is often cited as a major source of carbon emissions with one often-quoted statistic estimating that it is responsible for around two per cent of global carbon emissions – equivalent to the aviation industry.

However, 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."