ITU-T L.1420 PDF

The increasing proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) has led to concerns regarding its environmental impact. Taking into consideration the ongoing efforts within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to combat climate change, ITU-T decided to develop an internationally agreed upon methodology to help the ICT Sector to make an inventory of the environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, of ICTs in organizations.

This Recommendation can be used to assess the energy consumption and GHG emissions of ICT related to organizations for two different purposes.

• Firstly, it can be used to assess the life cycle GHG emissions (first and second order effects) emerging from the use of ICT in non-ICT organizations, based on the Recommendation ITU-T L.1410.

• Secondly, it can be used as a supplement to [ISO 14064-1] and to [b-GHG Protocol] for ICT organizations intending to assess their own organizational energy consumption and GHG related impact.

This Recommendation is intended to allow organizations to assess their direct GHG emissions (generally referred to as scope 1), their indirect GHG emissions (generally referred to as scope 2) and their other indirect GHG emissions (generally referred to as scope 3). It also allows organizations to assess their energy consumption by developing an energy inventory focusing on secondary energy used by the assessed organization itself.

However, it should be noted that this Recommendation will not address:

• GHG removal, which needs not be considered since ICT activities do not directly remove GHG,

• Other effects (apart from first or second order effects), such as rebound effects, since these effects are still under research to a large extent,

• Other environmental impacts like for example depletion of abiotic resources, acidification, eutrophication, stratospheric ozone depletion, photo-oxidant formation and human toxicity.