A group of IT experts, including staff from BT, Google and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are meeting in April to
finalise work on a
global method of measuring carbon emissions from IT.
The IT arm of the United Nations - the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) - is bringing the group together
because it says a globally accepted way of measuring the carbon
emissions from IT projects would be a huge step forward in the
fight against global warming.
The group is set to ratify the method after months of
development and fine tuning.
"This will have a huge impact on the technology sector," said
Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU's Standardisation Bureau. The
standard will be used to measure the impact of IT equipment, and IT
projects in other sectors.
Technologists are also working on developing a standard method
to measure the carbon emissions of any project or product, although
the ITU is not involved in this.
Once a standard method is devised, it can be used to measure the
emissions of anything - the manufacture of a PC, the building of a
road, or even the manufacture of a teacup.
IT contributes about 2% of total global emissions. This is
expected to rise to 8% by 2050 as technology use keeps growing, but
IT could
help to cut emissions by five times that.
The ITU is fighting to raise awareness of the crucial role
technology will play in the fight against climate change. It is
pressing for the technology sector to be mentioned in the text of
December's
Copenhagen climate change talks. IT was not mentioned at the
Kyoto summit on climate change and it is currently not included in
this year's summit.
The ITU says this is a big omission considering the huge role
technology will play in measuring and reducing carbon
emissions.