ICT Guidance on GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard

GeSI’s ICT Sector Guidance, produced in collaboration with Carbon Trust provides guidance and accounting methods for the calculation of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions for ICT (Information and Communication Technology) products with a focus on ICT services. This ICT Sector Guidance is built on, and in conformance with, the GHG Protocol Product Standard.

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Assessing the GHG emissions of ICT products presents a number of challenges because of the nature of ICT, with the complex and extensive features of ICT services, the long and complex supply chains for ICT hardware, and the wide use of shared resources within ICT systems requiring specific allocation techniques.

This is why GeSI developed ICT Sector Guidance with the aim of addressing these issues by providing practical methodologies, which provide a consistent approach to calculating the GHG emissions from ICT goods and services.

The need for this Sector Guidance is due to the specific nature of ICT products. ICT equipment is characterized by extensive bills of material (BOM) consisting of hundreds of individual components with long and complex global supply chains, often using multiple and alternative sources. This makes it inherently challenging to execute a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) for typical ICT equipment.

The ICT sector is also characterized by a large number of extensive services. These services are generally complex solutions including potentially thousands of items of ICT equipment and have significant use stages. In other words, understanding the use profile and behavioral aspects of the use of the service are important in assessing the service.

You can access the full version of the guide by clicking below.