Paris, France, 20 September 2012

Opening Address

Distinguished participants, Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of ITU welcome to this Information and Training Session on ITU Methodologies to Assess the Environmental Impact of ICT organized in partnership with the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and I am pleased to be joined by Alice Valvodova, Executive Director of GeSI.

This is the second of a series of training sessions that ITU will carry out to demonstrate how one implements the ITU methodologies and to describe how these methodologies differ from other methodologies.

This work was initiated by the first ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change held in Kyoto in 2008. It was clear there were many different estimates of the impact of ICTs since everyone was using different methodologies. ITU was request to develop an international agreed methodology and this in turn resulting in a revision of the terms of reference and name of our Study Group 5 to Environment and Climate Change.

Since it was created in 2009 it has done an incredible amount of work in this area and I would like to congratulate the Chairman Ahmed Zeddam and the participants in the study group for its outstanding work. In fact, it has become the fastest growing study group within ITU-T over the last couple of years.

As we know ICT is a double-edged sword. By consuming energy and natural resources and by creating e waste, ICTs have negative effects on the environment at all stages of their life cycle.

Off-setting this, ICTs can improve the environmental sustainability of personal lifestyles and all sectors of the economy by providing digital solutions to increase energy efficiency.

Following two years’ work, ITU-T SG5 approved a set of standardized methodologies to assess the environmental impact of ICT.

I am very pleased to be joined today by, Ahmed Zeddam, Jean Manuel Canet and Gilbert Buty who all played key roles in driving this effort.

This training session will provide you with information on how to implement two ITU-T Recommendations in particular:

The first is Recommendation ITU–T L.1410: Methodology for environmental impacts of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) goods, networks and services.

The second is Recommendation ITU–T L.1420: Methodology for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions impact assessment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in organizations which standardizes the requirements that an organization should comply with when assessing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Many ICT companies have tested these ITU-T methodologies within the framework set out by the European Commission for the pilot testing of methodologies assessing the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the ICT-sector.

The purpose of this Information and Training Session is not only to help industry understand how to implement the ITU methodologies, but is also important that industry players leave this session with an understanding how ITU’s methodologies differ from others currently on offer.

In this regard, I am pleased to welcome Beniamino Gorini from ETSI and Gabrielle Giner and Tom Okrasinski from GeSI to present on other available methodologies.

I wish you an informative training session and will now handover to Alice.