TELECOMMUNICATION
STANDARDIZATION SECTOR
STUDY PERIOD 2009-2012 / Doc 67
English only
Original: English
Seoul, 28 September 2011
Source: / JCA Chairman and Co-Chairman
Title: / Report of the eighth meeting of JCA on ICT&CC (28 September 2011)
1.1 General
The eighth meeting of JCA on ICT&CC was held on 28 September 2011in Seoul in the Republic of Korea under the Chairmanship of Mr. Ahmed Zeddam and Mr. Dave Faulkner. The meeting was attended by 30 participants.
1.2. Agenda
Doc.58Rev.3 is the draft agenda. It was approved as drafted.
2. JCA/SG5 Chairman's update (Ahmed Zeddam)
Mr Zeddam first reported on the “ITU Symposium on Progressing the Climate Agenda Through Green ICT Standards” which preceded the Study Group 5 meeting. This event gave the opportunity to present work of SG5 and to hear about green activity in Korea and how this can contribute to green growth. The outcome of this symposium showed how ICT can play an important role in the fight against climate change and can be used to prepare an important message for the COP17 conference to be held in Durban in November 2011. Mr Zeddam thanked the Korean Government and the Korea Communications Commission for the excellent organization of this event.
The symposium focused on the issue of ICT standards, the environment and climate change in Asia, and the needs of countries and especially developing countries in the region. Topics discussed included methodologies for the assessment of the environmental impact of ICTs, e-waste, cost-effective ICT technologies, challenges and opportunities in the transition to a green and resource efficient economy and the role of standards in mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The symposium brought together leading specialists in the field, from top policy-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others.
Mr Zeddam then presented the results of the SG5 meeting and was pleased to say that twelve Recommendations were consented. Four of these were related to ICT and climate change.
Details of these are shown below.
2.1 Revised RecommendationsITU-T Rec. No. / Title / Question
K.20 / Resistibility of telecommunication equipment installed in a telecommunications centre to overvoltages and overcurrents / 4/5
K.21 / Resistibility of telecommunication equipment installed in customer premises to overvoltages and overcurrents / 4/5
K.44 / Resistibility tests for telecommunication equipment exposed to overvoltages and overcurrents – Basic Recommendation / 4/5
K.45 / Resistibility of telecommunication equipment installed in the access and trunk networks to overvoltages and overcurrents / 4/5
2.2 New Recommendations
2.3 Future Work
Mr Zeddam reported that the last SG5 meeting of the current study period will be held in April 2012. This meeting will constitute a good opportunity to progress on work programme and to consent some expected Recommendations. Preparations for the new work programme have begun. This will include the wording of the new and revised questions. The Report of SG5 achievements and the new programme have to be agreed during the last meeting of ITU-T SG5.
3. Update on Methodologies, Jean-Manuel Canet, ITU-T Q18/ 5
Mr Canet provided an overview of the ongoing efforts made by Q18 in the development of the different methodologies to assess the environmental impact of ICT in cities; countries; goods, networks and services; ICT in projects and ICT in organizations. The work of the group focused on the following Recommendations which were consented at the last SG5 meeting:
· L.1410 L.GNS Methodology for environmental impact assessment of information and communication technologies goods, networks and services.
· L.1420 L.ORG Methodology for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions impact assessment of Information and Communication Technologies in organizations.
L.1410 is in two parts. The first part is on ICT lifecycle assessment to be used by practitioners as a complement to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. It provides detailed guidance on all the steps covered in ISO. The document required a huge effort from the ICT sector with over 100 contributions.
The second part of the Recommendation deals with a comparative analysis between an ICT solution and a ‘reference product system’ as used in ISO. This provides guidance for practitioners to compare a situation when no ICT system is used and with the situation where an ICT system is used. An example was given comparing a video-conference with travelling by plane. Part 2 allows two ICT goods, networks or services to be compared using the same boundary and metrics to enable comparisons to be made.
L.1420 provides two types of guidance, lifecycle assessments for non-ICT organizations such as an insurance company which uses ICT goods networks and services in that organisation. The second provides detailed guidance for an ICT organization, from the ICT sector, on how to perform an environmental impact assessment of energy consumption and total GHG emissions. The document complements 14064-item 1 and the GHG Protocol. The same steps are used. In the future it is intended that other environmental impacts such as water depletion, rare metal depletion and biodiversity should be covered.
Three other Recommendations are being prepared. These include environmental assessment of ‘ICT Projects’. This is important because it provides guidance on how to evaluate over the full lifetime of the project the energy consumption and GHG emissions. This will be important in relation to ongoing work at UNFCCC level.
There is ongoing work on ‘ICT in countries’ and this also is important in relation to ongoing work at UNFCCC level.
A third ongoing Recommendation in preparation deals with ‘ICT in cities’. There are many cities worldwide which are active in this field which have taken important and formal steps for the reduction of energy consumption and GHG emissions. UNEP and UN-HABITAT are active in this field. This will cover both direct impacts and the enabling effects thanks to Smart grids, smart buildings and smart transportation.
Ms Giner of BT (online) asked how long the comment period will be. Mr Canet said this will start probably on the 16 October and will last for 4 weeks, ending around 13 November.
4. Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability Standard for the ICT Sector
Mr Smiciklas provided an overview entitled “Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability Standard for the ICT Sector” (Doc 63). This project will focus on development of a standardized checklist of sustainability requirements specific to the ICT sector that will become a contribution to ITU-T Study Group 5 with the goal of developing a global standard in this area.
The goal is to develop a set of agreed upon sustainability characteristics for ICT companies that will allow for a more objective review of how sustainability is practiced in the ICT sector. These indicators will give sustainability performance guidance to the ICT Sector in the following key areas:
o Sustainable Buildings : How ICT companies operate their physical plant
o Sustainable ICT : How ICT companies operate their ICT operations
o Sustainable Products: How ICT companies design and manufacture and manage end of life forproducts
o Sustainable Services: How ICT companies design and deliver services
o End of Life: How to secure an environmentally sustainable solution for ICT equipment’s EOL
o General Specifications and KPIs: How ICT companies select KPIs for strategic environmental management and set performance targets
5. ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association)
Mr Griffa provided an overview of ETNO and its goals and activities related to the ETNO CORE Energy Task Force (ETF) (Doc.64). The ETNO ETF was created in 2004 with the following goals:
o Decrease further the energy consumption of the ICT branch
o Motivate society to make use of the existing potential of Green ICT
o Develop new solutions to increase the energy saving impact of ICT
The Group mainly develops benchmark activities and shares knowledge/best practices among its participants.
6. How Mandat can help delegates attending ITU-T meetings and update on Smart buildings (Doc 66)
Mr Ziegler made a presentation entitled “Smart IPv6 Building”. His presentation is available as Doc.66. In addition to research activities Mandat offers conference and office facilities, budget accommodation and support to delegates in Geneva from developing countries. Research activities include ‘IPv6 for Wireless Sensor Networks & Green Buildings’ and ‘IPv6 for the Internet of Things’. It is anticipated that the work will contribute to the ITU work with contributions on Smart IPv6 building approach, the research projects results and an end-user perspective.
Mr Faulkner suggested that results could also be provided through this JCA.
6. “Sharing experience gained in setting up an Inventory of Carbon and Energy for building materials” (Doc 69)
Mr Jones’ overview included a reminder of why climate change is important and how the rate of increase in emissions had accelerated since 1945. He explained how carbon emissions accumulate throughout the extraction, delivery and refining stages of a product citing fuel for a car as a typical example. Hence the fuel economy of a car measured on the road at 5.6lt/100km may actually be 6.3lt/100km.
The Inventory of Carbon & Energy was created to provide information on embodied energy and carbon emissions for a wide range (200+) of materials. In making comparisons it is no use just comparing materials kg to kg. It essential to take account of: density, lifetime and properties of the material (e.g. wood v steel utility poles). A cradle to grave approach is needed over the full lifecycle.
Many carbon footprinting standards for all sectors are available. BSI (UK) PAS2050 is one example. In October the WRI ‘product and lifecycle’ and the ‘Scope 3 assessment’ standards will be available. The EU standard on construction of buildings will also be available also in October. In France there has been a pilot study for 1 year of a wide range of consumer goods. These will have an environmental label including carbon and other environmental conditions.
In the context of buildings the embodied carbon varies. For domestic buildings in UK 12-19 years is the time when the in-use carbon emission equal the embodiment emissions.
The EU is interested in embodied emissions of ICTs and is expected to run a study in this area soon.
The Inventory of Carbon & Energy may be downloaded from
www.bath.ac.uk/mech-eng/sert/embodied
7. The “OPERANET” project (Doc. 65)
Mr Esnault explained that the aim of the project is to reduce the energy consumption France Telecom's network (in France) with emphasis on mobile networks (and backhaul).
The results showed that significant savings (up to 50%) are possible on current sites with existing technologies: 20% with site optimization (air-conditioning, lights, aux. equipment) and ~30% with network adaptivity. This partly achievable now with available software features. Further hardware development is needed to improve load adaption.
In future base stations power amplifier efficiency can be improved by up to 50% using class AB operation.
Operanet2 is a follow-on project which will include work on hybrid energy sites: availability analysis of different renewable power sources and their geographic variation; energy supply modelling and optimisation; wind Turbine and LiPo battery storage trial.
Mr Zeddam encouraged Mr Esnault to make a contribution to the relevant SG5 Questions.
8. Announcements of upcoming events
Ms Bueti said the next meeting of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change (DCICC) and the Workshop on Green ICTs and Innovation will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, 30 September 2011.
Information about the event can be found on
http://www.itu.int/themes/climate/dc/index.html
Next ITU Symposium on ICTs, the Environment and Climate Change will be held in Montreal, Canada in May 2012.
9. Future meeting dateThe 9th meeting of JCA-ICT&CC will be held on 23 November from 12.00 to 14.00 hours Geneva time. The topic for this meeting will be an expansion with other presenters on “Guidelines for Environmental Sustainability Standard for the ICT Sector”.
10. AoB:
10.1 Update of IEC TC111 WG4 Activities (Doc 68)
Mr Namikawa (Liaison officer between ITU-T SG5 and IEC TC111). TC111 focuses on environmental issues and WG4 focuses on GHG.
Two Technical Reports are being drafted and will be available by May 2012.
TR 62725 describes principles and guidance to quantify greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) for electrical and electronic products based on the life-cycle thinking. This is applicable to any type of EE product, new or modified.
TR 62726 focuses on the enabling effect and is a quantification methodology of greenhouse gas emission (CO2e) reductions for “EE products & service” from the project baseline.
10.2 Liaison in
Mr Faulkner mentioned two liaisons on the JCA website one from ITU-R and the other from ETSI. Please look there for the information which may already be familiar to SG5 delegates.
10.2 Vote of Thanks
Mr Zeddam thanked the Korean Government and the Korea Communications Commission for excellent organization of this JCA and the other events in Korea.
11. Summary of Actions
Mr Zeddam to speak to Mr Esnault about the most appropriate Questions to make contributions to in S5.