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Green Standards Week drives tech sustainability strategies
Paris meeting to accelerate work on ‘green ICT’
policies and standards
Geneva, 01 August 2012 – ITU’s second annual ‘Green
Standards Week’ (GSW), to be held in Paris from 17-21 September, will stimulate
the creation of international ‘green ICT’ standards with a view to further
expanding the capabilities of information and communication technologies to
boost environmental efficiency across all industry sectors.
Organized by ITU and TechAmerica Europe and hosted by Microsoft, it will
gather policy makers, regulators, private sector entities, research institutes
and standards development organizations (SDOs) to discuss the standardization of
ICT from an environmental perspective. A High-Level Segment featuring key
industry and government figures will discuss the role of global standards in
spreading access to green ICT, as well the development of new standards that
reflect the interdependence of industry sectors.
The main focus of this year’s forum will be the impact of ICTs on the
environment. Forum sessions on e-waste challenges and ‘greening’ the ICT supply
chain will look at means of minimizing the life-cycle environmental impact of
ICT products. An information and training session will detail ITU’s standardized
Methodologies for the Environmental Impact Assessment of ICTs (Recommendation
ITU-T L.1400 series). And finally, a forum on environmental sustainability for
the ICT sector will expand discussions to address the long-term health of the
ICT sector, providing insight into the ICT industry’s reaction to the outcomes
of Rio+20 in June.
The first day of GSW will feature a gala award ceremony for the second ITU
Green ICT Application Challenge, rewarding outstanding concept papers around the
topic of “Sustainable Energy for All”.
Dr Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General: “Environmental sustainability has
rightly become one of the highest priorities for policy makers worldwide. We now
recognize that, over the long term, economic growth at the expense of the
environment breeds greater costs than it does benefits. We need decisive actions
that can deliver on the world’s commitment to a greener future – and the
standards being produced by ITU’s Standardization Sector (ITU-T) represent just
such actions.”
John Vassallo, Vice President EU Affairs, Microsoft: “It is with great
pleasure that Microsoft will host the second ITU Green Standards Week and, on
Microsoft’s behalf, I thank ITU for the leading role it is playing in the
development of green ICT standards. ICT is so deeply engrained across industry
sectors that any study of ICT is necessarily inter-disciplinary in nature. Green
Standards Week is therefore an ideal opportunity to ensure a holistic approach
to the creation of green ICT policies and standards.”
The enabling power of ICTs will be a special focus, with discussions on how
standards might increase other industry sectors’ adoption of green ICTs. Smart
grids is one case in point: a session on ‘boosting smart grids through
energy-efficient ICT’ will look at how new standards in this field will increase
the rollout of smart electricity grids globally, while a forum on smart cities
will discuss how ICT can offer smarter, greener ways of life to the world’s
rapidly urbanizing population.
ITU will also take the opportunity to launch several new reports on
ICT-enabled environmental sustainability, many of which have been authored by
leading experts from ITU’s new academic membership. Among these, three reports
discussing the climate-monitoring and disaster-warning potential of submarine
communications cables will fuel a focused discussion on this topic on 20-21
September.
The second ITU Green Standards Week is sponsored by
Orange,
Telefónica,
Huawei and
Fujitsu, and is being organized in
partnership with the European Commission; the
World Meteorological Organisation (WMO);
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC);
United Nations University (UNU); the Centre for
Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE);
the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO);
and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).
Participation is free of charge and open to all. Journalists wishing to
attend should mail toby.johnson@itu.int.
For more information, please contact:
Toby Johnson
Senior Communications Officer,
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Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
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