IDC readies ICT Sustainability Index ahead of UN’s COP15 Climate Change Conference

FRAMINGHAM, USA, LONDON, UK, MILAN, ITALY & SINGAPORE: IDC today announced that it has completed an index, the ICT Sustainability IndexTM, that scores a country's ability to use information and communications technologies (ICT) to effectively reduce its CO2 emissions. The complete results will be released at a press conference in Copenhagen on December 10th.

The ICT Sustainability Index ranks the individual countries that make up the G20, who also account for over seventy percent of the world’s gross domestic product and the world’s carbon emissions.

IDC believes that the ICT Sustainability Index will help these countries prioritize ICT investments in major sectors, such as manufacturing, transport, and housing, as part of their overall climate change strategy. Finally, the Index scores will allow IDC to rank nations fairly and transparently as they tackle the long-term challenge of environmental and economic sustainability.

“We believe that we have been able to normalize economic, energy, and ICT profiles to determine a country’s ability to use ICT to reduce its CO2 emissions. Countries with diverse characteristics such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and the United States can at last be equally compared to each other,” said Vernon Turner, senior vice president of IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure, Consumer and Telecom Research.

“The G20 countries have also been ranked into five tiers based on their scores from our analysis. While everyone wants to be in a higher tier, we believe that it is more important to understand why each nation is in a particular tier.”

Six of the G20 nations come from Asia/Pacific, including Japan, China, and India. “It is clear that Asia will play a prominent role in the ICT Sustainability Index,” said Philip Carter, associate research director for Green IT & Sustainability Research. “We anticipate that some of the nations will see the opportunity to use the Index as a positive tool towards lowering their CO2 emissions. We also think that some may feel challenged by their Index ranking.”

Western Europe has the largest concentration of industrial nations, and while there are similarities in their profiles, there are significant differences to their overall ICT Sustainability Index Rankings. Chris Ingle, associate vice president, Consulting, said, “Europe is a diverse mix of old and new nations that assert that they cannot be equally compared. We think we have overcome that challenge with the Index and look forward to sharing the results.”

Finally, energy usage remains the leading driver for ICT executives to undertake any Green ICT and Sustainability initiatives. Roberta Bigliani, research director at IDC Energy Insights, stated, “It’s important for the G20 nations to have a clear road map of what technologies they should be investing in since almost 65 percent of all ICT executives believe that energy impacts their ability to be green.”

The Index will be accompanied by a report offering qualitative recommendations to policy makers on where ICT investments can contribute to achieving climate change goals.