Considering the temporal variability of power generation in the assessment of ICT emissions: presentation of the IEEE 1922.2 standard draft

A large fraction of the ICT life cycle impacts are related to the ICT use phase because of electricity consumption. Environmental evaluations of the ICT sector suggests that this sector contributes now to 3% of the global anthropic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is anticipated that ICT could be used to mitigate the GHG emissions of the other sectors by 12% by 2030. These numbers are however uncertain due to simplifications made in the emission assessment. Especially, the use of annual average emission factors to model the GHG emissions related to the ICT electricity consumption that varies in time is expected to be a large source of uncertainty on the ICT emission assessment. Therefore, in this paper, we present the proposed IEEE 1922.2 standard to include the temporal variation of the power generation and electricity consumption in the computing of ICT emissions. The methodological framework is developed around a series of scopes and considerations to cover most of the situations that could be encountered when assessing ICT emissions. Consequently, the standard is flexible and methodological choices must be made by the user according to its context. Such choices must then be reported and documented to ensure the robustness and transparency of the ICT emission calculation.