Japan Most Likely To Cut Emissions Using ICT

IDC has named Japan as the country most likely to be able to reduce its greenhouse gases using Information and Communications Technologies (ICT).

The analyst had previously released information from ICT Sustainability Index, but it used the Copenhagen Climate Conference to announce the completed results, which including the rankings of the G20 countries.

It found that, based on a country’s ability to use ICT to reduce their CO2 emissions, Japan was ranked as the only top-tier country with a score of 16. Meanwhile in the tier 2 group was the United States, which scored 20, as well as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Brazil, all of which scored 21.

Intel told eWEEK Europe UK this week it felt the Index was important, as it identifies which countries can use ICT to cut their emissions, which would help policy makers. Intel also said that only 10 percent of computers are currently using power management technology.

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IDC believes that 5.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions could be eliminated by 2020, through the focused use of a number of core technologies in four major economic sectors, namely energy generation & distribution, transport, buildings, and industry.

At the moment, the G20 nations are responsible for more than 70 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and the world’s carbon emissions.

IDC had clear guidelines when it developed its CO2 reduction model. “The core technologies had to pass three tests: they had to be mature enough to provide real benefits within three years, support significant processing on a network, and be discrete independent technologies,” said Philip Carter, associate research director for Green IT & Sustainability Research.

In order to achieve a balanced viewpoint, IDC used measurable variables relating to:

• The current state of technology penetration and practices within the country
• Characteristics of the physical infrastructure and geographic factors
• The relative difficulty each country will have in achieving its underlying potential

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

IDC has projected that under normal ICT-capable reductions, Japan can achieve a CO2 reduction of 318.5 million tons annually by 2020. For the G20 as a whole to achieve a 25 percent reduction in this time frame, Japan will need to expand its reduction by 35 percent (111.5 million tons) to 430.0 million tons in accordance with its current resources and energy usage profile.