Data and methodological needs to assess uncertainty in the carbon footprint of ICT products

Several pressures have led to unprecedented corporate interest in “carbon footprinting” or life cycle assessment (LCA) of products. These pressures include historically high energy prices, climate change regulation, corporate sustainability efforts, and announcements from several major retailers that environmental data will be required from suppliers. There are significant challenges in standardizing such calculations and several proposed standards include those from the British Standards Institute, the International Standards Organization, and the World Resources Institute/World Business Council on Sustainable Development [1, 2]. This work discusses the particular challenges relevant to the information technologies (IT) industry's ongoing investigation into the environmental impact of their products. IT products are complex and experience high turnover both in their manufacturing and assembly process flows as well as the supply chains used to procure materials and components. Often the results of quantifying environmental impacts are dominated by significant uncertainty and variability in the calculation of footprints, particularly for complicated products with large supplier networks. The existence of uncertainty is undisputed, and yet efforts to quantify uncertainty and variability in carbon footprints and life cycle assessments remain nascent at best. This research helps elucidate the data and methodological challenges in assessing uncertainties in the carbon footprinting of laptop and desktop computers.