The European Commission announced that it is working with 27 of the world's leading tech companies and associations to measure their carbon footprint arising from the production, transport and sales of ICT goods, networks and services. The next step in this European Commission initiative is to get the ICT and relevant industries to put these methods into everyday use.

The European Commission published a Recommendation four years ago on mobilising ICT to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy calling on the ICT industry to develop a framework to measure its energy and carbon performance and adopt common methodologies. This led to the ICT footprint initiative. The aim of this initiative is to have a common measurement framework in order to get a clearer picture, and eventually a reduction, of CO2 emissions. In October 2010, major ICT companies decided to join European Commission initiative to reduce electricity consumption.

The European Commission is working with 27 of the world's leading tech companies and associations to measure their carbon footprint arising from the production, transport and sales of ICT goods, networks and services. According to a study published by the Commission, 10 measurement tools and standards pilot-tested by the organisations are comparable.

The pilot-testing involved 18 tests of 10 international standards, provided by international standard bodies and organisations, such as ITU (International Telecommunication Unit) and ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). These were tested by the following ICT companies and associations over a period of 10 months (from December 2011 to September 2012): Alcatel-Lucent, AMD, AUO, BT, Cisco, Dassault Systèmes, Dell, EECA-ESIA, Ericsson, GSMA, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, Intel, Lenovo, NEC, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Orange, Sagemcom, SAP, Telecom Italia, Telefónica and TeliaSonera. Three of the participants involved chose to remain anonymous.