Certification Criteria

The certification criteria are developed to target and resolve the environmental and social sustainability challenges of digital resource production and producers.

Whilst developing the criteria, we will build upon the TCO Development process, which starts with identifying the sustainability challenges in the production of the product (digital resources). We will research scientific and other evidence that supports the challenges we have identified, to confirm that they do exist and are measurable. Then, we will verify that there are solutions to those challenges which can be implemented by the producers, defining a method of verification that each solution (or another approach to overcoming the challenge) was implemented.

This process leads to developing a table of challenges, categorized into: ICT equipment, the facility, operational practices, and the organization - supported with evidence, potential solutions, and levels of difficulty as well as a method of verification. You can review the table with all of the criteria below.

Following is an overview of some of the key aspects that we believe need to be addressed. If you would like to view the full criteria document, you can find the overview here and full descriptions here.

The ICT equipment being used

• Is refurbished equipment being used?
• When new equipment is being purchased are certifications such as TCO Certified included in the procurement process?
• Are the practices in place to maximize the equipment's lifetime (e.g., repairing them)?

The facility housing the ICT equipment

• Does the redundancy level of the facility reflect the actual needs of the digital resources customers?
• How is renewable energy supplied and procured at the facility?
• Are there measures in place to recover residual heat or reduce the demand on the power grid?
• Is there a real-time measurement of power efficiency metrics in place? Is power usage adaptive to the actual power utilization of the ICT equipment?

The operational practices used to produce the digital resources

• Is there transparency and sustainability information available for customers to determine the environmental and social impact created by their usage of digital resources?
• Are new compute or storage servers only provisioned when the utilization rate reaches a threshold above 60-70%?
• Are virtualization techniques being used that maximize the utilization of the actual equipment?
• How are customers incentivized to switch off or reduce unused capacity?
• Can customers purchase digital resources with different levels of redundancy that match their actual requirements?

The organization which is operating the equipment to produce the digital resources

• Are there ILO core conventions being implemented to provide good working conditions within the organization?
• Is there a sustainability strategy in place and transparent reporting of the organization's environmental and social impact performance made openly available to the public?
• Are there investments in training and upskilling people?

Building on existing standards and frameworks

Wherever possible, we reference existing standards, if they meet our intention of addressing the sustainability challenges we have identified.

This is especially useful for the ICT equipment and the operating facilities (data centers) where existing standards, guidelines, and certifications already exist (TCO Certified, TÜV, EN50600, EU Code of Conduct, to name a few), and often meet our expectations. If there is a sustainability challenge we believe is not addressed in an existing standard or criteria, we will provide an addendum to referencing the existing one.