BEREC Report on ICT sustainability for end-users: Empowering end-users through environmental transparency on digital products

BEREC considers end-users’ awareness of environmental issues as critical for end-users’ empowerment and for ICT sustainability. Environmental information on digital products and services could enlighten user choices in terms of their digital consumption. Complementary to effects on the demand side, this data-driven approach of end-users’ empowerment could create positive incentives for digital players to support the deployment of greener digital solutions and limit the risk of greenwashing.

In 2023, BEREC lead a fact-finding process to raise NRAs’ knowledge of existing work and analysis of environmental transparency on ICT sustainability products and end-users’ empowerment. This work took the form of a review of literature and existing EU regulation, a workshop on end-users’ empowerment and ICT sustainability with representatives of the Commission, consulting firms, BEUC and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), and an internal questionnaire on NRAs and other relevant stakeholders’ initiatives.

Main results of this work are presented in the Report.