Sustainability Committee Drives Sector Progress on CO₂ Benchmarking and EU Taxonomy Inclusion

Since the beginning of 2025, the Sustainability Committee has been working actively to encourage as many Council members as possible to join the FTTH Eco Platform. To date, more than 30 companies have joined — a strong achievement that the Committee aims to expand further by the end of 2025 and into 2026.

This summer, the Sustainability Committee launched the collection of CO₂ emissions data from participating organizations. Members have been asked to share their corporate carbon footprints, while manufacturers are also invited to provide life cycle assessment (LCA) results for record-keeping purposes. The collected data serves as the foundation for sector-wide calculations, providing participants with valuable, actionable benchmarking insights and enabling a clearer understanding of the fiber sector’s overall CO₂ footprint in Europe.

The first consolidated results will be shared with participants in November and further discussed during the Sustainability Committee meeting at the upcoming General Assembly.

The Sustainability Committee has consistently highlighted the importance of ensuring that the fiber sector is included in the EU Taxonomy. A key step toward this objective is the development of the Code of Conduct for the Sustainability of Telecommunications Networks. Over the summer, the European Commission opened its final consultation round on the second draft of this Code. Encouragingly, several of the FTTH Council’s comments submitted during the first consultation were adopted and reflected in the updated version.

The Sustainability Committee submitted additional input on the second draft at the end of September, and it is expected that by 2026, it will become clear whether the fiber sector will be formally integrated into the EU Taxonomy.