TCO Certified, the world-leading sustainability certification for IT products, has recently introduced requirements for renewable energy in the final assembly of certified products. Ecohz advisors assisted TCO Certified in the development of the clean energy criteria.
In February 2025, Niclas Rydell, Director of TCO Certified, joined the Ecohz advisors involved in the process for a webinar, where they explained the new renewable energy criteria and how IT manufacturers can fulfil them. This is a summary of their conversation. You can also watch the full webinar here.
The criteria mandate that at least 15% of the electricity used in each final assembly factory of certified products must be procured and/or generated from renewable sources. This ratio must be reported yearly.
Once a year, and for each final assembly factory manufacturing certified products, companies submitting information to TCO Certified must include:
Electricity consumption for the calendar year must be reported before 31 August the following year. As for EACs, they must observe a production period of 6 months before to 3 months after the electricity consumption for which they are used.
Brand owners can register new factories gradually, which must be in compliance the following calendar year. Factories with no TCO Certified Generation 10 certified product (from any brand) before 31 August must be in compliance the following calendar year.
Brand owners reporting to TCO Certified can choose to either report the electricity consumption of a whole factory or only for the brand owners’ manufacturing. This should be determined based on the revenue or manufacturing volume corresponding to the brand owner.
You can read the full TCO Certified renewable energy criteria through this link.
“We are focusing on emissions reduction,” says Niclas Rydell, Director of TCO Certified. “It is now quite common to calculate the carbon footprint of products, but we want to incentivise reduction. Substituting fossil electricity with renewables is one of the easiest ways to reduce GHG emissions. In doing so, we also increase the demand for renewable electricity and incentivise new generators, which is crucial for sustainability.”
“Our criteria must be certified by independent parties for compliance,” Rydell continues. “The verification process is a big task. We want to rely on global, established standards and systems. We think Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) are one of the most credible ways to do this. The most efficient, too. If we relied on, for example, contracts between electricity generators and buyers, it would be much more complicated to verify.”
By creating more demand for EACs, TCO Certified also aims to generate new revenue for renewable energy producers. As stated in the criteria: “[the requirements] also increase the demand for EACs, which increase the economic incentive to build new generators for renewable electricity in many regions where most electricity is generated from non-renewable sources.”
The TCO Certified criteria differ from other standards in three important ways: they are sector-specific, require immediate action, and are designed to be easily actionable.
“While standards such as RE100 are sector-agnostic and look primarily at Scope 2 of reporting companies, TCO is primarily focused on Scope 3 and was created with the necessities and possibilities of IT manufacturers in mind,” Bjørn Erik Myrland, an advisor at Ecohz, explains.
TCO Certified also has specific criteria to allow clean electricity sourcing in difficult markets, for example, in countries where supply is limited. While the RE100 guidelines establish strict market boundaries for energy procurement—outside Europe and North America limiting procurement to national borders—the TCO Certified criteria allow brand owners and their suppliers to procure EACs from neighbouring countries in challenging locations, such as Singapore and Taiwan.
In addition, TCO Certified requires brand owners to act immediately and report renewable energy use starting already next week. “The goals of RE100 are more long-term, with milestones in 2030 and 2050. TCO requires more immediate action.”
Most products have more than one factory, so compliance must be ensured for each. The documentation required includes:
Ecohz’ Supply Chain Portal (SCP) was originally developed in collaboration with an international IT company, which is also TCO-certified. The needs of IT manufacturers are thus embedded in the design of the platform. The SCP streamlines every stage of the compliance and certification process.
“Interacting with Ecohz was very useful to get a broad understanding of the EAC market and how it works in practice—to purchase, to retire, pricing, etcetera,” Rydell adds.
“There are several EAC markets worldwide. While they all work similarly, there can be large differences in pricing and where different certificates can be used. The market is complex, so when we develop criteria, we look for actors who simplify implementation.”
Ecohz’ Supply Chain Portal has designed with the needs of IT manufacturers in mind. For companies looking to get the TCO certification, the portal becomes the natural all-in-one tool to comply with the renewable energy portion of the criteria.
“When we release a new generation of criteria, it is important to keep everything as simple as possible for the industry,” Rydell says. “Ecohz has a good system to purchase and manage EACs globally, which is something many of our brand owners need.”
The Ecohz team of advisors further specialises in simplifying the complexity of global clean energy procurement for businesses.
“There is also a lot of knowledge within Ecohz about the global situation for EAC which was very useful for us to have. I encourage all the brands that use TCO Certified to check our Ecohz system to help you achieve the certification,” Rydell concludes.