Businesses struggling to reduce IT's footprint

Britain's biggest businesses are struggling to make the changes necessary in IT to tackle climate change, according to a survey by the Corporate IT Forum (TIF), who presented its findings at Europe's first Green IT Summit today.

TIF's survey of its members found that while 81 per cent recognise that there is a problem with IT's carbon footprint, and cite it in their top ten IT priorities, they are also concerned that cost is the main barrier to change. Fifty-eight per cent admit that building a business case is the biggest challenge they face in implanting green IT.

TIF is made up of 150 bluechips sharing best practice. Collectively they spend a massive £35 billion on IT and have 100,000 IT professionals. Its survey, produced with The Bathwick Group, was presented this morning to the European Green IT Summit.

Members of TIF are making all the right noises, such as two-thirds rating the four Rs -- reduce, reuse, recycle and reengineer -- as important or vital, and 71 per cent seeing climate change as an opportunity to cut costs. But there is an underlying current of commercial reality. Sixty-four percent say that green strategies are dependent of cost-efficiency, while 51 per cent say saving money is key.

Money, it seems, is both the driver and inhibitor of change. One Forum member remarked, "If it saves us money we will do it, if it costs us money, we'll think twice."

Ian Campbell, Chairman of TIF, said: "Many companies are struggling to cost-justify green IT. CIOs are not getting enough support. If we don't embrace it with a carrot approach we are going to get hit very hard with a stick."

But only one-third of bluechips were measuring IT's carbon footprint, while one third were planning to do so and the final third had no plans to measure it. Campbell remarked, "Often no measurement means no budget. Business cases need these figures."

The problem with business cases, or the inability to make them work, is often caused by a lack of consistent metrics in the industry. Each vendor has a different way of proclaiming its energy-efficiency.

"Everyone tells me their server is the greenest you can buy. They're all using different metrics to spin their particular product," said Alan French, head of architecture at Marks & Spencer and a panellist at the event.

John Killey, head of Citi Realty Services EMEA at Citigroup is also facing the different metrics problem. He's a member of a data centre forum for investment banks, and they are struggling to measure the computing power in data centres and reconcile that with the overall energy being used.

Not all companies are concerned about business case creation, though. The Royal Mail has saved £130 million through its carbon reduction strategy. "Carbon costs money, there is no tension with that. Where we can drive out carbon we drive down the bottom line," said Martin Blake, head of CSR and sustainability at the Royal Mail.

And as a company that cares, Blake added, "[Royal Mail is] trying to change the attitude and behaviour of [its] staff [towards climate change]. We are the UK's largest employers. Change their behaviour, and their families, and you can make a real difference."

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