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Fears over cost efficiency are stalling green technology plans

Ensuring that IT is environmentally friendly is a growing priority for British businesses but the cost-cutting imperative still takes precedence, according to research presented this week by the Corporate IT Forum.

"If going green costs money, then it will go more slowly, especially within large businesses," said David Roberts, Corporate IT Forum CEO.

Although 81% of respondents to the CIF survey said that green initiatives were of greater importance to their organisations than they were last year, environmental issues still fall far below priorities such as data security, data quality and maintaining legacy software.

For 69% of the IT managers polled, cost efficiency is key to the implementation of any new IT policy and was the key driver for green IT policies, with 51% admitting that their green initiatives are really cost-cutting projects.

"As one manager said to us, 'If it saves us money, we’ll do it: if it doesn’t, we’ll think twice,'" said Ian Campbell, chairman of the Corporate IT Forum, speaking at the European Green IT Summit in London.

Adoption of 'green IT’ policies and technologies among the organisations did not tally with their stated priorities. Recycling heat in the data centre was a strategy adopted by only 15% of organisations polled, while 19% employed some form of carbon offsetting scheme, despite 55% of respondents declaring that 'going green' was 'important or vital' to their business.

The impetus is shifting onto the individual company to take responsibility for its environmental footprint. Roberts draws attention to the 'sharp decrease' in support for IT suppliers taking on the burden, while the largest proportion of respondents, 46%, recognised their own responsibility for leading the efforts to go green, believing that it was primarily up to businesses to take ownership.

Fewer businesses (38%) want the government to take charge and provide incentives. According to Roberts, this is perhaps "because the government is notoriously ineffective at intervention in the IT world".

As economic caution mounts, the pressure on IT departments to constrain costs will only intensify. This research strongly suggests that organisations are only likely to adopt those ‘green’ IT tools and management techniques that require little or no capital outlay.

But Roberts is hopeful that the barriers to the 'greening' of IT will lessen as "organisations see that it is the right thing to do, that they have a responsibility to set an example and demonstrate how green IT can be done."

Further reading

Energising the Green IT debate Two new reports on power consumption highlight the urgent need for greater energy efficiency in IT

Crossed wires Challenging the conventional data centre thinking.

Find more stories in the Data Centres Briefing Room