Big business is lining up behind a new lobby group that
will call on the government to resolve the environmental impact
contradictions between reducing their carbon footprint by 60% and
processing and storing more data digitally.
Trewin Restorick, director of environmental consultancy
Global Action Plan
(GAP) and spokesman for the new
Environmental IT Leadership Team (EILT), said government
departments are sending contradictory messages. Some want companies
to reduce their impact on the environment, but more regulations
require firms to do business electronically and to store the data
for many years, he said.
"The potential threat of audits and law suits down the line
means everyone is storing everything," he said.
The EILT launched today with the release of
research into how green the UK IT sector is, and how far green
thinking extends into the parent organisation. The initial members
include Global Action Plan, Lloyds TSB, John Lewis Partnership,
Sony UK, British Medical Association, E.ON UK, CQS, and the
University of Cumbria.
Restorick said the ICT sector produces 2% of the world's carbon,
about the same as the aviation sector. But it is growing
faster.
Chris Gabriel, head of solutions and strategies at systems
provider
Logicalis,
which sponsored GAP's research, said the results showed companies
are confused by both government and industry messages. "Users are
looking for environmental standards that are consistent and
meaningful across the whole range of equipment and activities," he
said.
Some users are adopting greener technology such as
virtualisation, thin client architectures, and some are putting
more work on to mainframes under Linux. But the main driver was to
save money rather than carbon, he said.
ICT managers are often personally aware of the issues, but they
seldom see their energy bills and so have little insight into the
costs of running and cooling their kit. Nor are they usually
consulted on corporate carbon-reduction plans, he said.
Restorick and Gabriel said IT suppliers have been slow to
respond to global warming. However, the government could speed that
with more effective regulation and through its own procurement
strategies. "At present, reducing the government's own ICT carbon
footprint is not a high priority," they said.