A first
national survey by environmental charityGlobal
Action Plan, with guidance from the Environmental IT Leadership
Team (EILT), has shown that three in five businesses
lack support for a sustainable ICT strategy.
The result is that
the IT and communications (ITC) sector in the UK currently has a
carbon footprint similar to the aviation industry but will
rapidly cruise past what EILT calls the poster child for climate
change.
On what can be
regarded as somewhat worrying, 86% of ICT departments surveyed for
the report, ‘An Inefficient Truth', do not know the carbon
footprint of their activities and less than a fifth actually see
their energy bills. Regulatory mandates for storing more data will
likely only worsen this situation.
Other key findings
in the survey of CIOs, IT directors and senior decision makers
include the fact that nearly two-thirds of UK datacentres have the
capacity to support only two years of growth; just over a third of
firms are storing data indefinitely due to government policy;
two-fifths of servers are underutilised by more than 50%;
four-fifths of respondents do not believe their company's data
policies are environmentally sustainable.
EILT says that
increased efficiencies using proven techniques could lead to rapid
and significant carbon savings. IT believes that most ICT
professionals are aware of green technology and would like to be
involved in sustainability initiatives but they are in great need
of support to do so.
Commented Trewin
Restorick, director of Global Action Plan and chair of the EILT,
“ICT equipment currently accounts for 3-4% of the world's carbon
emissions, and 10% of the UK's energy bill. The average server, for
example, has roughly the same annual carbon footprint as an SUV
doing 15 miles-per-gallon. With a carbon footprint now equal to the
aviation industry, ICT, and how businesses utilise ICT, will
increasingly come under the spotlight as governments seek to
achieve carbon-cutting commitments.”