Great Article on today’s GreenBiz.Com – even though it is UK-centric (also, if you haven’t seen it, check out the Eden Project mentioned in the article, it is truly amazing) – this article gets to the heart of what we are doing at BetterWorld in the US though, greening the supply chain through telecom and IT. Look for our partnership soon with an alternative energy provider where we will be offering essentially a one stop green utility solution. Enjoy:
Source GreenerComputing.com_
_ URL: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/news_third.cfm?NewsID=35329
LONDON, June 26, 2007 — Nine out of ten companies in the U.K. believe that reducing the carbon footprint of IT systems is a necessary step to greening their business, but 70 percent have no concrete plans to do so, according to a study by the Green Technology Initiative.
The survey replicates results seen in recent studies of consumer beliefs: businesses recognize the importance of energy efficiency, especially in their IT departments, but are looking to the government and manufacturers to make it easy for them to reduce their emissions.
“IT has the potential to have huge benefits for sustainability. But if played wrong can accelerate its impact disastrously,” said Chris Hines, director of sustainability at the Eden Project, an eco-theme park in Cornwall. “All business can think smart about making IT work for them and the planet.”
Of the respondents, 79 percent said they do not link power costs to hardware spending or IT budgets, despite the fact that a small server will now cost more to power during its lifecycle than it costs to purchase initially. And more than 95 percent said they don’t know how efficient their IT systems are because they have no measurement.
“What we are doing in IT today is not sustainable. Systems efficiency is the cheapest and easiest way of reducing the carbon footprint of the work you do and delivered properly it has the benefit of bringing down costs across the board,” says Dan Sutherland, founder and acting chair of the Green Technology Initiative. “Whilst undoubtedly U.K. enterprises are willing to take action, many lack the incentive, knowledge and resources to make immediate changes.”
Among the positive findings from the survey are that businesses are starting to catch on about turning computers off when they’re not in use, even though those that are turning machines off are still less than half of all respondents. And people said they are still waiting for vendors, hardware manufacturers and the government to help the country meet its goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent before 2010.
“Businesses are very aware of green issues but they are failing to translate that into effective action. 2010 is not far away and IT accounts for a significant amount of greenhouse emissions, so now is the time to take greater responsibility and tackle IT energy consumption,” Sutherland said. “But business is clearly not getting the help and support it needs to take that responsibility. Both industry and the Government need to work together to help businesses make the changes they clearly want to make.”
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