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By Ellen Pearlman
Strategic Thinkers:
CFO Research Services and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsui. Sam Knox and Peter B. Lull, of CFO Research, directed the research and wrote the report.
Research Report:
The Next Wave of Green IT:
IT's role in the future of enterprise sustainability, published February 2009.
Major finding:
Technology is increasingly a focus of corporate green initiatives, both as a target and an enabler of change.
Methodology:
The survey was distributed by CFO Research Services, a unit of CFO Publishing Corp., to senior finance and IT executives at companies in Europe, North America and Asia (primarily China). More than 95% of the 353 responses came from companies with more than $1 billion in revenues. In-depth interviews were conducted with more than 23 senior executives in those countries. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsui funded the research and both organizations developed the hypotheses for the research.
Factoid:
Human activity produces about 27 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Information Analysis Center
Thirty-nine years ago April 22 was designated as Earth Day. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived the idea for a day to teach people about the environment. In 1970 about 20 million people globally participated in the first event; today roughly 500 million people around the world take part in Earth Day events. The observation of Earth Day seems a fitting time to take a look at how sustainability issues are impacting the enterprise and what IT's role is in improving environmental performance in the corporation.
A new report, "The Next Wave of Green IT: IT's role in the future of enterprise sustainability," was released by CFO Research Services and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsui in February and provides a wealth of information on the subject. The global survey was conducted among companies with more than $1 billion in revenues; 353 people responded, primarily IT and finance executives from a broad cross-section of industries.
The research demonstrates that many companies have participated in the first wave of green IT by retiring legacy systems, consolidating data centers, adopting more efficient hardware and cooling systems, and reducing consumption of energy. Much of these efforts were undertaken to cut waste and decrease energy costs.
Despite the worldwide economic downturn, and with it a reluctance to invest in new ventures, senior finance executives interviewed for the study said that energy-saving Green IT initiatives can deliver much of the efficiency improvement they "wish they had implemented during the last downturn." So the time is right for Green IT plans to move ahead.
The data speaks for itself:
- 91% of companies surveyed have moved to reduce their impact on the environment in the last year (43% were "aggressive" in their activities).
- 36% said that 15% or more of their IT budget is allocated explicitly to green IT initiatives.
- 67% of the companies have a formal program for measuring, monitoring and improving their environmental performance.
- 75% have conducted or are in the process of conducting a formal evaluation of the environmental impact of its business activities in the last two years.
One area for improvement is in getting a handle on how a company uses and manages the electricity consumed by its IT systems. When the cost of electricity in the data center was a small part of the overall data center costs, companies were not so concerned with monitoring it. As energy costs have escalated, this has become a greater concern.
IT is the most likely candidate for this job: 39% of companies said the IT organization is responsible for monitoring the amount and cost of energy used by its IT systems; 24% said facilities does the job, while 17% said the finance organization was in charge of it. However, a full 19% said energy use by IT is not monitored separately.
Next: Creating a Sustainable Enterprise
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