Oct. 3, 2007 Forty-two percent of IT executives say their firm does not monitor its IT-related energy spending and a further 9% aren't sure if they do, according a new survey from the Economist magazine's Economist Intelligence Unit.

"IT and the Environment: A New Item on the CIO's Agenda?" answers its question in the negative, showing that despite rising energy costs and the high visibility of environmental issues, few companies have a cohesive strategy for dealing with these concerns from an IT perspective.

More than half of executives (54%) polled agree that their firm does not measure the environmental impact of its IT systems and policies and just one-third (33%) say they do. In part, this is due to the lack of visibility about the issue, according to the report: 64% agree that an industry standard on energy efficiency on IT equipment would cause them to change their procurement policies.

"Although concerns about energy efficiency and global warming are now high on the political agenda, the spotlight has not yet been turned onto the IT function," says James Watson, the report's editor. "This survey suggests that few firms have woken up to the fact that their IT infrastructure is already responsible for a significant proportion of their total energy costs."

Other key findings include:

• Most organizations appear to be paying lip-service to green issues. Although two-thirds of executives polled say that their organisation has a board-level executive responsible for energy and the environment, only 45% of firms have a program in place to reduce their carbon footprint. And those that do have a carbon reduction strategy, the majority (52%) have no specific targets for it, although a small core (9%) aim to be carbon neutral by 2012.


• When it comes to IT procurement, power consumption is not a significant factor. Reliability is the main deciding factor when buying IT equipment, according to 63% of respondents. This is followed by price (32%) and then after-sales support (30%). Despite rising energy costs, only 12% of respondents believe that the energy efficiency of IT equipment is a "critical purchasing criterion." In comparison, 13% of executives rate delivery times as being a critical factor.

These results contradict the findings of an informal Computerworld poll conducted at the publication's Infrastructure Management World conference in September, which found that 90% of respondents agreed with the statement that "environmentally friendly computing is a reality."

A Digital Realty Trust survey showed that IT managers would like to green their operations but are unsure how to proceed. The IT research firm Info-Tech recently urged governments to establish energy-performance benchmarks as a means of motivating and supporting IT departments to improve efficiency.

The EIU report concludes that IT holds much room for improvement in environmental performance, noting the U.S. EPA's recent findings that by adopting existing energy efficiency methodologies and technologies, corporate servers, and data centers could cut power use from current efficiency trends by 56% by 2011.

"There is a growing business need, and an emerging legislative one, for CIOs to look at their own organizations to ensure their IT systems and services are as energy efficient as possible," says IBM CTO Richard Lanyon-Hogg. "[This] report confirms that despite this many organizations are unsure as to how to measure their IT carbon footprint and bring about sustainable improvements."