IT sector told - "Be greener"

ICT Sector Goes Green

One of the best ways to get businesses to go green is to encourage business service providers to first establish greener policies, so then their costumers will have no choice. And now, the European Commission is requiring the info tech sector to become 20 percent more energy efficient by 2015 to help other industries get greener too.

The EC are looking the IT sector to lead the way in conserving energy and cutting carbon emissions. Last week it gave the IT a deadline of 2011 to come up with a set of practical steps it will take in order to meet the set targets.

The specific industries that the EC hope IT can help become more energy efficient are the buildings, transport and logistics sectors. According to a report by environmental organisation the Climate Group, IT-enabled improvements in other sectors could cut 15 percent of total carbon emissions by 2020.

One of the more obvious ways in which businesses can cut there carbon emission through technology is videoconferencing, with the EC claiming if Europe were to replace 20 percent of all business trips with videoconferencing, Europe could save more than 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

"With high-resolution video becoming increasingly affordable, we do now have an increasing number of viable options for replacing physical business travel with other alternatives," service director of analyst house Freeform Dynamics, Martin Atherton, told Silicon.com.

But Atherton also highlighted that fact that some conferences do need physical presence, insisting that video conferences cannot be used "indiscriminately", and will be a case of working out which meetings can be completed without the need for travel.

The EC now wants similar technology - that which reduces the need for physical hardware such as storage media - to be pushed by governments and public sector officials.

However, the EC can only play a limited role in promoting the necessary technology as consumer demand is still king, "The problem for the industry essentially is that it has to balance what customers want and will pay for with investments in new solutions," said Gartner analyst Simon Mingay.

He added, "none of them are doing anything that the customer is not prepared to pay for."

But the IT industry itself is also required to directly adjust to sustainable solutions itself, with the EC requiring the ICT sector to improve the energy and environmental performance of its processes. The EC recommendation calls for measurable cuts in the energy use and carbon emissions associated with the production, transport and sales of IT equipment and components, and the development of a framework to measure its energy and environmental performance.

The IT industry are one of only a few sectors that can truly enable and facilitate a reduction in company carbon emissions, and by establishing green-credibility in its own sector it can encourage others to follow.

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