If it is true that the carbon dioxide emission consequences of IT are greater than that of the airline industry, it can come as little surprise that the chief information officer is under increasing pressure to prove his or her green credentials.

Many large and small organisations in the public and private sector are beginning to take action: from power saving and recycling; flexible working and teleconferencing; to grid computing and virtualisation. Some organisations are further down the road than others - but are they doing enough?

Delays to the much-anticipated WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive haven’t helped. The laws set recycling and recovery targets for electrical goods and finally came into effect at the beginning of July.

However, change is afoot. Tony Roberts, chief executive of computer refurbishment specialist Computer Aid, says many businesses are now beginning to take action as a result of WEEE.

‘One example is soaking up computers for sale in Eastern Europe,’ he says. ‘Once implemented into national legislation, the WEEE directive ensures that any organisation involved in manufacturing, importing or retailing electrical goods will take responsibility for what happens at the end of their life.’

The WEEE directive is an important measure, but there are other significant developments in the pipeline, such as the revision of the Companies Act to include environmental impact reporting by 2008 as well as the threat of a potential carbon dioxide levy.

What might be considered standard business practice now is unlikely to be sufficient in the very near future and there will be very compelling economic reasons to change, says Ian Osborne, Intellect’s project director for the DTI funded initiative Grid Computing Now.

‘The government is looking at sustainability and carbon trading but my feeling is that in the end we will all have carbon allocations,’ he says. ‘The IT director will have to fight his or her corner with the rest of the organisation over how much power he or she is allowed to use as opposed to getting away with using it. This is going to be an ugly battle.’

Green light for growth

A battle it may be but organisations with the right tactics look set to benefit. Roberts says the green agenda is increasingly being seen as an opportunity, which probably explains why the public relations machines of multinational corporations are working on a range of green initiatives. ‘Quite apart from the fact if you don’t address green issues the planet will die, it is good business sense to do so,’ he says.

BT, the UK’s incumbent fixed line operator and consumer of 0.7 per cent of the country’s electricity, has certainly taken the green agenda on board. One of its recent campaigns has been to launch an advice service to small businesses in an attempt to help reduce their carbon footprints. Donna Young, BT’s head of climate change, calls the service enlightened self-interest. ‘If you don’t view it this way, then you will lose out because this is what the consumer wants,’ she says.

BT is probably right, given that customer buying habits are increasingly driven by ethical concerns. Sixty-four per cent of consumers are more likely to buy from an ethical company than not, up from 20 per cent just two years ago. Heightened interest in green issues is not only having an impact on consumer buying power, it is also affecting how both the public and private sector award competitive tenders.

According to Mark Blakeley, IT director for Hestia Managed Services, a housing and energy consultancy that deals primarily with the public sector, the weighting criteria for environmental issues in a competitive bid has gone up by as much as 40 per cent during the past three years. ‘In terms of tender preparation, green issues now need a lot more attention,’ he says.

Companies bidding for work, therefore, need to prove they are doing their bit. So Hestia uses the zero carbon managed hosting service of Rackspace, a company that plants a tree every time it makes a server sale. Another environmentally driven decision was to plant trees instead of sending Christmas cards to its customer base. ‘We calculated how much carbon dioxide an average Christmas day is responsible for and we planted 300 trees, one for each of our clients,’ says Blakely. Of course this information is used when bidding for public sector work, which Blakeley says is very well received.

In Blakely’s view, the public sector is leading the way with green procurement standards, but Computing Business found that getting anybody to talk about it was a bit like pulling teeth. Somewhat surprisingly, the Department of Food Rural and Environmental Affairs (Defra) was unable to provide a spokesperson to speak about how they are running their own shop.

UK communications regulator Ofcom, however, was more forthcoming. In a statement from its press office, Ofcom said it ‘is taking opportunities in this area to be as environmentally responsible as possible’. The regulator seeks to purchase hardware that adheres to the latest and highest power management standards, taking account of Energy Star ratings when procuring equipment to minimise power consumption.

In addition, it aims to buy Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (Epeat) approved hardware. Epeat is a system that rates desktop computers, laptops and monitors based on environmental attributes. Ofcom’s other initiatives include putting its PCs into standby or power off mode at short intervals, as well as extending the life of and recycling hardware wherever possible.

Extending the use of the PC is at the core of Computer Aid’s agenda. Roberts says reuse is one part of the green programme that is often overlooked and is particularly important because the environmental cost of producing computers is very high. The PC, for example, consumes 75 per cent of the energy used across its lifetime during the production phase. ‘It becomes imperative to extend the life of a PC for as long as possible in order to claw back some of the carbon used in production,’ says Roberts.

Slow to change

While IT directors can increasingly see the benefit of a green approach to computing, the general perception seems to be that change is happening too slowly. Dr Jason Carter, an independent consultant who has worked with a range of organisations including BT, certainly thinks so. ‘UK organisations seem to be reluctant to move to what they deem to be new technology,’ he says.

Budget allocations, historical procurement agreements and training are among the issues cited as barriers to change. Procurement departments, for example, might not have a piece of kit on their list or they might have negotiated a term with the supplier for a particular piece of equipment. Another factor is that companies are somewhat risk averse and want to see another organisation try innovative technologies first.

Baring Asset Management is one company, however, that has completed a proof of concept and has successfully utilised green computing strategy virtualisation for 29 business-critical applications. In the event of disaster, Barings can continue investing for its clients by instantly switching on virtual applications; it is no longer reliant on a team of people to restore IT desktop application functionality. Although Barings’ Business Continuity IT Desktop strategy has been heralded a success, it did require taking the bull by the horns.