Green IT remains immature, emmission offsets highly unlikely

Green IT remains immature across the US, UK, Australia and India and the industry is highly unlikely to offset its carbon emissions by 2020, according to a survey commissioned by Fujitsu.

The Green IT: The Global Benchmark survey of 600 CIOs and IT managers across the four locations is based on methodology created by Connection Research and RMIT University that looks at five areas (lifecycle, end user, data centre, low-carbon enabler, and monitoring/measuring) to create an IT Readiness Index.

The survey found Australia lagged far behind the UK and the US because of low levels of measurement; India was ranked worst.

In a statement, Fujitsu’s global executive director sustainability, Alison O’Flynn, said while sustainable IT had been topical in recent times, “real action and progress had been slow”.

The findings mirror that of research conducted by analyst firm IDC.

Australia was ranked in the bottom half of G20 nations for its ability to use ICT to reduce CO2 emissions, according to IDC's ICT Sustainability Index.

The analyst firm's index, which was launched to the public at the United Nations COP15 climate change meetings in Copenhagen, found Australia could cut up to 116.6 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2020 if it used more intensive ICT solutions in the transport, industry, building, and energy generation and distribution sectors.

Overall the G20 nations – which account for over 70 per cent of all emissions – could cut CO2 emissions by 25 per cent to 2020 with 41.4 per cent of this potential existing in the Asia-Pacific region.

The countries were ranked into five tiers with Japan being the only country to achieve a Tier 1 ranking with a score of 16. Tier 2 comprised the US, France, Germany, Brazil and the UK in that order.

Australia scraped into Tier 4 as the 13th ranked country behind Turkey, South Korea and China. South Africa and Indonesia received the dubious dual honour of the worst ranked.

However, another analyst firm found Australian IT professionals are increasingly prioritising green IT.

In April, Frost & Sullivan revealed that, despite the global financial crisis, IT professionals in Australia are placing more emphasis on sustainability initiatives than a year ago.

There has also been considerable promotional work been put in by organisations such as ComputersOff – which ran a global Green IT Awareness week mid-year – and in the Federal Government space.

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