Research Shows IT not Ready for New Green Legislation

Are you ready for the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act that came into affect this month? Find out how your Green IT strategies compare with 2,500 others in this year’s Sun Eco survey.

More than three quarters of ANZ businesses are unable to measure and report on carbon emissions. That’s according to Sun Microsystems’ annual eco-responsibility survey run in the last EDGE.

Thanks to your support we received more than 2,500 responses from 813 organisations across ANZ.

The research shows that while 22 per cent of companies can measure carbon emissions, a staggering 33 per cent have no plans to put practices in place.

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, introduced on July 1st 2008, currently applies to 400 of Australia’s largest organisations.

Next year it will expand to cover more businesses.

“Not only will organisations be unable to comply with these new regulations, they are unprepared for carbon trading which is due to be introduced in 2010. This could be a real challenge for the 33 per cent that have no plans,” Angus MacDonald, Chief Technologist, Sun Microsystems ANZ, said.

Carbon trading provides economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants.

Of the respondents that could disclose their organisation’s energy consumption, 44 per cent spend more than $1 million on electricity annually.

“The results highlight that eco-responsibility isn’t just an environmental consideration but also an economic one,” said Angus MacDonald.

Energy Efficient Technologies Top of the List to Green the IT Department

When asked to rate a range of strategies for greening the IT department, energy efficient technologies was the most popular (73%), followed by systems virtualisation (66%) and power and cooling solutions (59%).

Comparing data from last year’s survey, the number of organisations that have environmental or green business practices at a company-wide level in place has grown 6% to 66%.

At the IT department level, 38% of respondents said their organisation already had plans in place to green IT, an increase of 11% from last year.

The energy sector is still the leader in implementing eco responsible initiatives (88%) followed by the financial services industry (81%), retail (78%) and telecommunications (74%).

Other key findings include:

Measurement of carbon emissions

• 22% have practices in place to enable the measurement of carbon emissions
• 36% have no practices in place but are interested in evaluating them
• 33% have no plans to measure carbon emissions

Annual power costs (of the 48% who could respond)

• 44% spend more than $1 million on power annually
• 8% spend between $750k and $1 million on power annually
• 7% spend between $500k and $750K million on power annually
• 15% spend between $100k and $500k on power annually
• 26% spend less than $100k on power annually

Eco responsible business practice (company wide)

• 66% of respondents have environmental/green practices already in place (up 6% on last year)

Greening the IT department

• 38% have dedicated green IT plans in place (an increase of 11% from last year)
• 23% plan to deploy eco responsible technology in the next 12 months
• 21% are evaluating putting green IT plans in place
• 15% have no plans at all

Drivers for uptake of green technology (multiple answers allowed, top 4 below)

• Reduced power consumption - 78%
• Lower costs - 73%
• Lower carbon emissions and environmental impact (eg recycling) - 61%
• Improved systems performance and utilisation - 50%

Strategies that would help green the IT department (multiple answers allowed, top 4 below)

• Energy efficient technologies – 73%
• Systems virtualisation – 66%
• Power and cooling solutions – 59%
• Data centre consolidation – 48%

Evaluate your eco opportunities

Read more about the eco responsibility survey results here

Check out Sun’s eco resources for ways to green your business

See the results from Sun greening its own data centres, including more than $9 million USD cost avoidance in new datacenter investment

Calculate the energy output of a specific server by using the SwaP (Space, Watts and Performance) metric