Green IT to benefit from Defra budget boost

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In an increased 2008/09 budget settlement, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is pledging more financial support for green IT.

Setting out details of the settlement, the Department's secretary and MP for Leeds Central Hilary Benn said the overall budget increase of over £400 million amounted to a real increase of 1.4 per cent in Defra's overall budget on 2007/08.

"Defra spending will increase to almost £4 billion over the next three years but we must invest wisely," he said.

Greener information technology initiatives like research into new ways of cooling computer equipment and smart utility metering will benefit from a £47.7 million share of the extra funding allotted to the Carbon Trust technology programmes as part of the domestic Environmental Transformation Fund (ETF).

The domestic ETF brings together existing low carbon technology funding programmes of Defra and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) with a number of new investments that are scheduled to begin this April.

Defra said this includes funding for the Carbon Trust's innovation programme including research accelerators, technology accelerators, and incubators as well as for new low-carbon technology businesses.

IT professional body, The British Computer Society (BCS) welcomed the announcement and said that funding would particularly benefit its work to find effective ways of measuring data centre power consumption.

Bob Harvey, chair of the BCS Ethics Forum, said: "We are very encouraged that money has been made available to support programmes to reduce carbon footprint of IT and we are working with the Carbon Trust on a potential data centre project."

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