Government saves £7 million by going green

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The government has saved millions of pounds over the past year by being greener with IT.

Last year, the government unveiled its green IT plans, saying it wanted to be carbon neutral by 2012.

Since then, the government has saved £7 million and 12,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to a progress report delivered by Cabinet Office Minister Angela Smith.

Such savings came from basics such as printing on both sides of paper and turning computers off at night.

The report highlighted the Crown Prosecution for saving £2.35 million by replacing its 9,500 computers and 2,5000 printers every five years instead of every three. The Home Office saved £2.4 million annually by removing unused IT equipment and boosting efficiency of what it does use.

“All departments have risen to the challenge of cutting their IT carbon footprints and countries from around the world are now looking to us for advice on how to follow our lead,” Smith said yesterday in a speech.

“But it’s not just about the Government,” she added. “I hope that private companies and individuals will also recognise the savings that can be made and get on board.”

While the government has saved 12,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, public sector IT generates some 460,000 tonnes a year - making the goal of taking government IT carbon neutral by 2012 look rather difficult to achieve.

The report noted that 110 public organisations have created green IT action plans, with 80 per cent of their plans already delivered.

The basics of green IT were proving less of a problem to rollout than more complicated steps, according to the report.

More than half managed to set printers to default grey scale or duplex, but just six per cent put timer switches on non-networked printers.

Another half turned to virtual servers to cut power use, while a third did the same for storage. However, only four had taken their use of virtualisation far enough that they could turn off unused servers.

Click here for our top tips for green IT.

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