How green IT can ease recession blues

Green technology is not just good for the environment – the recession has shown it makes business sense as well.

By Tom Brewster, 27 Apr 2010 at 13:30

"As part of a coalition government, this party could establish red lines on issues like Heathrow and coal power and focus instead on developing the clean technologies that will define the 21st Century."

Of course, a coalition may never be formed, with party leaders being somewhat reticent about who they would be happy to work with. If the election does result in a hung parliament as many are predicting, and if Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg decides to isolate his party from the other two major political forces in the UK, it could result in a moratorium of sorts on the development of governmental green technology projects going ahead, for now at least.

The bigger picture

Regardless of who wins power, businesses should not forget the lessons of the recession, in particular that green can be great for business.

What is more, IT can have a monumental part to play in helping our planet. Back in 2008, a report from the Climate Group and the Global

e-Sustainability Initiative claimed that smarter technology use could cut global emissions by 15 per cent. In addition, such measures could save global industry €500 billion in annual energy costs by 2020 - there's that synergy again.

Significantly, the study also showed how IT could help cut global emissions in areas outside the industry, such as helping to lower energy consumption from buildings and assisting in the running of smart grid technologies.

"The way in which technology offsets inefficiencies outside of technology – that is the big play," said Microsoft's Strange.

"There clearly can be an argument that technology should increase its footprint in order to reduce the vast 95 per cent that goes on in business."

The IT community is in a great position. Not only can it help the environment on a massive scale, but it can help itself in the process also.

Wide-scale recognition of this could prove vastly beneficial for all involved in the years to come.

1 2 3

Email to a friend

Print this page

Green IT : Analysis & Insight

1 comments

You need to Login or Register to comment.

Green does make economic sense also.

As an I.T. policy, green is good. If a business has hardware problems, as in one of the computers is getting slower, it is always cheaper to change the processor and put in more memory and even a bigger hard drive, than to change a whole system. I have worked in companies before who changed their entire computer systems because the keybaords and mice were dirty...

By Cookie_UK on Saturday May 8