CIOs ignored in green initiatives

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Almost half of international companies fail to take IT and telecommunications into account when it comes to cutting their carbon footprints.

Research carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) found that 57 per cent of companies have a strategy to reduce the carbon produced by their business activities. However, less than half of those companies mentioned information and communications technology (ICT) as part of their plans to cut CO2 emissions.

Nor are CIOs as heavily involved in environmental policy as they could be. Only half of businesses consult their chief information officer when they draw up carbon reduction strategies. Although green issues have steadily moved up the CIO's agenda in the last few years, the potential of ICT to tackle emissions has yet to register on the wider corporate agenda, the report found.

According to the EIU, this represents a missed opportunity. "There is a lot of talk about reducing carbon footprints in today's organisations, but not much action," said Robin Bew, editorial director at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "Putting technology to work in this endeavour offers a simple, effective way to move from rhetoric to action," he said.

Where companies have enlisted the help of IT departments, green initiatives have tended to focus around web and video conferencing. Measures such as replacing executive flights or car journeys with conferencing have proven popular, because CO2 savings are both quick to achieve and easy to measure.

However, other initiatives such as home working or teleworking have failed to take off as quickly as researchers expected. Although home working technologies are now widely available, few companies have formal teleworking programmes.

Instead, companies allow ad-hoc homeworking, or do not measure the number hours staff spend working from home. Often, managers treat the practice as a perk rather than using it as part of a strategy to reduce carbon footprints.

The EIU survey was co-sponsored by telecoms company AT&T and networking equipment vendor Cisco.

An earlier survey found that ad-hoc remote working exposed companies to security risks.

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