Computerworld Australia reports on research from S2 Intelligence.

Within two years, most big businesses will be on their way to spending three times as much on systems for carbon accounting and sustainability reporting compared to what they spent on Y2K, according to analyst and research firm, S2 Intelligence.

Businesses will collectively spend at least US$595 billion on systems to support green accounting.

Releasing forecasts on what businesses will spend on systems to support green accounting through to 2015, S2 Intelligience estimates Australian business will spend at least US$6.5 billion.

The research firm's managing director, Dr Bruce McCabe, said to reduce the carbon footprint of businesses we first need to measure it, but green accounting today is shallow, with lots of window dressing and little actual measurement.

"By 2010 all types of businesses will be investing in systems that support detailed and continuous information collection."

It's interesting that they think Carbon Labelling will drive purchasing behavior.

"Carbon labelling in supermarkets is a good example. Led by chains such as Tesco in the UK, this will soon impact what makes it into the shopping basket.

"Even schemes that follow a simple star rating will cascade into new accounting requirements for every business in the supply chain," he said.

" The primary producer, manufacturer, wholesaler and transport provider will all need to be able to report their contribution--or lose business to someone that does."

ITPro summarizes research by Aperture Research Institute (ARI) on how customers are wary of vendor's Green IT marketing messages.

Green IT causing data centre confusion

Posted by Miya Knights at 4:01PM, Tuesday 11th March 2008

Organisations are adopting green initiatives but they're unsure how it will impact data centre efficiency and are wary of vendor hype.

The majority of organisations (70 per cent) are adopting green initiatives, but almost a third are unsure how their actions will impact data centre efficiency and are wary of vendor marketing messages, according to new research published today.

The Aperture Research Institute (ARI) study of more than 100 data centre professionals found 19 per cent of those with a green initiative admitted it did not include the data centre, while 13 per cent did not know whether it did or not.

Steve Yellen, ARI's principal, said: "Our study found that many organisations are adopting a green initiative, but some have left alarming gaps as far as the data centre is concerned."

Of those that did have a clear on the impact of green IT in the data centre, the most popular initiatives were cooling (named by 44 per cent), server virtualisation or consolidation (27 per cent) and the use of more power-efficient equipment (24 per cent). Only one respondent suggested powering off unused CPUs.

This isn't necessarily surprising research.  In their research they mention.

The data center deserves to be a focal point for any green initiative: two-thirds of those surveyed reported that power consumption was rising, and 22% of those said it was rising rapidly. The chief cause is an increase in demand from the business for IT services. It is essential, then, that business departments are accountable for the energy their IT consumes. In the second paper in this series, we will investigate whether organizations are charging the cost of power back to business departments effectively.

This would be interesting to see the #'s from their 2nd research.

Business week summarizes recent reports from Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey in one article. It starts with an attention getting paragraph.

At the recent World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, 20 sessions focused on environmental issues. On Jan. 24 a group of top guns at leading technology companies, including Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, Dell (DELL) founder and CEO Michael Dell, Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers, and Intel (INTC) Chairman Craig Barrett, met to talk about the possibility of coordinating their efforts to pursue more sustainable practices. Then, on Feb. 5, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) announced it had surpassed its goals for recycling e-waste: Globally, it recycled nearly 250 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges in 2007—a 50% increase over the previous year. And it announced a new goal: to reuse 2 billion pounds of products by the end of 2010.

And summarizes the reports as follows:

Whereas Forrester and Gartner's reports concentrated on green IT, the McKinsey report focuses on a broader sense of energy efficiency, to include office buildings as well as devices and products. The authors argue that implementing such energy efficiencies could offset 85% of projected energy demands by 2030. That's considerably more impact than increasing fuel efficiency in vehicles, replacing industrial equipment and industrial processes that are not energy efficient, planting forests and improving soil, or shifting toward renewable energy sources. Citing projections from the Energy Dept., the report's authors state that overall energy use in commercial environments is predicted to rise at 1.6% each year for the next 22 years. The energy used in offices full of PCs and power-guzzling devices is expected to grow at twice that rate.

What each of the three reports share is statistics that make it clear reducing expenses is the leading reason corporations are seeking more eco-friendly practices. Forrester's report, for instance, states that 55% of those surveyed see reducing their energy-related operating expenses as the main reason for pursuing more sustainable IT operations—above "doing the right thing for the environment," the top motivator for 50% of those polled. In the Gartner report the authors estimate that "potential power cost and CO2 emission reductions of 50% are available" by better managing the power usage of PCs, monitors, and printers—for instance, simply encouraging employees to turn them off.

Here is a press release by Info-Tech Research with specifics how North America lags Europe and Asia in Green IT.

When it comes to taking action on green IT initiatives, a new study by Info-Tech Research Group finds that enterprises in North America lag behind those in Asia and Europe. Respondents from North America are also less concerned with their carbon footprints than those from the rest of the world, with nearly one-fifth reporting low to minimal levels of concern about climate change.

"People in North America tend to believe that newly industrialized countries like India and China wouldn’t have the means or interest to support green technologies," said Aaron Hay, research consultant with Info-Tech Research Group. "In reality, the study paints a very different picture as North America is failing to keep pace with the adoption rates of green IT techniques in emerging economies."

In addition to the implementation of quick win policies, the study revealed that almost double the amount of respondents from Asia reported the adoption of major initiatives such as "green RFPs" favoring acquisition of energy-efficient solutions and technologies.