A colleague of mine sent me a story that, if it turns out to be the harsh truth, can have a significant impact on the technology industry’s role in fighting climate change. According to research analyst Gartner, “2009 will be a gap year for green projects lacking a short-term cost-cutting and efficiency focus.” Signs of a weakened interest in green IT were visible as early as last year when Green IT was moved from first (in 2008) to tenth (for 2009) place in Gartner’s top 10 strategic technologies list.

As I have written elsewhere, green IT is selling because it delivers higher efficiencies and lower costs in business operations, not just in IT. Indeed firms are still looking to invest in green projects if they deliver quick wins in terms of cost cutting and immediate efficiency gains. But long term investment projects in green IT and its potential to generate operational efficiencies elsewhere are put on hold, which can have negative effects on developments of new, greener technologies.

Much like the banks, businesses are doing what they individually believe is sound but which collectively can have some disastrous consequences. Shrinking availability of credit as banks ‘shore up’ their balance sheets is squeezing businesses; likewise, will the development and implementation of environmentally friendly IT shrink if businesses put holds on green IT projects?

Government to the rescue?

The British Government has an opportunity to step in and pull green IT back to the forefront. Not only is green IT something that the Government itself maintains to be committed to, but if the UK is going to continue to claim its leadership in fighting climate change more needs to be done in the private and public sector. The promise of the creation of a “low-carbon economy” for Britain by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in March is on the face of it indeed promising, but only 7% of Britain’s fiscal stimulus is allocated to “greenery” (specific figures for green IT in this sum was not available).

The economic recession looks to prevail for some time (although some say that the worst is behind us) and if it fails to act as a catalyst for green IT will we have lost another two years of opportunity for change? The budget released this Wednesday may surprise us with a substantial green focus, but let’s not put all our eggs in that basket.

So what will happen if neither the private nor the public sector remains committed to green IT and its potential to reduce the other 98% of carbon emissions? What incentive or business case will exist for the IT industry to continue the development and push for using IT to help fight climate change? We have to ensure that the IT industry continue to proactively push for the use of IT to fight climate change and prove that the IT industry is indeed the leader of a sustainable knowledge economy.

Technorati Tags: Economic Climate, Green IT

Tags: Economic Climate, Green IT

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am and is filed under Energy and Environment, Public Sectors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.