Why it pays to go green

IT leaders are well placed to save their organisations money by implementing technologies that can reduce increasingly costly carbon emissions.

There is a wide choice of technology available that can cut energy use and thereby reduce emissions. Some of these technologies were designed specifically to lower energy consumption, while with others power efficiency is more of a secondary benefit. Virtualisation technologies, for example, began with a focus on saving space but also help reduce energy consumption.

Banking group HSBC has rolled out technology to manage power on 300,000 computers, reducing total cost of ownership and bolstering its environmental credentials in the process.

Our Essential Guide to green IT looks at this and several other, similar initiatives.

It also examines the impact of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme. The legislation, which came into force on 1 April 2010, began as a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing carbon consumption but has more recently been transformed into a carbon tax.

The issue here that IT leaders need to think about is whether a stringent carbon tax regime will force datacentres offshore or whether concerns over data privacy, latency and comparable carbon targets in other regions will stop this happening.