Rating the reducers: Report highlights sustainability progress of 14 green IT service leaders
If you're looking toward ways you can optimize your technology infrastructure to reduce energy consumption, it might help to tap an IT services company that has had success doing so internally.
That's why I read a new report from independent analyst firm Verdantix with interest. That report, "Carbon Strategy Benchmark: IT Services Sector," reviews the carbon reduction and energy management strategies and plans of 14 major enterprise IT services firms. Those firms are Accenture, Atos Origin, BT Global Services, Capgemini, CSC, Fujitsu Services, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infosys, Logica, Orange Business Services, TCS and Wipro. All of these companies have significant practices designed to help businesses better manage their carbon emissions and energy consumption metrics.
There's a great progress chart in this report that lets you compare and contrast. I pulled one set of that data for the purposes of this post. There are other metrics covered in the full chart. The numbers I've posted below specifically cover the percentage increase or reduction in energy consumption of each company compared with its baseline year. Keep in mind that the baseline years are different, and all sorts of factors can contribute to energy usage including the addition of cloud computing services or workforce size fluctuations. So, there are many mitigating factors as to whether someone reports an increase or decrease, including whether or not the company purchases renewable energy certificates to offset consumption.
Accenture (+1.5 percent)
Atos Origin (Not available)
BT (+6.9 percent)
Capgemini (-1.2 percent)
CSC (-14 percent)
Fujitsu (Not available)
Hitachi (Not available)
HP (-14.5 percent)
IBM (-5.0 percent)
Infosys (Not available)
Logica (-1.1 percent)
Orange (+24 percent)
TCS (Not available)
Wipro (-1.8 percent)
I think it is worth pointing out that a couple of the company reporting increases in consumption, notably Accenture and BT, buy more energy from renewable sources or low carbon tariffs than the others. Accenture sources 10 percent of its energy this way; BT's number is 60 percent. Accenture has also pretty well with respect to its carbon intensity metrics: the company has reduced this number by 25 percent versus its 2007 baseline.
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com