Survey: Green IT issues carry heavier weight

Only 20 percent of companies have any kind of green technology procurement and management budget, but the issue of green as it relates to IT strategy carries more weight this year than last year.

That's according to the second annual Green IT and Insights Study from CompTIA, a non-profit trade association for IT professionals. In the previous survey, just 9 percent of the respondents rated "green IT" as one of their top organization priorities. That number was 37 percent in the latest study and CompTIA expects it to rise to 54 percent by 2013. The survey accounts for the responses of 650 IT and business executives who are involved in green initiatives. The respondents came from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

What exactly is meant by green IT? CompTIA suggests that is one of the challenges in quantifying this movement. Here are a number of concepts that the survey respondents associated with being green. The percentages cited is the percentage of respondents who "strongly associated" a given concept with being "green." I am only citing the responses that got at least 50 percent.

• Reduced energy consumption (67%)
• Recycling obsolete products or waste (63%)
• Paperless (58%)
• Eliminating hazardous substances in products (58%)
• Product design optimization (55%)
• Sustainability (52%)
• Carbon footprint (51%)
• Leveraging IT to reduce business travel (50%)

As you might expect, the larger the company, the more apt they were to have a green strategy of some sort. In fact, they were twice as likely as smaller companies to have a comprehensive green strategy. Overall, here's what your peers are saying about their green IT priorities over the next two years.