Gartner Predicts Green IT Audits for Suppliers

According to Gartner, IT vendors will soon be subject to green audits by the global corporations they supply, Sustainable Life Media reports. This is according to Gartner's annual list of topics expected to affect the IT industry, specifically where IT professionals will need to take action in 2008.

When discussing supply chains, Gartner predicts that "by 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. These policies go well beyond minimizing direct carbon emissions or requiring suppliers to comply with local environmental regulations."

Many large organizations are already putting such policies in place, such as Home Depot, Timberland and Wal-Mart.

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California May Tax Corporate Emissions

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing to charge businesses an annual fee based on their CO2 emissions, Mercury News reports. This would be the first such program in California, and would charge 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted. The program would affect all types of businesses, large and small.

The largest fee would be paid by The Shell oil refinery in Martinez, $186,475 a year for its 4.4 million annual metric tons of emissions.

The air district board could take a final vote on this rule by May, meaning businesses looking to avoid the fees should focus on measures to reduce their CO2 emissions immediately.

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Hillary Clinton discusses Verdiem

While on the campaign trail Thursday night, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton highlighted Verdiem as a company doing important work to reduce our country's energy consumption.

Her discussion of energy efficiency recommendations came about eight minutes in during a 42-minute speech to a gathering of supporters in Seattle last night.

You can see the full video here.

North America Lags in Green IT Adoption

Two new reports have looked at the trends surrounding green IT.

The Standish Group examined the issues driving green computing and found that ultimately cost reduction is the main incentive. With energy bills ever increasing organizations continue to look for ways to cut costs in new places. Cost isn't the only driving factor however, with government mandates, the need for more power and environmental concerns also listed.

Another research group, the Info-Tech Research Group, looked at how fast green IT is spreading around the world. They found that green IT initiatives in the US and Canada are lagging behind those in Asia and Europe, mainly due to older infrastructure.

Infrastructure isn't the only the only place they saw differences however, as 75% of respondents from Asia said their organizations have policies in place for turning off computers while not in use and only 35% in North America indicated they have such policies. As each corporate PC can waste up to $60 per year in energy costs North American countries are missing out on huge savings.

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Top Ten Reasons to Green IT

Our venerable CEO is featured in Environmental Leader today with his top ten reasons why IT departments should go green.

The #1 reason: It saves money (a lot of money): PC power management software can cut energy costs by $20-60 dollars per PC per PC, which can translate to six- and seven-figure annual savings for large enterprises. For many organizations, this can mean a 5-15 percent reduction in overall, organization-wide energy consumption.

Read the full list here.

See Verdiem at the Washington Technology Summit

If you're local (in Washington state), mark your calendar for the Washington State Technology Summit, April 15th at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. We'll be on a panel in the afternoon addressing clean technology.

See you there!

Gartner Predicts Green IT is the Future of Tech

As Computing Business editor Mark Samuels reports, Gartner has issued a new set of predictions for business technology. While making tech predictions is no new thing for the analyst, the consistency of Green IT showing up on these lists is relatively new.

Green IT shows up three times out of 10 on Gartner's new list as predictions of areas where executives and IT professionals will need to take action in 2008. The predictions include:

• By 2009 - More than one third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods. In the future, IT organizations will shift their focus from the power efficiency of products to asking service providers about their measures to improve energy efficiency.
• By 2010 - Seventy-five per cent of organizations will use full life cycle energy and carbon dioxide footprint as mandatory PC hardware buying criteria. Most technology providers have little or no knowledge of the full life cycle energy and carbon dioxide footprint of their products.
• By 2011 - Suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. Organizations with strong brands are already helping to forge the first wave of green sourcing policies and initiatives.

Click here to learn more.