IBM Tops Gartner And WWF’s Green IT List

In their second biennial assessment of information and communication technology (ICT) companies’ sustainability efforts, Gartner and the environmental charity WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature) have awarded IBM the green laurels of achievement, followed by Fujitsu, HP, Cisco and BT.

The survey examined each organisation’s commitment to managing the environmental impact of its internal operations and its supply chain. It also took into account the efforts each one is making to advance low-carbon emissions in its products and services to help customers be greener.

Doing Well But Could Do Better

In all, 28 firms were invited to take part and 19 accepted, four more than in 2008. These were  Accenture, Alcatel-Lucent, BT, CSC, Cisco, Dell, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, SAP, Sun Microsystems, TCS, Verizon, Wipro and Xerox.

As Gartner pointed out in a footnote, Sun took part before it was acquired by Oracle. Oracle turned down the request to participate.

Companies who could do better included Verizon at 19th position and and Lenovo at 17. One of the co-authors of the report, Gartner vice president Simon Mingay, said that the two companies did not score particularly well but added that Microsoft, ranked 13th was making reasonable progress from a relatively weak starting point.

Video: Gartner analyst Simon Mingay discusses the report

Despite this, the industry is improving generally. Mingay said, “2009 and 2010 have seen rapid progress in the maturity of ICT vendors both in terms of their internal environmental programmes and the development of a set of low-carbon market offerings.”

Inter-industry partnerships are starting to emerge that will improve the sustainability stance of the ICT industry, the report said. Separating out Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and IBM for their roles in this, Mingay called it “a very significant and important step in ICT’s ability to develop commercially viable solutions for a low-carbon economy”. Technologies that are contributing to the reduction in CO2 emissions include smart grid, intelligent buildings, smart city infrastructures, and the instrumentation and analytics to make them efficient.

The energy efficiency of manufacturing equipment is a focus for HP, Ericsson and Fujitsu, he said. This is particularly important in reducing the two percent of global CO2 emissions caused by ICT systems. The downside is that few vendors are reusing and recycling parts, known as dematerialisation, to any great degree, with the exception of Xerox.

“No one is making any serious effort to extend the life of equipment beyond the basics one would expect of improving reliability and quality,” said Mingay. “But, with the management of e-waste and rare earth metals rapidly turning into a substantial global challenge and the growth of emerging markets, the industry needs to be giving much more serious thought to dematerialisation, recycling and longevity.”

Client-driven Strategies Are Not Enough

The industry may be improving its green credentials but Mingay noted a distinct dislocation between the growing sense of responsibility and total commitment.

“Although the leaders in the Carbon Delivery sections [of the report], such as IBM, Fujitsu, HP, BT, Ericsson and Cisco, have begun to build structural capabilities, governance, and allocated organisational resources addressing the opportunities of a low-carbon economy, their commitment still falls short of being integrated into their core business,” Mingay said.

Dennis Pamlin, the other co-author and an independent consultant working for WWF Sweden on this project, was much more outspoken in his criticism. He expressed a degree of scepticism regarding the apparent motivations of the companies.

“We were surprised at the lack of disruptive innovation, with the majority of responses essentially focused on the incremental ‘client-driven’ development. If the ICT industry is to deliver on its promise of making a significant contribution to enabling a transformation to a low-carbon economy it is going to require substantially more than marginal incrementalism,” he concluded.

The “Summary Report: Low-Carbon and Environmental Leadership in the ICT Industry by Gartner and WWF, 2010” is available on Gartner’s site.