The Many Faces of Green IT

The importance of sustainable development has been widely recognized by people, society, governments, and the business world. Green information technology (IT) has therefore become one of the latest considerations to improve the environmental sustainability of a business. Yet, as important as this term is, it is being used in so many different ways that it might lose meaning altogether. It is important to clarify the different meanings of green IT to understand how to pursue it better as a business, economic and social objective. Four different perspectives on green IT, and the benefits and barriers of green IT strategy adoption are reviewed and discussed in this article. DOI: 10.4018/jbdcn.2012040104 International Journal of Business Data Communications and Networking, 8(2), 52-59, April-June 2012 53 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ning to “significantly increase” investments – a category that marked a jump by almost a third. Moreover, according to the survey, top performing companies are significantly stronger “embracers” of sustainability driven strategies. For example, they try to innovate more than others to achieve competitive differentiation, place emphasis on the long term benefits of sustainability, and are far more convinced than other groups that sustainability related actions lead to profitability. Green information technology (IT) has therefore become one of the latest considerations to improve the environmental sustainability of a business. Yet, as important as this term is, it is becoming used in so many different ways that it might lose its meaning altogether. It is necessary to clarify the different meanings of green IT and understand how to pursue it better as a business, economic and social objective. By synthesizing prior literature and business reports, we first summarize four different but interrelated perspectives of green IT and discuss its different meanings, then analyze the benefits and barriers of green IT adoption. PERSPECTIVES ON GREEN IT Green Sourcing Perspective Green IT implies the practice of environmentally preferable IT purchasing. This involves adoption of sourcing practices such as analysis of the environmental footprint of an IT hardware supply chain, evaluation of the green track record of software and IT services providers, incorporating green issues (such as recyclable design and packaging) in vendor evaluation, and inclusion of social concerns (such as use of child labor and presence of harmful materials in IT supply chain) in IT procurement decisions. It also covers an assessment of the environmental performance of products such as the adoption of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment tool. This idea has been integrated in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and logistics social responsibility (LSR) frameworks (Carter & Jennings, 2002a, 2002b, 2004) as activities of a socially responsible organization. This is of special importance for manufacturers in Asia because Asia will be a center point of the world’s manufacturing activities in the next couple of decades, and this will bring about substantial environmental burdens (Rao, 2002). In fact, in the past two decades, many Chinese manufacturing firms have lost international orders due to the failure in meeting the requirements of environment or safety standards and thus this issue becomes critical for many manufacturing firms. IT Related Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emission Perspective Green IT also refers to the use of IT resources in an energy efficient and cost effective manner (Bose & Luo, 2011). It implies improving energy efficiency in powering and cooling corporate IT assets and reducing IT induced greenhouse gas emissions. A number of green technologies and practices can be used as indications of the adoption of green IT operation, including carbon offset programs, rightsizing the network critical physical infrastructure (NCPI) system to IT load, upgrading to energy efficient servers, retiring old systems, and designing energy efficient systems. There is a also a business value of green IT in price premiums (Cazier et al., 2010). It reduces the energy consumption bill of firms and enables them to charge price premiums, and many consumers are willing to pay sizeable price premiums to purchase products from companies that they perceived to be environmentally friendly versus environmentally neutral (Cazier et al., 2010). Another interesting perspective about green IT is “Trading in green IT.” Green IT could be associated with carbon credits, which could be traded openly according to a carbon cap-and-trade system as called for by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (Cameron, 2010). Reducing IT energy use could significantly impact a country’s carbon footprint. Although the US is still years away from both implementing a 6 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/many-facesgreen/70210?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Communications and Social Science. 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