Could the UK government encourage a green revolution within the IT departments of the country’s top companies by providing CIOs with a greater incentive to ‘green’ their IT operations ? We think so.IT leaders taking part in the Forum have indicated that whilst they’re committed to lowering their business’ energy consumption, many still struggle to cost-justify green strategies to the Board.

IT chiefs talking to Verbatim say they’d be able to build a better business case to cut IT’s emissions if they were given stronger financial incentives by the government.

Research indicates that businesses are broadly split between those that consider ‘green’ to be a strategic business issue - often consumer-facing organisations - and those less visible companies that are still waiting to be convinced.

IT directors cite financial pressures and shareholder obligations as being issues that frequently stop them from adopting green IT wholesale across the business.

We think that the Government has to be given a reality check. If it really wants to spread the green IT revolution to all businesses - something we would support - then it must take a pragmatic approach and intervene.

Like it or not, many CEOs still see ‘green’ as something that’s nice to have, but not as something that they can afford to tackle now. At the moment, going green still has a high price tag and there are always going to be competing demands for the money - and no company is going to put themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Leave it purely to the market and corporates will slowly invest in green IT. Make it more affordable and you might see a rapid change in behaviour now.