IDC announces the top tech for cutting carbon

Reseller provides heads-up on prime areas of IT focus for going green

Ingle: Organisations are looking to go green but financial and government incentives are also needed

Analyst IDC says it has identified the critical technologies that certain verticals should deploy if they want to slash their carbon emissions within a few years.

Integrating renewable energy into energy distribution using smart grids, IT-enabled smart building systems, IT-optimised supply chains, and variable motor controls in industrial machinery are the best ways to reduce emissions in the energy, construction, transport and general industry sectors, IDC has reported.

Roberta Bigliani, research director at IDC Energy Insights, said IT-based technologies can cut carbon emissions by 25 per cent from 2006 levels in the G20 nations, including the UK.

“The advantage of the technologies we have identified is that they are already reasonably mature, if not widely implemented,” she said.

“Given that carbon emissions reductions made quickly have more impact on global warming than those that take longer to implement, we recommend that governments and industry immediately evaluate and implement these technologies.”

The findings are part of an IDC report that will be released prior to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

IDC’s results focus on IT-based technologies that are already mature enough to be implemented within three years – given investment and government approval – that have significant network and processing bandwidth requirements, and are standalone technologies applicable to specific industries and use patterns.

Vernon Turner, senior vice president for enterprise infrastructure, consumer and telecoms research at IDC, said robust IT and communications infrastructure is necessary to reap the full benefits.

“Our research shows that use of capacity in mobile and fixed infrastructure, integrated with energy-efficient IT infrastructure, is required to support the technologies we have identified in this report.”

Chris Ingle, associate vice president for consulting at IDC, cautioned, however, that the budget constraints facing many economies make technological investment challenging.

“Government and industry need to work on structured finance instruments, which allow them to make these investments based on future savings, rather than capital investment,” Ingle said.