CIOs caught in a green sandwich

Stuart Corner
Friday, 23 November 2007 05:13

IT Industry - Market

Mingay argues that few organisations have any concept of the amount of change that will be needed, or how quickly changes will have to be made. " We will be in a low carbon economy and we will be in it pretty quick...Most organisations have not thought through what a low carbon economy means. But one thing is for sure, it will not be simply about doing the same old things with less carbon. It will be about rethinking how we do things. And IT is going to be absolutely central to that."

Mingay pointed out that the current targets the EU and the G8 are talking about are 60-80 percent cuts in C02 by 2050,  20-25 percent by 2025. "None of the signatories to Kyoto are going to reach the targets set down by Kyoto and those targets are nothing like these. As a result one of two things will happen: we as a society are going to throw our arms in the air and say 'we can't fix this', or we will see very substantial change in how we do things."

Gartner believes the rate and direction of shift to a 'low carbon' economy will be directly determined by three factors. "Those three things are the cost of energy and carbon, the impact on brand value and customer behaviour, and government regulation.

He added: "Most of our clients will be paying for carbon in the near future...And Gartner does not do energy price forecasts, but in all the conversations I have had there is not anybody who thinks that the price of energy is not going to go up significantly faster than inflation. This will significantly influence business cases and enable organisations to invest more in energy saving initiatives."