The ICT industry sees climate change and sustainability as an emerging opportunity, says research firm Gartner.
The firm's assessment of 28 global ICT providers along with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Sweden identified the emergence of a group of market makers and found out that the industry as a whole fell short of making climate change and sustainability part of its core business.
"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," says Simon Mingay, research vice-president at Gartner.
"We now have a clear group of market makers formed by BT, IBM, Cisco, Ericsson, HP, Fujitsu, and SAP who we believe are beginning to build a distinguishing capability,” he states.
However, Mingay notes that at this stage these leaders have not really taken the issues associated with climate change and sustainability into the core of the business and their strategies, and they continue to deal with it within the mindset of incremental improvement and 'short-termism'.
The survey, the second of its kind, examined ICT providers' commitment to managing the environmental aspects of their internal operations and supply chain. It also explored their capabilities in advancing the low-carbon solutions markets and developing products and services that will help them and their customers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or increase their energy efficiencies.
"The good news is that we don't see anyone going backwards," says Mingay. "But across every category there is clearly a group that is on the move and a group which seems to be treading water relatively."
Notable companies
According to the research, IBM, Fujitsu, HP, Cisco and BT ranked in the top five positions, while others such as Verizon and Lenovo did not score particularly well, and held 19thand 17th spots, respectively.
Mingay asserts that Microsoft, ranked in 13th position overall, is making reasonable progress from a relatively weak starting point.
The survey revealed that service and software providers have improved their position from 2008, but remain relatively immature in terms of their internal programmes and market offerings.
SAP, ranked eighth overall, did substantially better than any of the other large software and services organisations. Gartner says SAP has put sustainability at the heart of its communications and closer to its strategy over the last 18 months.
The survey also found that Fujitsu, at number two, is the only ICT provider to set a long-term context to its initiatives and wants to help reduce more emissions in society through low-carbon IT solutions than their own emissions.
Fujitsu has set itself a carbon reduction goal in terms of its impact on its customers versus a target related to their own emissions, says Gartner.
Finally, ICT providers in Asia (excluding Japan) are still lagging overall, but making some dramatic improvements, which Gartner analysts anticipate to continue.
Reasonable development
The dominance of talking in 2008 when Gartner and WWF Sweden completed their first assessment has evolved into much more action in 2009 and 2010, says Gartner.
"We now have a number of ICT providers with an actual low-carbon portfolio and a readiness to move from an incremental contribution into the centre stage when it comes to providing society with low-carbon solutions," states Magnus Emfel, director of the Climate Programme, WWF Sweden.
"It is precisely this shift - from ICT as a minor contributor to global emissions to a major enabler of low-carbon solutions - that we need to see replicated in business strategies and urban planning, if we are to succeed in the transition to a low carbon economy and stabilise the climate."
The survey also found that inter-industry partnerships are starting to emerge, particularly from ICT providers including Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and IBM.
This is a very significant and important step in ICT's ability to develop commercially viable solutions for a low-carbon economy, particularly around smart grid, intelligent buildings and smart city infrastructures, Gartner notes.
When looking at ICT's own impact, and the focus on the 2% of ICT's global CO2 emissions, Gartner states it has become evident that hardware vendors such as HP, Ericsson and Fujitsu are increasingly focused on the energy efficiency of their equipment and making it a core business, while for software and services organisations this is not the case.
“Very few vendors are thinking about dematerialisation in any real systematic way, though Xerox is one of the few exceptions that is reusing and recycling parts.”
Smart ICT
Collectively, the ICT industry has enhanced its game in terms of providing solutions in other areas, Gartner says, noting transport and buildings to help reduce the 98% of global carbon dioxide emissions that are not generated by ICT and says “that can be reduced with the help of smart ICT”.
"Although the leaders in the carbon delivery sections such as IBM, Fujitsu, HP, BT, Ericsson and Cisco have begun to build structural capabilities, governance, and allocated organisational resources to addressing the opportunities of a low-carbon economy, their commitment still falls short of being integrated into their core business," Mingay says.
Gartner's client interactions and analysis of the survey suggests this is due to a lack of spending on low-carbon and sustainability-related solutions by the public and private sectors, except in the area of smart grids, but also to the ICT sector's conservative approach built on incremental changes in existing technologies and capacity.
"We were surprised at the lack of disruptive innovation, with the majority of responses essentially focused on the incremental 'client-driven' development," states Dennis Pamlin, co-author and independent consultant working for WWF Sweden on this project.
"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."
"No one is making any serious effort to extend the life of equipment beyond the basics one would expect of improving reliability and quality," says 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."
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