Now, green bucks for IT companies

Indian IT firms like Tata consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Infosys and Satyam, besides MNCs like IBM, are working towards becoming carbon neutral themselves while simultaneously converting their expertise in this area to help global companies become environment-friendly.

Becoming carbon neutral means developing products or processes that, over their life cycles, do not add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Energy spending has reached 50 per cent of hardware spending, according to IDC, and is expected to increase to 70 per cent over the next four years. "Being carbon neutral is seen as good corporate and social behavior across the globe. The extent to which a company mitigates its carbon emissions is becoming a key measure for its business performance," says Uma Rajarathnam, Head, Environment Practice, Enzen Global Solutions.

While global giants like Intel and Google have already pledged their efforts to the green movement by launching the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, ITC Infotech is the only Indian company that can claim to be fully carbon neutral.

Other IT services firms have already started positioning them to address the global energy programming and monitoring market. The global emission trading market is said to be in the tune of $30 billion. This would require huge amount of software, programming and back-office management in measuring each company's carbon footprint, emission reduction and the measures to be taken for that in an ongoing basis. Wipro has already implemented various clean energy programme at its Bangalore campus. Infosys has installed solar systems and other energy efficiency technologies at its campus in Bangalore. Satyam is also planning to use energy efficiency technologies at its headquarters in Hyderabad.

IBM, on its part, has already announced its 'Project Big Green' which will not only help it become carbon neutral, but also help it to advise others on how to do it. It has announced it is investing $1 billion a year to increase energy efficiency within its own IT departments and those of its clients. By using the same energy efficiency initiatives it is offering clients today, IBM aims to double the computing capacity of its data centers within the next three years without increasing power consumption.

Steven Cole, Program Manager, Energy Efficiency Initiative, IBM Systems Group, Worldwide, says: "Energy efficiency is a business model now, and going forward it will see an increased demand. The world wide data centre consumption is estimated to be 180 billion Kwh in 2007 which would translate to $18 billion, and this will double over the next four years. "

To become carbon neutral, TCS is soon planning to do a full-fledged carbon audit. It has appointed a global corporate officer for the same. The IT major, according to its VP & CTO, K Ananth Krishnan, "is receiving many inquiries in this regard (energy efficiency)". "For years, we have been servicing customers in the manufacturing space with energy audits. More recently, we have also moved into the area of waste management. What we intend doing now is to make data centres 'truly intelligent' by helping them to respond to loads during peak- and non-peak hours. This will be of considerable help in conserving electricity in data centres," says Krishnan.

Wipro is already working with an electricity utility company in the US. The company has developed a framework and process to improve the old energy infrastructure and make it more efficient. The company is also working with an oil & gas company in area of emission trading, by installing a greenhouse gas emission compliance and monitoring system. Dayapatra Nevatia, vice-president, Energy Business, Wipro Technologies, says: " Those who are already into emission trading, or are preparing to get into it, need IT systems to acquire data from their different systems across geographies, monitor and validate the data and also some reporting mechanism to constantly monitor it."

Analysts opine that more opportunities would start flowing in the coming few years when thousands of global companies seriously aspire to become carbon neutral or energy efficient. The European Union has put a deadline for all the companies to comply to emission norms by 2012. Industry sources say that carbon tax (credit) or cap-and-trade legislation are going to be the next big global business transformation.

BEING NEUTRAL

IBM will invest $1bn a year to increase energy efficiency

TCS is working towards building an 'intelligent data centre'

Wipro is working with a US-based electricity utility firm to improve its energy efficiency