Is five per cent of your IT budget the green piece?

Despite the recession, companies are still setting aside a large chunk of their IT spending for green technology projects, a new study claims.

Two out of three of the companies surveyed by Deloitte - large enterprises with revenues of $500m plus - said they have at least five per cent of their IT budget earmarked for green IT projects.

One in three claimed to have allocated 15 per cent or more, and one in eight were spending more than 25 per cent on green projects.

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Cutting cost is still a significant motivating factor behind green investments, along with reducing regulatory risk and improving public perception, Deloitte said.

Two-thirds of respondents said their company has a formal programme in place for measuring, monitoring and improving environmental performance, while just under half of companies said they charge the cost of electricity for IT directly back to departments - making them directly accountable for the power they use.

The report also found that some UK organisations are making major efforts to reduce their carbon emissions.

The John Lewis Partnership, for example, is running Unix machines in production at around 80 per cent utilisation, which means they are using a half to a third of the number of machines to accomplish the same tasks as some other organisations. Meanwhile, HSBC incorporates environmental criteria into its equipment procurement, to make sure it's buying energy-saving kit.

Head of Deloitte's green IT consulting practice, John Winstanley, said as a major consumer of electricity and producer of waste electronics the IT department was one of the first business functions to be scrutinised and then forced to improve its efficiency and lessen its environmental impact.

"IT typically produces two per cent of an organisation's CO2, now it will have to turn its attention to the remaining 98 per cent," he said in a statement.