Since the advent of information technology (IT) is continuously increasing, energy consumption is on the rise, which forces the global world to be directed toward green IT. The Joulemeter program developed by Microsoft used to make the comparisons between computers types. The results showed that laptops consume less power than desktops, and CO2 emissions of the laptop are about 4.5 times less than desktop emission. A questionnaire was developed to evaluate green IT readiness from the perspective of the IT employees. The data collected from 401 IT employees. The results showed the dimension maintenance gain the highest average, which indicates the IT employees realize that the maintenance is an important factor for green IT readiness. The factors, technology, practice, attitude, and maintenance, have an agree degree of agreement; the factors, policy, governance, and green IT readiness, have neutral degree of agreement. The governance has the highest correlation and influence on green IT readiness. The study recommends organizations setup strategies for implementing green IT.
TopIntroduction
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the fastest growing sector of energy use, so most of IT industries are replacing their IT systems and work practices greener, global carbon emissions of ICT was estimated at 2% to 2.5% (Goasduff & Forsling, 2007). The carbon dioxide (CO2) in IT emissions were expected to reach 6% at the end of 2020, while data centre emissions are expected to grow by 7% each year (Mingay, 2006). Green IT emissions are considered the major interest of concern, which could be related either to the rate of production or consumption of CO2. There are many sources of CO2 emissions; one of them is the emission from the use of IT technologies (Jonathon, 2012). McKinsey and Company forecasts that the ICT carbon footprint will triple during the period from 2002 to 2020 (Green IT Sustainable Information Technology, 2015).
Although energy costs less than 10% of an overall IT budget, in future they could rise to more than 50% according to the Gartner report. Many organizations such as “Google” have already claimed that their annual energy costs exceed their server costs (Gartner, 2008).
Green IT auditing is a method used to measure power consumption, to reduce costs, and improve energy efficiency (Ambtman, 2011). IT assessment is a method used to reach green IT implementation, and govern mental plays an important role in monitoring green IT Jongsaguan & Ghoneim, 2013). In order to be competitive in the market companies need to consider greener solution, companies have to stand a responsibility toward societies, since their activities have direct and indirect effect on the environment (Esty & Winston, 2009).
The maturity of green policies should be determined to measure sustainability policies reached throughout an organization. Three value chain areas considered to assess the degree of the maturity of green IT policies: IT sourcing, IT operations/services, and IT end-of-life management (Minsani & Imam, 2012).
Organizations are facing high pressure from rivals, regulators, as well as society groups in order to move toward green IT. Moving to Green IT implies that organizations are balancing between their financial performance and environmental sustainability.
The sections of this chapter organized as follows: Section 1 outlines the motivations for this study; Section 2 presents a literature review; Section 3 explains the objective; Section 4 introduces research methodology; Section 5 introduces data collection and analysis; Section 6 offers the conclusion.
Motivations for This Study
Due to the importance of ICT, especially the increase in demand of the Internet, cause an increasing of power consumption, where power consumption is one of the sources of air pollution. The expected demand for ICT will be increase; this causes an increasing in power consumption and air pollution. Organizations must try to gain competitive advantage by practicing green IT readiness and evaluating power consumption. Green IT readiness becomes very important in terms of the performance of any organization, saving money, and power consumption. In addition, it is necessary to provide IT staff an awareness of the importance of the green IT readiness.
The main factors that motivate any organizations toward green IT: the lack of natural resources demands and the stakeholders’ environmental awareness (Esty & Winston, 2009), another motivating factor is money, once people know how much money they can save by going green, their habits can be changed (www.oureverydayearth.com). The motivational factors cause IT employees to go for green based on connectedness to nature, public service motivation, and organizational citizenship behaviour (Stritch & Christensen, 2014). All of these justify the needs of evaluating the green IT readiness and power consumption.