We're most of the way through 2012 and Green ICT has been a topic of conversation for years. Best practices have been developed, standards put into place, conferences held monthly around the world. So why do recent surveys of ICT operators suggest that few are paying attention to the full suite of Green ICT possibilities?

The Uptime Institute 2012 Data Center Survey offers these less-than-stellar indicators from 1,100 data center owners and operators, 50% of which are in North America.

• Only 20% of IT departments directly pay their power utility bill. "This speaks to how the responsible parties are held accountable for defining and implementing a more energy-efficient solution."
• Only 24% moinitor CO2e and 34% monitor water usage. Asian data centers are lowest in both.
• 29% still don't measure PUE, a basic step in managing energy efficiency.

The survey did not appear to even address equipment life-cycle issues such as sustainability purchasing practices, toxins, or e-waste.

Fujitsu's ICT Sustainability: The Global Benchmark 2012 paints a similar picture:

The findings of our research indicate that in 2012, improvements in ICT Sustainability have stalled. We are particularly concerned about the decline in the performance of organizations in a number of areas including Equipment Lifecycle (Lifecycle), End-User Computing (End User), and Enterprise – the areas where organizations can typically make quick improvements. We have seen declines in power management settings of personal computers, in-house investment in data centers, and adherence to standards and policy. Our results indicate that organizations have experimented with initiatives, however trials fail to mature, possibly due to competing priorities, inferior change management practices or the ‘champion’ leaving

Fujitsu reports that only 23% of ICT departments include the cost of ICT power consumption in their budget. "In Japan, 38.5% of ICT departments were accounting for the cost and consumption of ICT energy in 2012. This was the highest proportion in the world. China showed the largest improvement, with 26% of organizations tracking these measures in 2012, up from 6% on 2011."

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Data centers and water