UK IT departments counting carbon footprints twice

Fujitsu Services, who employ over 19,000 people across 20 countries including the UK, commissioned a survey to discover if IT managers at UK companies who employ over 1000 people think that not only should their IT carbon footprint count against the company, but that subcontractors’ carbon footprints should be added as well.

Fujitsu seem to be quite surprised by the results, as over three quarters of IT managers believe that the carbon footprint of their subcontractors should be included in their own company’s figures.

Fujitsu, who is a major outsourcing player worldwide and in the UK, contends that this concept would lead to a company over-stating its carbon footprint.

They go on to say that they consider that big company IT managers do not fully understand the concept of tracking carbon emissions.

With less than a quarter (24%) believing that the outsourcing company is responsible for its own carbon footprint, Fujitsu considers that a lack of understanding by IT managers of carbon footprint rules means that they tend to over compensate by being over cautious and opting to count emissions twice, rather than being accused of not including legitimate carbon contributions.

Fujitsu contend that for example, their footprint continues to grow as the company grows, but they make huge efforts to keep their emissions and carbon footprint as low as possible.

If their subcontractors are not as fastidious, they should not feel that they should penalise themselves by counting their carbon statistics with theirs.

There is also the thought that if the subcontractor already counts their carbon footprint, and then Fujitsu counts it as well then it is being counted twice in the overall scheme of tracking carbon footprints, which defeats the object of the exercise.

Fujitsu organised the survey because it is keen to open an industry-wide debate on this issue, in a bid to gain consensus and agreement of a common set of principles governing who owns the carbon footprint of outsourced IT and in what circumstances.

The research also showed that many IT departments are not even measuring the contribution of IT to their own organisation’s carbon footprint.

At 68% the financial services sector were the most diligent carbon measurers.

Only 32% of retailers and 36% of manufacturers were currently even measuring their carbon footprint, let alone trying to significantly reduce it.

Fujitsu does have some bragging rights having lowered its CO2 emissions down from 710 to 556 tonnes per year (22%)