Friday 26 April 2013

Cisco and Google tie in ‘green’ IT table

Cisco and Google have come joint-top of a ‘Cool IT leaderboard’ which ranks 21 of the world’s biggest IT firms on their efforts to be more 'green'.

The computer networking firm climbed up the rankings to draw even with the search engine giant, with both coming ahead of comms company Ericsson in third place. Japan’s Fujitsu was ranked fourth, while data and internet firm Sprint, IT services consultancy Wipro and computer maker HP tied in fifth place.

Japanese tech firms Hitachi and Toshiba were new entrants, taking the last two places in the leaderboard which was founded in 2009. Vodafone, Dell and Microsoft hold positions in the middle of the table.

Compiled and scored by researchers at Greenpeace, the Cool IT Leaderboard put Cisco in the top spot because of its new energy targets and plans to move away from using coal. The campaign group suggested it could have edged ahead of Google if it made more of a ‘green’ stand politically in the US and EU.

Writing on the campaign group’s blog, Greenpeace’s David Moritz said more corporate firms should do this: “Despite the IT sector’s green ambitions, we won’t achieve transformational change – a real Energy Revolution – until technology companies use their political power to demand a shift to energy policies that will unlock investment in clean energy solutions.”

If the IT sector switched to renewable energy sources and cut its energy use, it could cut greenhouse gases by 16% by 2020, according to the SMARTer2020 report released in 2012.