Business Times 25 Feb 09;
MORE than half of companies in Singapore are unaware of the benefits of green IT practices, according to a survey by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and the Institute of Systems Science of the National University of Singapore.
Green IT, or the use of computing resources in an efficient and environmentally friendly manner, isn't just good for the environment - it's also good for the bottom line.
Patrick Chan, SBF industry division director, said: 'Innovative green technologies can lead to 30 per cent or more reductions in power consumption of data centres.'
Other IT processes, such as videoconferencing, e-publishing and supply chain management will also result in cost savings.
Among SBF's more than 15,000 members, more than 90 per cent are potential adopters of clean energy and energy efficiency solutions, said Mr Chan.
At present, the National Environment Agency (NEA) offers a number of incentive schemes to encourage firms to adopt Green IT practices, such as the Energy Efficiency Improvement Assistance Scheme (EASE), which provides support to conduct energy assessments. As at Jan 31, $3.49 million has been approved for 128 industrial facilities and buildings under this scheme.
Singapore Post, which applied for EASE, achieved annual savings of $1.2 million by replacing existing chillers with more efficient models and by optimising pumps and cooling towers with variable speed drives.
However, 42 per cent of survey respondents indicated that they were not aware of such schemes, while a small number said that the cost of energy audits was prohibitively high.
SBF has indicated that it would hold outreach programmes to help more Singapore companies leverage on such Green IT assistance schemes this year.
