Going green is white-hot in the industry these days. But in IT organizations, there’s little interest in cutting power consumption — even though technology is a major consumer of energy.

At least that’s what IT researchers at Forrester are saying.

Recent research by Forrester found that only 13% of companies had launched wide-scale power management programs, despite the savings that organizations can realize from them.

Researchers found that another 18% of companies had set up programs, but not for all of their PCs.

What’s the problem? Saving money on power bills (and consequently saving the environment) isn’t in the typical IT manager’s job description. In most organizations, IT’s not responsible for technology energy costs, said Doug Washburn, the Forrester analyst who conducted the survey.

Consequently, power management isn’t top of the IT ‘to do’ list.

Other reasons IT may be dragging their heels on managing power sucking PCs:

• end-user backlash
• unfamiliarity with approaches and policy crafting, and
• uncertainty about how to predict financial savings and make a business case for a green program.

The survey results don’t surprise many folks: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that no more than 10% of all PCs in use within organizations have their power management capabilities turned on.

That could be changing. Some companies have begun to realize that IT can play a bigger role in cutting energy use and are transferring at least a portion of the organization’s power budget to the IT department.

There may also be more inclination to administer shut downs of idle PCs once organizations move away from XP and onto either Vista or Windows 7, both of which have tools that allow system administrators to manage power settings across the network.

But few are predicting that IT will jump on the green bandwagon unless it’s worth their while – and comes under their list of responsibilities.

Tags: cost savings, environment, green