VERNON HILLS, IL — A new survey by CDW finds that small enterprises are most likely to invest in green IT projects as a way of saving costs from computing energy use.

In a survey sampling businesses (those with fewer than 100 employees), CDW found that 31 percent of respondents plan to implement green IT projects in the next two years; the second most likely group to adopt green IT is medium businesses, with 23 percent planning such projects.

As the chart below shows, small companies have been the slowest to adopt green IT projects to date; while 66 percent of large businesses said they have gotten on board, just 23 percent of the smallest firms have done so.

Among the reasons why SMEs have not yet adopted green IT are a reported a lack of expertise and internal know-how: One-fifth of respondents said they lacked the skills to implement and maintain green IT projects. More than half of respondents put cost concerns as the biggest barrier to adopting green IT solutions.

Green IT projects include a range of technologies designed to improve the energy efficiency and environmental impact of a company's technology usage. Although there are any number of projects that fall under the heading green IT, among the most common are PC power management, virtualization, data center efficiency projects, and cloud computing.

In addition to projects based in the IT department, companies are increasingly using technology to help reduce the impact of their larger operations, a trend dubbed "Green IT 2.0." These projects include more sophisticated tools like virtual meeting systems, building energy controls, or logistics optimization.

The SME survey results follow on the company's larger Energy Efficient IT report, which found companies able to cut costs by 17 percent or more through green IT projects. That survey sample didn't include SME respondents, so CDW commissioned a separate study to gauge the small business response to green IT.

The full set of responses can be downloaded from CDW.com [PDF].