Hollywood IT: There's No Green Here

When it comes to green IT, the digital media and entertainment industry is all image and no substance. A new report shows that even though the entertainment industry thinks it should green its IT infrastructure, it gives itself grades of C, D, and F for work actually done.

The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and its Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) group decided to survey what progress has been made toward greening IT in digital media and entertainment-related businesses. So it surveyed IT professionals in the industry. The results weren't pretty.

First, some background. The entertainment industry is a surprisingly sizable polluter. A UCLA study found that California's film industry is the state's second largest polluter, trailing only the oil industry. And as the entertainment industry goes digital, its IT infrastructure becomes a bigger and bigger polluter.

The GREEN study found that IT professionals in the industry think something should be done...but no one actually seems to be doing much. So 99% of IT professionals in the industry believe that their digital media and& entertainment industry-related businesses should reduce their carbon footprint, but 76% give the industry a C, D, or F for their actual environmental practices. Only 2% gave the industry an A.

There's more disturbing news, still. Consider these figures, quoted directly from the survey:

• 77 percent allocate only 10 percent or less of their budget towards green IT
• 53 percent don't have or don't know if they have a corporate sustainability agenda
• Only 22 percent say management is highly sensitized to the Think Eco-Logical message
• Top three environmental activities that executives are undertaking are conducting discussions, publishing guidelines, and doing nothing!

Rackable Systems, a sponsor of the report, has a press release about it here. You can download the entire report here.