BT makes it easier to be green

BT Global Services is making a commercial product out of parent company BT’s internal commitment to the environment, offering a service in the U.K. and the U.S. that assesses the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced by corporate IT departments. The new Carbon Impact Assessment service is aimed not only at BT customers but other corporations as well.

BT began its own carbon emissions initiative in 1996 and since then has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 60%, with a goal of hitting 80% by 2016. It has been recognized as the world’s number-one telco in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh consecutive year.

“The more we talked to other companies about what we were doing internally, the more they were interested in how we could help them do some of the same things,” said Scott Cain, head of IT transformation, BT Global Services.

The service provides a comprehensive five-week assessment that generally starts at the data center and works out, Cain said, “because that is where you can have the biggest bang for the buck.” Recommendations can be sweeping, to include such things as using motion-sensitive lights in offices, telecommuting, reducing corporate travel, changing to new servers or creating virtual call centers with distributed workers.

“The biggest changes can happen by making changes in the data center and coming out from there,” Cain said. “Corporate travel is a big one, but there is a huge downstream effect in changing the way you are doing your business, and that is a much longer process than, say, planting grass on the data center roof to reduce power consumption.”

The audit processes use standard questionnaires and an asset inventory, as well as proprietary calculations and processes BT developed internally, as part of its own carbon emissions initiative. The company is making a major commitment to this effort, Cain said, that is reflected in its hiring.

“We took some internal people who had already been involved in what we were doing ourselves, and they were tasked with creating proprietary calculations and methodology,” he said. “But then when we looked at how we can apply this to the market, we hired a few people that can help us with their own reputation.”

They include Dinah McLeod, head of BT Global Services’ sustainability practice, and Kevin Moss, a corporate social responsibility officer based in the U.S.

The recommendations are presented with information indicating the impact of each action so that companies can prioritize what they choose to do, Cain said.