BT

Climate change is a reality – sustainable development is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. Given its size and influence, the banking/financial services industry needs to think about the environmental and economic impact of their businesses. The reality of the situation is as follows:

Financial organisations purchase up to twice as many servers as they did five years ago in response to demand: long-term storage of customer related pre- and post-trade data (MiFID, Reg NMS). Despite this overall usage of these servers can be as low as 10%

Financial organisations continue to expand and grow in emerging markets. There is a need to reduce the physical costs of facilitating this expansion.

With the financial cost of dealing with natural disasters expected to reach $150 million USD over the next ten years, investment firms will need to show that they are responding to scientific information about climate change.

As the topic of climate change has become mainstream, customers and shareholders are asking financial organisations what they are doing in this space.

A series of clear targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions as part of the UK Government Climate Change Bill (60% reduction by 2050) will encourage companies to reduce their own emissions.

No one has all the answers, but BT is a lot further down the road than most corporations. We integrate social and environmental concerns into our business operations on a voluntary basis over and above the minimum regulatory requirements, to grow shareholder value and help make sustainable development happen. BT has reduced its carbon footprint by 60% since 1996 with an objective of 80% by 2016. This was achieved by the following means:

Renewable energy procurement (100% of Green Energy in the UK)

Direct energy efficient improvements
Business process and behavioral change (homeworking, tele- and video-conferencing)

In addition, BT's approach has won it numerous awards. The following are a few examples:

In September 2007 BT was ranked the world's top telecommunications company in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh year running. Dow Jones assessed 2,500 companies worldwide as part of its annual review. Areas covered include corporate governance, investor relations, environmental management, digital inclusion, human rights and risk management.

BT was awarded the prestigious Golden Peacock Award for CSR for the second time in 2007. The award is made by the World Council for Corporate Governance to encourage competitiveness and recognizes corporate governance and CSR around the globe. It is awarded for corporate excellence in quality, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, innovation, training, environment management, ecological leadership and business leadership.

BT has been named as one of the 'Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World' by Innovest for three years in succession. This global business ranking identifying the top 100 was first unveiled at the World Economic Forum, held in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2005. Companies are selected on their ability to manage strategic opportunities in new environmental and social markets. Research and analysis was conducted by environmental investment advisory firm, Innovest Strategic Advisors.

BT can share a range of activities in which we are currently engaged for our own business and for our customers which can demonstrably reduce carbon emissions. These include:

BT Carbon Impact Assessment: BT's Sustainability Practice created the BT Carbon Impact Assessment to help customers assess and measure their enterprise's carbon footprint, and identify the most effective targets for reducing emissions. BT focuses on the use of networked IT services as a way of reducing CO2 emissions partly because this is where our expertise lies, but mostly because we've found that relatively small changes in the way a business uses networked IT can have a disproportionate impact on its carbon footprint.
Server/datacenter virtualization and consolidation: significantly reducing server real-estate (often factors of 10-50% reduction in infrastructure required to deliver key services) through removing excessive infrastructure and consolidating onto reliant but much reduced footprint.
Application hosting through shared infrastructure and services: having multiple businesses each run their own separate instances of common applications (email, billing, payroll, etc.) represents an unnecessarily high energy cost and footprint. These can be part of shared or managed of BT hosted services. This includes 21CN and BT's Radianz Shared Market Infrastructure, the largest dedicated network serving the financial services industry.
Energy Efficient Turrets: Our latest generation turret, ITS. Netrix, has been redesigned with energy savings capabilities. ITS. Netrix uses less power, runs faster, and takes up less space on a trader's desk.
Agile/home working solutions: reducing need to commute to specific offices/locations is a major avenue to explore for significant reductions in energy consumption and carbon emissions. BT can design, implement and manage a fully flexible working environment, including the trading room with our soft turret (ITS Anywhere) BT has been developing flexible working practices within our own organisation over many years, so we have the know-how to provide optimal technical and cultural solutions that address both current and future requirements.
Teleconferencing/video conferencing and web conferencing: allows people to meet in virtual context but maintain visual contact and share documents/applications/presentations real-time. Significantly reduces the need to travel while allowing groups to successfully interact and conduct their business.

For more information on the Carbon Impact Assessment Service and Green Data Centres, please access the following thought leadership papers:

BT Carbon Impact Assessment Green Data Centres

Should you need more information about BT's Green Bank proposition, please contact Mary McCarthy - mary.mccarthy@bt.com