Seven in ten EU end-user organisations do not have a system to measure the environmental impact of their data centre IT workloads and infrastructure.
The findings were unveiled by Roel Castelein, EMEA marketing chair at The Green Grid, during DCD Converge Europe 2015 in London.
The survey of 150 IT decision makers in the UK, France and Germany has found that 88% of companies have data centre resource efficiency in their CSR strategy. 62% said data centre efficiency is discussed at board level.
Castelein said: "Data centres are recognised as a major factor in achieving resource efficiency."
The Green Grid is a collaborative organisation committed to improving the resource efficiency of data centres and business computing ecosystems.
As 67% of those surveyed said they do not have a measurement system in place to measure environmental impact, Castelein questioned "how will you ever improve if you do not know how to measure it?".
Only 29% of organisations said they have such system, while 5% said they do not know about it.
He said: "People understand that data centres are important. They are concerned about its impact to the bottom line.
"Cost reduction is still more important than energy efficiency. [However,] The pressure is building and IT leaders are feeling the pressure."
Over 50% of IT leaders said they believe the pressure for change will come from policy makers like the European Commission. This is followed by industry associations, standard bodies, vendors and investors.
Nearly 45% said they do not have energy efficiency objectives in place. Castelein said: "This is kind of a wakeup call."
97% of respondents said they see clear areas for improvements and nearly 70% believe increased investment on tools can help improve work in energy efficiency.
Castelein said: "The highest priority for innovation is 45% for compute power and 55% for energy efficiency. It is about measuring.
"If data centre operators can incorporate measures to increase energy efficiency, reduce their footprint and improve sustainability whilst balancing costs (OPEX and CAPEX) against the demands on the data centre performance, then there is agreement. Otherwise it is business as usual."
