British Airways (BA) is placing environmental policies and practices at the heart of its strategy this year, and has given its backing to our Green Computing campaign.

The airline industry is regularly criticised for its contribution to carbon emissions, and earlier this year the government doubled the amount of passenger duty people pay when taking flights from the UK.

But BA’s chief information officer Paul Coby says the firm is very conscious of its environmental responsibilities and IT is central to improving its practices.

‘Everybody has a part to play and Computing is absolutely right in its green campaign,’ he said.

‘Clearly from an airline point of view we are committed to doing a lot in terms of the issue such as with air passenger duty, but on the IT side it is really important that we understand what the environmental costs of running technology are.’

Coby has asked IT operations staff to document green costs.

‘I want them to bring an overall green audit to my leadership team. For example, costs to do with running two data centres and global networks,’ he said.

BA already follows environmentally-friendly IT policies including responsible disposal of hardware, but Coby acknowledges that more can be done.

‘We get kit reconditioned by a charity and it is used by a teacher training pool in Nairobi,’ he said. ‘However, I am sure we can do more and we have a focus this year to do things to lessen our carbon footprint.’

The firm announced its financial results last week, reporting record annual sales of £8.5bn.

While profits slumped £100m, BA has increased IT spending by seven per cent.

A spokesman says the increase is modest but the productivity gains that have occurred because of the spending are significant.

‘The IT department has targets to improve efficiencies and that has been successful,’ he said. ‘We have rolled out systems that deliver more for less.’

Computing reported last week the airline is considering testing mobile phone-based tickets.

Sign up to our Green Computing campaign at:
www.computing.co.uk/greencomputing