Steve O’Donnell drinks black coffee with no sugar.  I’ve never been able to take coffee that way – I like milky and sweet.

I was interviewing Steve for a Financial Times article I’m writing on heat in data centres. Someone had told me he is the man to talk to about this – and they were right.

Steve left BT six months ago as Global Head of Data Centres to join First Data International (the global credit, debit, gift and prepay card processing business) where he runs IT.

We had a good old chinwag and I asked him, if you outsource part of your business, does that part of a carbon footprint still belong to you?

“Oh yes,” was his answer (he’s Scottish and I wish he’d said ‘laddie’).  “If your business operations are consuming carbon then it’s part of your carbon footprint. It’s a bit like dumping chemical waste in India. You can’t do that.

“A carbon footprint is a carbon footprint, regardless of where.”

Steve runs a great blog called the Hot Aisle, which is read by some of the top CIOs and IT directors in the world.