Energy costs have outranked the costs of healthcare, payroll, rent and even equipment for small businesses around the world. Thus, greener information technology practices have become a major trend in the biz world, although the United States is slow to adapt.

The move for small and midsized businesses to adopt green building, use hybrid vehicles or install solar panels has been slow. According to a survey conducted by IBM, the one area many businesses are focusing on is IT, purchasing more energy efficient information technology, consolidating servers and evaluating server usage and performance. Considering that for every dollar spent on IT, 50 cents is spent on related energy costs, this seems like a smart move.

But small businesses tend to follow different practices depending on where they are around the world. Only 38 percent of small businesses in the United States said that their businesses' concern for the environment affects their company's decisions on reducing energy usage, compared to 52 percent of non-U.S. small businesses. Similarly, nearly twice as many small businesses outside of the United States believe energy efficiency affects their IT purchases.

The survey sampled businesses in the United States, Australia, India, France, Brazil, Germany, Benelux and China. For the purpose of finding out why America is trailing behind, I'll ignore the fact that IBM probably conducted the survey to determine the arena for pushing its own services for small and midsized businesses. The question is, why the difference in opinion between American businesses and foreign ones?