Back in May, I suggested that a green bandwagon was beginning to roll through the IT marketing community. Well, I've been proved right.

Last week, I received three press releases within a matter of minutes, each touching or concentrating on this topic.

Wyse announced its EarthSmart Computing Initiative, promoting thin clients as a way of reducing environmental impact. Every 10 PCs replaced by thin clients and appropriate server infrastructure can reduce CO2 emissions by one ton per year.

The company is working towards the production of thin clients that run on Power over Ethernet. While this will help to reduce the clutter of cables on our desks, it is touting environmental benefits too - presumably one large power supply is more efficient than several small ones. I quite like this idea, but can't help wondering whether PoE can delivery enough current to drive an IP phone as well as a thin client - or will we have to switch to softphones?

Wyse is also planning a 'Zero-client computing' model. To quote the release, "This means removing a layer of circuitry associated with storing a local operating system and applications that make up the functionality of the thin client. By doing so customers get a more energy efficient device with no local operating system or applications, yet capable of delivering a full PC experience to the user." How does that compare with a terminal?

Secondly, Acer noticed that the Veriton 1000 ultra-small form factor PCs it has sold to the Australian Bureau of Statistics can reduce power consumption and hence carbon emissions by up to 50 percent compared with conventional designs.

But it was the missive from the Australian Computer Society that pointed out the significance of IT in the power consumption and emissions landscape: its audit found that "ICT use by Australian businesses generated 7.94 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2005, which is the close equivalent to the civil aviation and the metal production industries."

While transportation accounts for nearly half of CO2 emissions, business ICT is responsible for nearly three percent of stationary energy use.

Consequently, the ACS has established a Green ICT SIG for its members and come up with a policy for green IT that includes:

• Extending the Energy Rating System to cover ICT equipment;
• Leveraging innovative technologies to reduce power consumption;
• Purchasing carbon offsets - typical Australian ICT SMEs would be looking at less than $30 per employee year;
• Switching to IP softphones and combining the communications server with existing servers;
• Using virtualisation technology to significantly reduce the number of physical servers; and
• Disabling screen savers in favour of enabling 'sleep mode'.

Apart from purchasing carbon offsets, all these suggestions involve saving money. There's very little downside to making better use of sleep mode, for example.

While you might not rush out to buy new and more efficient equipment just to save energy, it makes sense to include power savings when developing a business case for proposed ICT expenditure.