KEY POINTS:
The roof of Google's Californian campus is peppered with more than 9000 solar panels and the company has ambitious plans to generate 50 megawatts of its own renewable energy by 2012.
Microsoft will be relying on a technology it calls "air-side economisation" to help reduce energy costs at
a new data centre it is building in Chicago.
Others would call it opening the windows; the idea is to let cool air flow through the facility at appropriate times.
In Japan, a consortium including Sun Microsystems is building a data centre deep within a mine to take advantage of the cooler environment and, again, a reduced electricity bill.
Going green is increasingly big business in IT.
For some corporate IT users, the trend is driven by necessity - reducing power consumption has become a top priority because limitations on their local power company infrastructure mean getting more electricity into their buildings is becoming a problem.
Local technology vendors report a surge in interest around eco-focused solutions from customers, especially those in the government sector.
Happily for the vendors, green technology is often not a hard sell because it tends to go hand-in-hand with saving money.
"The two are related - one's obviously more of a driver than the other," says Meech Aspden, New Zealand country manager for Philips.
"People are becoming more conscious of being environmentally friendly but for any business the bottom-line is the big issue, so that's probably the predominant driver at this time."
With lighting being a significant part of Philips' business, the company is keen on pushing its range of energy efficient bulbs.
At a corporate customer level, this can involve stumping up with a building energy audit, essentially telling a company how much money and energy they will save by installing the new technology.
At a global corporate level, Philips is also trying to walk the eco walk with grand Google-esque targets around reducing its internal carbon footprint and its business model. The company aims to generate 30 per cent of its revenue from "green products" by 2012 (up from 15 per cent last year). It also plans to increase the energy efficiencies of its operations by 25 per cent and double its investment in green innovations to $1 billion over the next five years.
At the consumer end of the market Aspden admits that there is more that companies like Philips need to do in terms of driving education programmes because with products like light bulbs, shoppers still tend to be focused on the up-front price rather than factoring in the full cost, including electricity consumption, over the bulb's life.
"I think there is a lot of interest but we are still a long way from making sure that individuals are actually educated and individuals take responsibility," she says.
Joseph Kremer, Dell's managing director for Australia and New Zealand, says Dell has been on a sustainability drive for about the past five years and its initiatives have included making its computers easier to disassemble at the end of their working life. The company has a policy taking in old machinery and recycling it for free. It also ran a recycling day in Wellington this year where residents could drop off unwanted technology.
"What we're seeing more and more is that the customer is starting to care about the behaviour of their vendor," Kremer says.
"We've had several instances where our being so much greener than anyone else has been influential in terms of us winning business."
With summer now officially upon us, I'd suggest local IT users practise a local version of air-side economisation to boost local green efforts. Turn off your computer (and your monitor) and spend an hour outside enjoying the sunshine.
