How can IT make my operations greener?

Lots. IT can help almost any part of the business lessen its environmental impact. For example, technologists can help reduce the amount of paper employees use for printing or deploy tracking systems to measure plant emissions. Such practices can save companies money and also generate revenue.

At Sun Microsystems, OpenWork, the company's telecommuting program, provides employees with shared office space, home equipment and subsidies for DSL and electricity, according to Dave Douglas, VP of eco responsibility at Sun. More than 56 percent of Sun's employees are currently in the program. "In the last five years we have cut our office space by one-sixth and have saved over $60 million a year on space and power," Douglas said in a roundtable interview about energy-efficient IT for CIO.com. Sun also saves an estimated 29,000 tons of CO₂ per year due to reduced employee commuting. That's equivalent to taking 5,694 cars off the road for one year, according to the EPA's carbon calculator.

Dow Chemical's process control automation system will shut a plant down if it is not compliant with air and water emissions requirements. Dow also uses a monitoring system to measure the air and water emissions at its plants and is deploying an environmental reporting system to manage reporting of this data to state and federal authorities, says CIO and Chief Sustainability Officer David Kepler.

IT systems can also help save energy by controlling heat and air conditioning in office buildings. Wireless sensors can be used to measure airflow and room occupancy. If the occupancy sensors (which turn lights on and off when people enter or leave a room) are networked to airflow sensors, the amount of air conditioning used when people are not in a room can be reduced, says Lawrence Berkeley's Koomey. "The basic idea is to collect data on how the facility is using energy and use that information to define patterns that can help change what you are doing and reduce operating costs."