Does this sound like an exaggeration? It isn't. In 2005, total data center electricity consumption in the US, including servers, cooling and auxiliary equipment, was approximately 45 billion kWh, consuming as much as all color televisions in the county and using as much power as the entire state of Mississippi, according to a recent survey by AMD. That is the total output of five 1000-megawatt coal power plants. And that usage is soaring exponentially, with the power usage of data centers having doubled between 2000 and 2005.

In the next three years, individuals and organizations worldwide will replace more than one billion computers. The average mobile phone in the US is replaced after just 18 months, and more than 75 per cent of all computers ever sold remain stockpiled in our closets, garages, office storage rooms and warehouses. "After years of helping global organizations manage the recycling/disposal/re-marketing of retired IT assets, the days of companies turning a blind eye to proper IT asset disposal are over," says Chris Adam, NextPhase director of IT asset management solutions.

Consumers will decide

The article Competitive Advantage on a Warming Planet in the Harvard Business Review points out that whatever your industry the numerous risks associated with global warming are affecting your business, from tough emission-reduction legislation through to a damaging backlash from consumers concerned about the environment to weather-related damage to physical assets.

"Consumers are increasingly taking your environmental record into account when they make purchasing decisions. And investors are already discounting share prices of firms poorly positioned to compete in a carbon constrained world," authors Jonathan Lash and Fred Wellington say. However, they add that the risks of climate change also offer new sources of competitive advantage for companies prepared to measure their firm's contribution to global warming, assess their climate-related risks and opportunities then reinvent their business -- before rivals do -- to mitigate those risks and seize the opportunities.

Environmentalist and former VP Al Gore recently implored an audience of Silicon Valley executives and technologists to use their collective knowledge and resources to promote green technology that causes less pollution and can reverse the effects of climate change. "The world faces an unprecedented challenge and Silicon Valley can make an unprecedented contribution to meeting that challenge," Gore told them. "You can change the future of civilization."

That line of reasoning applies to CIOs as much as IT vendors and software companies, and some industries are already rising to the challenge. Lawson Software vice president of marketing Jeff Frank predicts responsibility for green business practices will eventually be placed squarely in the lap of the CIO. Like any other business problem, the organization initially tries to manage its eco-responsibilities in a piecemeal, fragmented and manual way before realizing that that approach does not work, he says.

When things start to fall apart they then turn to IT and the CIO to lead the charge on managing programs and bringing information together in the interest of better decision making. "Ultimately, the CIO is going to really be one of the driving forces behind how companies manage their green business practices and corporate social responsibility programs," Frank says. "What CIOs should expect from their business application providers are really the tools to bring together the fragmented programs that they're trying to manage today into an integrated dashboard that would allow the CIO and decision makers across the company to better manage their CSR [corporate social responsibility] and green business practice in a more integrated manner."

And they should also expect and be prepared to change their own approaches and thinking. "When a CIO decides to go green in response to global warming, a change in thinking needs to precede a change in corporate decision making," says Judah Freed, the author of Global Sense. "A chief information officer familiar with general systems theory already thinks of his or her organization as an interconnected network. Going green means seeing that organization interacting within the wider planetary system, so the green CIO wants to ensure the information network truly makes global sense.

"Beyond videoconferencing instead of air travel, beyond component recycling instead of throwing away obsolete computers and other enterprise technology, the CIO can choose among a range of options," Freed says. But as Chris Homer, VP sales and marketing and legislative affairs with environmental management software solution company EnvironMax, notes, any efforts by the CIO will go nowhere without support from the top. "The first and most critical requirement is for a CIO to make it a point to secure executive buy-in and subsequent budgetary commitments to green initiatives," he says. "In my experience, technology funding for environmental issues within corporations is almost always at the bottom of the list. Companies don't fund green initiatives -- generally speaking -- until there's a problem, such as EPA or OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] fines, or a PR-based need, such as consumer or environmentalist-based complaints or concerns, for change.

"The CIOs who are visionary in this area, and make the effort and proactive commitment to the environmental impacts of their organizations, are the ones who are well ahead of the game in terms of positively affecting the environment, presenting their companies as good citizens and realizing cost savings and bottom line positive results to their financials," Homer says.