One of the areas of focus for my role at Dimension Data is Green IT, and in that capacity I have attended or spoken at a number of ICT and climate change conferences over the past 12 months. At these events I've found that there is always at least one amazing green concept or innovation presented - but once the conference is over, what happens to those ideas?

Last month, I participated in a media roundtable together with other industry representatives. One of the speakers was John Maunder, CIO at the South Australian Department of Transport, Energy & Infrastructure who presented a range of lateral ideas on ways in which his department's ICT infrastructure can contribute to reducing our impact on the environment. John spoke about the idea of enabling Wi-Fi access on public transport to make it a more attractive option to commuters and thereby increase utilisation. He also explained how traffic flow systems can be applied intelligently to ensure that peak hour traffic is kept moving, reducing the time that vehicles spend on the road emitting carbon.

However, the most compelling concept John put forward was to propose that we get serious about "hot rock" technology - geothermal energy. He also suggested that we should locate data centres - one of the most significant energy consumers in ICT - at the source of these geothermal energy plants, such as in Central Australia, and transfer data from these centres to our major business centres over fibre optic cable. Why do this? Because transmitting electricity over long distances involves significant energy loss (up to 70 percent in some instances).

Now, we have just had news of Google investing in geothermal technology in the United States. No great surprise, given the scale of their data centres, with an estimated 450,000 servers across 25 countries. A day later, our Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announces $A50 million funding for a national geothermal drilling program. As these drilling programs are likely to be in pretty remote locations in Australia (given the map on Earth2Tech) we should already be thinking about applying ideas like those put forward by John Maunder.

We are starting to do a good job of capturing and sharing ideas on what we can do personally to reduce our impact on the environment. For instance, at Dimension Data, our people have access to a personal carbon calculator - Zerofootprint  - which gives them the ability to not only estimate their carbon footprint but also provides information and assistance in taking steps to reduce it. Things like eating more organic food and less meat, car pooling, installing energy-efficient lighting and composting kitchen waste.

However, at a corporate and government level, we are not doing nearly enough to capture and share ideas in the same way. There are potentially hundreds, if not thousands of ways in which we can either reduce ICT's consumption of energy or apply ICT laterally to reduce our individual or collective carbon emission levels. We just don't have the mechanism to capture this innovation, quantify its environmental benefit and share it with corporate Australia.

As Zerofootprint states on its website: "our individual actions, whether large or small, have a collective impact that will ultimately determine our future".

When it comes to climate change, collective action is what it's all about - and it doesn't matter whether you are an individual or an organisation.

How are you sharing your ideas on Green IT with Australian business and government? I'd welcome your thoughts, either by contacting me directly (gerard.florian@didata.com.au), or by posting a comment to this article.

Gerard Florian was appointed Dimension Data's Australian CTO in 2001. Gerard works closely with both local and global Dimension Data management to define the overall direction and strategy of the business, focusing on technologies, solutions and services. He is also responsible for marketing that strategy and Dimension Data's value proposition to staff, clients and partners. His work with vendors encompasses creating and improving their long-term plans and partnerships with Dimension Data. Gerard has been in the IT industry for over 20 years and joined Dimension Data in 1992, holding various technical positions involving pre-sales and consulting responsibilities. Prior to Dimension Data, he was Consultant and Network Engineer for several network integration companies, as well as undertaking various network consulting projects.