There’s a lot of talk about green computing these days, but implementing energy-efficient IT is about saving greenbacks as well as trees.

“Green IT is primarily about saving money,” says Bryan Rood, director of Internet data center services at Quantros, a healthcare software provider in Milpitas, Calif. “If you want to have green IT, reducing the electric bill is one of the best ways to do it.”

The reality is simple: Data centers use a lot of energy. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data center and server energy use has doubled in the past five years and will nearly double again in the next five years, to a cost of about $7.4 billion annually.

CIOs can cut their ballooning electric bills if they build a strategy to help lower IT power costs. The key is tailoring a strategy to specific company needs, says Aaron Hay, research consultant at Info-Tech Research Group, a technology research company in London, Ontario, Canada.

"You have to look at two things: what your goals are versus what you think the organization can reasonably accomplish,” he says. For example, in a company with 1,000 PCs but only 15 servers, the PCs are using more collective energy. Upgrading to energy-efficient flat screen monitors would cut the energy bill more than server consolidation. On the other hand, a company with a 1,000-server farm in the data center should focus more on consolidation, he says.

CIOs should start with small, attainable projects and build a history of success. “Inventory what you have, and take the low-hanging fruit to get it out of the way,” says Mark Wood, director of data center infrastructure at Highmark Insurance in Pittsburgh, Pa. For example, easily installed software will automatically turn PCs off at night and on in the morning. “In a 1,500-PC company, you’re looking at about $30,000 to $40,000 in energy savings per year,” says Hay.