WASHINGTON-Government information technology managers need to look at green IT both from a defensive and an offensive perspective, author and Yale University professor Daniel Esty said this week at the Green Computing Summit.

Esty, a former top official at the Environmental Protection Agency, and an adviser to the Obama campaign on environmental issues, said that with IT consuming 2 percent of the nation's energy supply-on par with the airline industry-it's important to take significant defensive steps to reduce the energy consumed by data centers and IT systems in the public and private sectors.

But IT officials also need to look offensively at "the enabling possibilities, where IT deployed cleverly, can reduce energy consumption" and the carbon emissions of entire enterprises. "So if we look at lighting, it's not just using more efficient bulbs, but using information to manage lighting better," he said, during one of the conference's keynote addresses.

Esty said that IT managers will need to play an important role in the future, helping to create systems that can support and audit regulatory controls, track environmentally harmful emissions using sensors, and develop models for issuing and trading carbon permits.

But he warned, "You need to be strategic on how you do this." IT managers need to understand the issues their organizations face, build an analytical framework around stakeholders, prioritize, find best practices, and be able to deliver. Esty said that in spite of the current economic crisis, a variety of logical factors have come together to foster the long-term trend toward greater environmental stewardship, both among the public and within mainstream businesses.

The Green Computing Summit was held Dec. 2-3 by 1105 Government Information Group, parent company of Government Computer News.