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Companies are investing big in IT, but it's not necessarily paying off in environmental dividends, according to a new survey of IT professionals around the world.

The Green IT Benchmark report, sponsored by Fujitsu, looked at how enterprises in Australia, India, the U.K. and the U.S. are faring on five different categories of green IT. Perhaps not surprisingly, the data center and internal IT operations are the recipient of most IT departments' time and energy, while applying IT to the measurement, management and reduction of a company's overall carbon footprint is still a rare occurrence.

That fact is illustrated by last week's Power IT Down Day, which aimed to get IT managers and employees to turn off their PCs and peripherals before heading home for the weekend. While over 17,000 people signed up to participate -- the biggest turnout yet -- that's still a minuscule fraction of the population. Fortunately, powering IT down is an energy-saver year round.

In a dispatch from the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Corps program, Megan Rast looks at four ways eBay put PC power management to work, and outlines steps any company can take to get an energy-saving, green IT project underway.

This report from Greenpeace looks at how the rise of cloud computing will lead to a tripling of the IT industry's overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and suggests policy changes that IT companies should work for in addition to energy efficiency.

This webcast will showcase ways to make your firm's IT green, from meetings to fleets to operating costs.