With the ESB making noises about not being able to generate enough power for private and commercial use in the coming years, some of the bigger consumers of power, such as data centres, are starting to look at ways of reducing their usage and become environmentally friendly.

Jason O'Conaill, sales and marketing director at Servecentric, says the IT industry has woken up to the realities of the environment and the cost of power. To this end Servecentric has installed Climaveneta fan units that suck in the outside air to cool the centre. This has led to a 20 per cent cut in power requirements, which means six-figure sums are saved every year.

The company is also engaging in a "lights-off" policy in an effort to curb costs and reduce more heat.

"Because of the increased cost of power there is an imperative to save money but also to burn fewer kilowatts. So our requirement and desire is to burn less power.

"At the end of the day data centres are burning barrels of oil. And we know we have to get our house in order now because there's going to be a major problem coming down the line in a few years. Either lack of power, very prohibitive costs or government labelling of data centre efficiency, such as they're doing in Britain."

O'Conaill said power consumption would probably increase in the next few years due to the demand for computer services and data centres to house them, hastening the need for action now before the problem is unmanageable.

"Customers should also be aware of power-efficient servers. The first question they should ask their vendor is about the power output of the unit and can they recommend a unit with less power output for the same IT service delivery.

"Customers pay for power usage in a data centre so it's in their interests to buy power-efficient servers."