Three in four CIOs consider green IT an important element in their overall IT strategy, and 15% rate it as their top priority, according to a recent Datamonitor survey. Good intentions are well and good, but where should your IT shop begin its green journey?

Given the myriad of possible entry points, it's an important question. Answers vary depending on your context:

• From the top-down: Align to your firm's companywide sustainability initiatives. For example, if waste reduction is a corporate goal, start by enforcing double-sided printing, or begin recycling or donating your end-of-life IT assets.
• From the bottom-up: Take stock of pains in your IT shop. Green IT can help minimize - or even eliminate - out-of-budget, out-of-power, or out-of-space challenges. For example, if datacenter space is limited, server virtualization is a common consolidation technique with green benefits, such as energy savings and reduced e-waste from operating less physical servers.

My advice? Focus your initial green IT efforts on reducing IT's energy consumption. Why? Reducing IT's energy footprint offers tangible benefits, both environmental (reduced CO2) and economic (reduced costs). I'm not going out on a limb here - just look at the IT user and vendor communities:

• Users are asking...according to a recent survey by Forrester Research, the number-one green IT motivation for IT procurement and operations professionals is "reducing energy-related operating expenses."
• ...and vendors are reacting. The vendors have been picked up on this, one-upping each other with energy efficiency improvements - just last week both Sun and IBM touted energy-efficiency innovations in their server and supercomputer hardware.

However - and there's always a "but" - before reconfiguring your IT environment or spending money on new energy-efficient equipment, quantify IT's portion of the energy bill. The old adage that "you can't manage what you can't measure" is particularly relevant here: you will not be able to accurately quantify, and then report to senior management, the environmental and economic benefits of any green IT initiative without establishing a baseline on which to track improvement.

A final word of encouragement for the CIOs out there: Your success in making the business case for green IT - particularly as it relates to energy savings - has far-ranging consequences for your company's overall environmental strategy. Armed with solid numbers you'll be better equipped to get the rest of the C-suite thinking about how greener (read: smarter) IT can pay dividends throughout the organization.

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Doug Washburn is a senior advisor at Forrester Research, where he advises clients on sustainable business and green IT practices and the role of technology in business. He also hosts SLM's Greener IT Update e-newsletter.