IT vendors can play a major role in reducing the world's energy consumption, but information about the benefits of technology has been lacking in an ongoing environmental debate in Washington, D.C., three tech CEOs said Wednesday.

While IT consumption of energy in the U.S. has grown in the last decade, technology also displaces more than its share of energy-consuming activities in other sectors, members of the Technology CEO Council said. The advocacy group highlighted a report, released Wednesday, saying that every kilowatt hour of energy used by IT replaces 10 kilowatt hours of energy that would have been used elsewhere.

IT currently uses about 6 percent of U.S. electricity, up from 2 percent to 3 percent in 2000, said John "Skip" Laitner, co-author of the report and director of economic policy analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). But through a wide variety of IT products, including tech that enables video conferencing, telecommuting and e-mail, technology results in a net decrease in energy consumption, he said.

Instead of flying to a conference in Sweden recently, Laitner attended by video conference, he said. And in preparing the ACEEE's report, Laitner received thousands of pages of documents by e-mail or downloads, instead of having them delivered.

Few studies have explored the energy efficiencies created by IT, he added. "We have to look at what that's displacing," he said.

Users of computers and other tech products should expect more energy savings in the future, said Dell CEO Michael Dell. He joined Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials, and Joe Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, at a press briefing focused on green technologies.

"As an industry, we have begun to take up the [environmental] issue in a serious way," Dell said. "It's an issue that customers care about."

The IT industry has come under some criticism for its energy use, particularly at large data centers. In January 2007, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, introduced a bill that would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to analyze and report to Congress about the growth and energy consumption of computer data centers by the federal government and private companies.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.