The debate about green computing and the energy consumption of our many and various information and communications technologies is clearly going to be important in the tech world this year.  Big players like Google and IBM are pushing their green agendas and the high price of oil is forcing even climate change deniers to look at their energy costs. They may not care about saving the planet, but they want to stay in business.

However the real question is whether this awareness and interest can break out of the IT community and attract the attention of the wider world.  The energy consumption of home computers and the many electronic devices we all use every day may be relatively small compared to a cooker or a heating system, but it counts, and cumulatively it matters as much as the server farms run by large organisations.

The key thing is providing information, of course. IBM mainframes are very good at monitoring their energy use, and big server farms do the same. At home we generally know far less about moment-to-moment energy consumption.

This is starting to change. My partner has just got herself a smart meter that displays her electricity consumption on an LED display, and it's fascinating to see my laptop sucking down its power as I write this - it's taking around 0.05Kwh at the moment, but that's because the battery is fully charged.

Here in Cambridge a new company called Alert Me has a home monitoring system based around an internet-connected smart hub and RFID-based devices. It is sold primarily as an alarm system, but you can also get temperature sensors to keep an eye on things like the fridge or the central heating, and it could easily be extended to show electricity an even gas consumption.

If that information was sent to the website it would make it easy to keep track of energy consumption. We could even set up a competition, where the person with the lowest energy consumption gets a small reward!