Back in 2005 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) signed an agreement aimed at reducing the impact on the environment of the 2008 games, which begin on August 8 - read it here.

While flying thousands of people around the world for a sports event may not do much for carbon dioxide emissions, there does at least seem to be a broad awareness of the issues on the part of the Organising Committee, and the UNEP agreement covered air, water and noise pollution as well as  transport, landscaping and the disposal of solid waste.

The Olympics website has an interesting list of articles around environmental topics, although none are very recent.

And it seems that green issues are also being taken into account when it comes to the  IT infrastructure, at least according to this report from Zhejiang Online about the kit provided by the main supplier, Lenovo, the Chinese-owned computer company that took over IBM’s personal computer division in 2005.

The article focuses on the energy-efficiency of its new generation of desktop computers, the Kai Tian M5250.  As the article notes: ‘according to lab testing, 2000 units of Lenovo Kai Tian M5250 computers could save approximately 390,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity from January to September 2008 for the Beijing Olympic Games, an equivalent to a budget reduction of over 400,000 yuan (US$57,000)’

It may not be much given the scale of the Olympics, but at least it shows that green computing is being taken seriously as part of the environmental impact, and may provide a useful model for future events of this scale.