IT reseller Computacenter has this week unveiled plans to bring the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) system for identifying environmentally friendly IT kit to the UK. The move is designed to make it easier for firms to measure the energy footprint of their IT estate.

The EPEAT framework is run by the Green Electronics Council in the US and awards desktops, notebooks and monitors with gold, silver and bronze rankings based on a range of environmental criteria, including energy efficiency, elimination of hazardous substances and ease of recycling.

EPEAT also provides an online Electronics Environmental Benefits Calculator that allows a firm to estimate exactly how its purchases of EPEAT-registered products will reduce its environmental impact.

Under a new alliance with the Green Electronics Council, Computacenter has been granted permission to modify this calculator to reflect the UK's current energy mix.

Computacenter has also announced plans to develop a bespoke calculator that will reflect the specific energy mix of individual organisations, allowing them to take account of any renewable energy they use when calculating the environmental impact of new energy efficient IT kit. The company said that the new tools would "enable companies to audit their IT estates in order to benchmark performance and identify what equipment needs to be updated".

Heidi-Lynn Mitchell, product services director at Computacenter, said that there is growing demand for tools capable of simplifying purchasing decisions for energy-efficient IT kit. "Companies require a robust method to select high-performance, environmentally sound IT products," she said. "The EPEAT system, complemented by Computacenter's power consumption benchmarking service, provides IT decision-makers with a simple way to do this so they can reduce the environmental impact of their future IT estates."