The government has set up a taskforce to reduce the carbon footprint of IT by addressing the production and efficiency of computer hardware.

The public-private 'Green Shift' taskforce will be led by Manchester City Council and will oversee the piloting of a 'green PC' service in which individual machines use 98 per cent less energy than standard PCs.

The service works by using thin-client technology, hosting applications on data centres, which will be more energy efficient than PCs.

It will also aim to use 75 per cent fewer resources in the production of PCs.

'Innovative proposals like the green PC service are essential if we are to tackle climate change,' said Local Government Minister Phil Woolas.

'Only if all of our communities are engaged in action to tackle climate change will we be successful,' he said.

The service will be piloted in early 2008, and rolled out in late 2009.

Research from Gartner has blamed the IT industry for 2 per cent of global CO2 emissions, equal to that of the airline industry.