Global services giant Accenture today announced a new suite of tools aimed at helping firms better assess their energy consumption and efficiency.

Announcing the suite Steve Nunn, global lead for Green IT at Accenture, said, the new tools would provide organisations with "much-needed insight into their power consumption and environmental footprint". "By implementing the specific, tailored green recommendations, organisations can achieve measurable environmental improvements that contribute to bottom line savings," he added.

The Accenture Green Technology Suite lets firms assess where they sit within a so-called "green maturity spectrum". Once an initial assessment has been carried out, the suite then identifies areas where savings could be made.

The suite also features comprises a number of different elements: a Green Maturity Model, a Data Centre Estimator, and a Workplace Estimator.

The first of these asks the user some 300 questions about their working practices, their office environment, data centre, procurement and corporate social responsibility activities. Once this is completed Accenture will rate the firm on a scale of nought to five, depending on their activities.

Meanwhile, the Data Centre Estimator will be used to provide an idea of the environmental and financial impact of a firm's server farms. Again it results in a number of suggestions, recommending how and where energy can be reduced. For example, Accenture said that changes could be made to a firms' air conditioning, server, storage, or networking components tio enhance energy efficiency.

Finally, the Workplace estimator can be used to develop policies for the energy efficient running of existing and new office equipment. The company said the web-based tool will be is used by Accenture consultants to identify the impact of PCs and other office equipment and develop a roadmap for firms to help bring down their energy usage.