Software: Lean and Green

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Microsoft is also tuning Windows 7—the version of its flagship operating system due later this year—to conserve PC power by reducing the amount of system software running in the background, adjusting a processor's performance to meet the user's computing requirements at any given time.

Green Building Design

In the past year, engineering and design software maker Autodesk (ADSK) has acquired three software companies whose programs help architects design eco-friendly buildings. Autodesk's Green Building Studio software can analyze a planned building's energy and water usage and carbon emissions. Its Ecotect tool lets architects and engineers see how sunlight, shade, and airflow will effect energy consumption by a building's occupants. And Autodesk bought Carmel Software, whose product computes cooling and heating requirements to help design efficient heating and air-conditioning systems. Autodesk is betting the new products will continue to drive growth of its 3D design tools, even though "some people think sustainable design is a fad," CEO Carl Bass said in an interview last year.

Other software vendors are looking at ways to make energy supplies more efficient. German business applications maker SAP (SAP) sells software called Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which lets utilities keep customers up to date on their meter readings and charge variable rates to move loads to off-peak hours. SAP is consulting with European utilities on such "smart metering" projects, and is said to be developing an application—due out this year—to help companies better track energy usage across their operations. The company's chief competitor, Oracle (ORCL), is also touting its applications' ability to help companies cut waste from their purchasing and shipping operations.

IBMis taking a different approach, emphasizing how governments and businesses can invest together in powerful computer systems and data analysis software to address problems like climate change and food supply safety. Big Blue has several projects underway in the U.S., Europe, and Asia as part of its "smarter planet" initiative, which it announced in November. In Stockholm, IBM software and computers predicted traffic flows and rewrote the city's bus schedule to cut traffic by one-fifth and reduce carbon emissions from vehicles by 12%, according to IBM. "It's a big bet, controlling the traffic for the entire city," says vice-president Bob Sutor. "But this is what IBM does well."

It's not just business software that's getting the green treatment. Google (GOOG) on Feb. 2 released a new version of its Google Earth visualization software, emphasizing features that let scientists add their own data to the virtual globe, for instance by displaying the effect of climate change on temperatures. "It's not just a fun demo," CEO Eric Schmidt said at a San Francisco press conference announcing the product. "It really is a platform for science."

A raft of software companies are hoping customers take their new green products as seriously.

Ricadela is a writer for BusinessWeek in Silicon Valley.