IT equipment is thought to be as harmful as the airline industry Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the production, operation and disposal of computers is to be the aim of a new government taskforce. Computers and other IT equipment have been blamed for causing as much global warming as the airline industry. The taskforce will oversee the piloting of a "green PC" service in which individual machines use 98% less energy than standard PCs. IT equipment is thought to generate 35m tonnes of harmful CO2 gas each year.