Finalists:

The PC Pro Environmental Innovator award typically attracts an eclectic mix of companies, and this year was no different. Congratulations to all ten companies that made the cut to be finalists.

BT Global Services won its place for its continued work on Carbon Impact Assessment. This assessment service, where BT engineers assess a building's power, lighting and heating systems, helped cut BT's own carbon footprint by 58% between 1996 and 2006, and BT is now extending it to its customers.

We're already familiar with Dell's environmental initiatives, which include a plant-a-tree program, but this year saw something a little different. Dell not only made the Studio Hybrid to look different, it's also designed to use fewer resources throughout its life – from packaging to electricity.

D-Link powered its way onto the shortlist courtesy of its "Green Ethernet" technology, which puts key components into standby when it notes the connection is offline. It's already built into routers such as the DGS-1016D and DGS-1024D models, and D-Link intends to build the technology into all models.

Taiwanese manufacturer Gigabyte takes a similar approach with its Dynamic Energy Saver technology, which also earned it a place on this year's Technology Innovator shortlist. This deviously cuts power to core components on the motherboard when it sees that the CPU is in idle mode.

A company with tremendous potential to influence the world's power consumption is Google, and it certainly takes the responsibility seriously. Most recently, it announced a $10 million investment in Enhanced Geothermal Systems technology, which has the potential to power the whole globe!

The name gm2 Logistics will be less familiar to PC Pro readers, but it earned its place on this shortlist due to some holistic thinking and good use of technology. It's one of the UK's largest logistics companies, and used VMware software to reduce its server loads, Compellent's thin-provisioning software to reduce data needs, and transport scheduling software to cut down the miles.

We're torn here at PC Pro about home servers. We love the idea, but the energy they use due to being constantly on has been enough to stop us giving products awards. Fortunately, Tranquil PC has a solution in the form of its Harmony Home Server, which won a PC Pro Recommended award earlier this year.

Finally, we applaud the company that provides the technology behind so much of the good environmental work going on in the UK: VMware. Without its excellent work in creating virtualised environments, a lot of the energy-saving products we see passing through the PC Pro labs wouldn't be possible.