IN THE FINAL instalment of The Courier’s six-day examination of Dundee’s credentials for becoming Intelligent Community of the Year for 2008, we lift the lid on the environmental impact of embracing technology. And with the Intelligent Community Forum picking sustainability as its theme for this year, Dundee’s green approach is integral to its attempt to take the coveted title.

Scotland’s fourth city has an enviable position, sitting as it does at the mouth of the River Tay, with the Sidlaw hills protecting its northern flank.

Panoramic views over the city’s parks, open spaces and green areas are available to all with a literally breathtaking walk up the Law, and from there visitor or local alike can take in almost all of the 24 square miles that make up Dundee.

But within that relatively small area there are almost 143,000 people living, supplemented by around 20,000 more who come into the city to work each day.

And while residents and commuters do not have to contend with the obvious pollution of the city’s heavily industrialised past - the infamous postcard showing numerous chimneys belting out black noxious smoke with the ironic slogan Welcome to Dundee sticks in many minds - environmental awareness and sustainability is a vital component of the drive towards the success of the new economy.

Dundee City Council is the lead organisation in the City of Discovery’s so far successful participation in the Intelligent Community Forum’s promotion of areas using the latest technology to regenerate their economies.

As such many have looked to the local authority to provide a template for the use of hardware and software that has a minimal impact on the environment and yields a smaller carbon footprint.

For almost a decade the council has been moving towards providing its staff with what technical types call “thin client devices,” a computer that has no disc drive and as a result no moving parts.

In the past nine years more than 2000 units of this greener technology have been supplied to staff in a wide variety of different departments from administration staff to managers.

During that time their use has also been promoted to the wider public sector in Dundee, through leading by example and word of mouth.

Thin client devices use very little power, which means that the carbon footprint is 51% less than a normal PC or laptop with the equivalent amount of memory, but with no loss in its ability to do what it needs to do for the user.

Because it has no moving parts, and with it being small and robust, a thin client device has a longer working life, meaning each typically needs replaced every seven years, compared with the industry average of four years for the equivalent PC.

Taking the whole product life cycle into consideration, less resources are being used to produce them, they are replaced less frequently so not so much energy is consumed manufacturing them, and less carbon is being generated by their use.

There is also a human angle to the use of this technology. Thanks to the way that the computer systems have been set up, staff will do less travelling, and by implication produce a smaller carbon footprint.

All of the programmes that run on a thin client device are stored at the datacentre, so Dundee City Council does not need to send its IT staff to the office where there may be a problem. It can all be done remotely.

But the greening of the information technology that supports and drives Dundee City Council does not stop there. The council has consolidated all of its servers at the centre on low-footprint, blade devices.

Attractive to the council because they use less power than conventional servers, the installation of blade type servers in one place also has a desired positive knock on effect.

Greater energy efficiency is achieved across the council, because centralising the servers means that there are none at any of the 350 or more sites where the council has a presence.

Therefore the cooling/air-conditioning needed wherever heat-generating servers are to be found is done in one place, with the consequent massive reduction in high-energy-use cooling/air-conditioning equipment.

Dundee’s ongoing regeneration has cemented its position as the economic centre for Tayside and as a key player in 21st century Scotland.

Its growing strengths in biotechnology, digital media, modern engineering, telecommunications and high tech manufacturing have underpinned a phase of economic growth not seen since the dark days of the industrial revolution.

This time round, however, thanks to the green example of the council, which is increasingly being picked up by other public sector organisations, the city, its environs, and the whole world will still have a chance to breathe clean air.

The Intelligent Community of the Year award will be announced in New York on May 18.