A key cause of this is data centers, which enable cloud computing and thus the massive amounts of on-demand data and analytics that lead to more efficient manufacturing, water and waste management and other processes. In addition to using massive amounts of energy - Lux Research says data centers use more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually - data centers guzzle huge amounts of water to support their cooling needs.

Brian Gamble, IM coordinator North America at Veolia Global Enterprises, knows this first-hand.

"IT is one of the largest consumers of electricity so reducing our company's carbon footprint falls heavily on our group," he said. "A typical data center is inherently not efficient or effective in power usage."

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