Intel, Dell*, and Cisco were the only ICT companies among the top 20 Fortune 500 companies participating in the 2009 EPA Green Power Partnership program. (Compare this with Newsweek's Green Rankings 2009, in which tech dominated all of the Fortune 500 by capturing 11 of the top 20 positions.) In the 2010 Green Power Partnership, these three are still tops but are joined by by Motorola, Sprint, and AMD. Fortune 500 participation in the program was 64, up from 60 last year.

The EPA defines the Green Power Partnership: "Organizations can meet EPA purchase requirements using any combination of three different product options (1) Renewable Energy Certificates, (2) On-site generation, and (3) Utility green power products." The rankings are based on gross, not relative, green power purchasing, so larger companies are at an advantage.

When all entities, including education and government ones, were ranked to created the EPA's National Top 50 list, these six ICT companies made the cut along with media services operation Sony DADC. Bloomberg was the only media content company to make the Top 50. A smaller media entity of note in the Partnership is NBC Universal's KNTV.

Once again, we learn there are many ways to measure green. No external ranking is perfect, but organizations do have to commit to some external benchmarks for credible evidence-based greening.

* Dell is the only ICT company in the top 10 of the program's ~130 100% Green Power Purchasers.