Australia's financial services sector is performing poorly in terms of adopting green computing policies and practices, ranking behind only the manufacturing sector for adoption.Internationally, only India's banks achieve a lower rating than Australia's financial sector.Given that ICT usage can account for up to 75 per cent of banks' overall energy bills, the finance sector's approach may not be sustainable in an environment of rising power costs."ICT Sustainability; The Global Benchmark 2011" report was released by Japanese computing giant Fujitsu yesterday and revealed that Australia's overall ICT sustainability rating has fallen from 56.4 to 54.3.The finance sector rating is 50.2 (the same as China's finance sector).Ratings are based on how companies manage their IT lifecycle (procurement and disposal); achieve end-user efficiencies; generate enterprise and datacentre efficiencies; use IT to reduce carbon emissions more broadly across the organisation; and measure and monitor environmental issues.Ratings of 70 to 80 are considered to be approaching best practice.According to Fujitsu's global director of sustainability, Alison Rowe, the main problem is that in Australia only one per cent of all CIOs see and pay for their electricity bill. Rowe said most organisations carve up electricity costs by headcount or area of office space, rather than by activity, which gives ICT something of a free ride by not compelling CIOs to be accountable for their energy use.This is confirmed by the very low 40.6 rating that the Australian financial services sector scores for metrics - actually measuring how much energy it is using. Rowe believes this  will have to change once a carbon tax is introduced. "Once you start to see a price on carbon you will see it is about accountability regarding power use. There needs to be a real change in focus on energy use as a core capability," she said.