Green IT

Despite the economic downturn, companies are still planning to invest in long-term sustainability projects and want to make sure that their customers--and anyone else who asks-- knows it.

The American Marketing Association and public-relations firm Fleishman-Hillard sponsored a small survey (PDF) to determine whether companies were still keen to invest in sustainability practices despite economic downturn and what influenced them in their decision.

To give you an idea of where the economy was when people were asked about their commitment, the survey was conducted by the AMA during January and February 2009, and included 270 people spread about equally throughout … Read more

Updated at 4:08 p.m. PDT April 1 with further details about Google's data center efficiency and shipping containers modules and 6:30 a.m. April 2 to correct the time frame of efficiency statistics.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google is tight-lipped about its computing operations, but the company for the first time on Wednesday revealed the hardware at the core of its Internet might at a conference here about the increasingly prominent issue of data center efficiency.

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands … Read more

The same type of innovation and entrepreneurship that built the Internet should be applied to building a smart grid for a "squanderable abundance" of cheap and clean energy. That was one of the main messages from Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, during his keynote speech at the GreenNet conference on Tuesday.

The San Francisco conference was aimed at outlining a way forward for a smart grid.

Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and now a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners, said energy people don't like that IT entrepreneurs are getting into their field. But, he added, it's … Read more

Hewlett Packard on Monday said that its long-lasting Enviro laptop batteries from Boston Power are available with a three-year warranty.

The batteries costs $149.99 and fit 18 of HP's laptops. They can be purchased online now and will be available in stories later this month.

HP has branded Boston Power's Sonata batteries under the Enviro name to emphasize the environmental attributes. With a longer-lasting battery, consumers need to upgrade less often, which reduces the number of batteries that need to be recycled, HP said in a statement.

Last year, an HP representative estimated the Enviro line costs … Read more

OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there's interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world.

And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That's the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge.

Good idea but, well, maybe another day.

As I sat … Read more

Environmental activist and author Van Jones, one of the first to recognize the power of a "green collar" job corps as a tool for social justice, has been tapped by the Obama administration to serve as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Under his new post, which he'll start Monday, Jones will shape and advance the administration's energy and climate initiatives "with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the CEQ, in a statement Tuesday. … Read more

Investors received another tool Monday designed to track green themes and greenbacks.

Standard & Poor's launched on Monday its S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index, designed to measure the performance of large-cap U.S. companies operating with a low carbon emissions footprint.

The index, which currently has 362 companies gleaned from the S&P 500, are selected using calculations from Trucost, an environmental data gathering organization.

David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor's Index Services index committee, said in a statement, "Organizations around the world are paying greater attention to the impact of greenhouse … Read more

Cisco Systems is trying to help cities around the world go green.

On Monday the company announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Metropolis, an organization of 106 large cities mostly outside the United States, to help these cities use technology that is more efficient and less polluting.

The goal is to help build "intelligent" city infrastructure based on Internet Protocol technology. Cisco's philosophy is that helping cities get networked to use the Internet will also help them cut back on power consumption and pollution. As part of the two-year collaboration, Cisco will help cities … Read more

NEW YORK--There's a long way to go to make consumer electronics an environmentally sustainable industry and sometimes the best path isn't always clear.

Panelists and attendees at the Greener Gadgets conference here last week discussed the many ways that manufacturers could claim a greener product--a recycling program, less hazardous materials, and, increasingly, the embedded carbon footprint.

But to manufacturers--and the consumers themselves--what constitutes "green" is still a work in progress.

"I think that people are more focused on doing the right thing but there is very little for them to hang that on," said … Read more