Green IT

Greening the Valley, one tech giant at a time

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--The carbon footprint of the tech industry is estimated at 2 percent of the world's total emissions, or roughly the equivalent of the aviation industry's, according to data from McKinsey & Co.

Technology executives from Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems were here Tuesday talking about how to prevent it from growing to 3 percent by 2020.

The tech industry produces about 800 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalents, including the production of devices and their energy usage after they're sold, according to McKinsey partner James Manyika, who spoke here at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech … Read more

Carbon counter Carbonetworks grabs funds

Software company Carbonetworks on Monday is expected to announce it has secured $5 million in series A financing, led by clean-tech venture firm NGEN Partners.

The company's software could be described as a carbon accounting package. It allows corporations to do an inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions and provides them with an application to manage a program to cut down on those emissions.

A company could, for example, achieve reduction goals by making data centers operations more efficient or purchasing carbon offsets.

There are already regulations in Europe to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. But … Read more

CarbonFlow nets funding for carbon software

Will money start to flow to carbon software?

CarbonFlow has raised $2.9 million in its first round of venture funding from Clean Pacific Ventures, OVP Venture Partners, and Meridian Energy Limited, a New Zealand renewable energy supplier, which is a strategic partner.

The San Francisco-based company's founders are carbon emissions trading expert Karla Bell and Neal Dikeman, founder of merchant bank Jane Capital Partner and a contributor to CNET's Green Tech blog.

CarbonFlow's software, which is still under development, is being designed for managers of carbon emissions-reduction projects that want to monetize their carbon credits.

For … Read more

Fat Spaniel: Distributed energy meets Web 2.0

Fat Spaniel Technologies thinks the distributed energy business needs some more Web savvy.

The start-up company, which has software for monitoring performance of energy-producing systems like solar panels, on Wednesday is expected to announce an "open platform" designed for sharing energy information.

It is publishing an application programming interface (API) designed to encourage equipment manufacturers and other software companies to build applications based on energy performance data.

For many corporate installations, energy services companies install and operate solar arrays and sell electricity they generate back to the building owner.

Using the APIs would allow a developer to write … Read more

Tech makers fail to clean up their act, says Greenpeace

Nintendo is the least eco-friendly electronics maker, and Microsoft is barely better, according to Greenpeace. The environmental group rated the practices and designs of gadget makers lower than ever in its eighth quarterly report card (PDF).

Only two corporations scored above 5 out of 10 possible points in the report released Wednesday, down from 14 companies in March. Apple, for one, tumbled to 4.1 points in June after earning 6.7 in March more than a year after Steve Jobs' highly-publicized pledge to remove toxic ingredients from products and improve product takeback options.

Among the paltry few brands whose … Read more

What Cleantech sector are the VCs after now?

As always, the venture community is looking for its next big thing. The cleantech world is no exception. Despite the dearth of exits, so much capital has flowed into the cleantech sector that investors need new places to put it. So despite my promise to certain friends not to blog certain funding rumors in each category, the top 4 contenders are:

Green building materials - I'm not sure it would be my thing, but investors across the board seem to think this area is ripe for a hit.

Carbon IT - With some sort of cap and trade a … Read more

Green tech news harvest: Redesigning suburbs, cooking carbon, and mapping wildfires

Correction June 30 11:30 a.m. PDT: See below for details.

A sampling of green-tech news with quick commentary.

High fuel costs threaten suburban lifestyles - The Boston Globe Does America need a redesign? Rising gas prices could drive an exodus from suburbs into city centers.

Novomer launching plastic made from CO2 - Greentech Media Plastic made from carbon could be used in electronics and solar equipment.

Google Earth maps California fires - Google Earth Blog Tagged maps and NASA satellite imagery help to pinpoint some 1,400 fires raging in California.

Number of flights to plummet by summer's end - The New York Times … Read more

Research: Old data centers can be nearly as 'green' as new ones

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Revamping existing data centers can achieve energy efficiency close to those built from scratch to be greener, according to an early report Thursday from Accenture, which analyzed results of case studies backed by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

The energy savings explored, if widespread, could prevent the release of carbon dioxide equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road, researchers said.

Data center energy use could double by 2011, amounting to $7.4 billion in U.S. electricity costs and requiring the equivalent of 10 new power plants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Just … Read more

Dell hits server efficiency targets a year early

Dell on Wednesday said its server power supplies have met an industry target of 92 percent efficiency.

Its servers comply with the 80 Plus benchmark of making power supplies 92 percent efficient when a server is at 50 percent load, explained Albert Esser, Dell's vice president of power and infrastructure solutions.

Esser said the server power supply Dell has developed is the first to comply with the 80 Plus Gold certification, making it 14 percent more efficient than existing equipment.

That standard also meets the 2009 target set by IT industry consortium Climate Savers.

What's perhaps most notable … Read more

Google: Server efficiency needs new recipe

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Chipmakers have been applying lessons learned in mobile computing to servers in an effort to increase efficiency by lowering power consumption. But a noted Google engineer threw some cold water on the approach on Monday, arguing the two styles of computing are too different.

"The data center is a different device than the key targets for mobile electronics, laptops, and mobile devices," said Luis Barroso, a Google engineer who closely studies the company's power consumption, speaking at the O'Reilly Velocity conference here.

And naturally, with at least hundreds of thousands of servers in operation … Read more