Green IT

The European Union is sponsoring a multimillion-dollar research project to boost the efficiency of everyday electronics and choke the constant flow of wasted energy from their chips.

The three-year effort, called Project Steeper, promises to result in gadgets that operate 10 times longer on a battery charge and don't lose energy to standby--or vampire--power, researchers say. Although there are many different ways to improve efficiency in computing, the focus of this work is on the basic building block of all electronics, the transistor.

Everything from TVs to cell phone chargers draws a small current even when they are not … Read more

The World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the United States said on Tuesday they were pressing for solutions to concerns China may be exploiting its stranglehold on rare earth metals, crucial in the making of everything from portable phones to wind turbines.

Officials and industry executives in Berlin and Washington warned of severe repercussions from a scarcity of the minerals with magnetic, luminescent, and other properties that go into products such as hybrid cars, solar panels, and windmills. The dominance of China, which produces 97 percent of the world's supply of rare earths, has been well-known for years, … Read more

Tech firms proved dominant in Newsweek's rankings of the greenest companies around the world, with Dell, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard among those singled out.

Out today, Newsweek's rankings looked at the most environmentally friendly companies in the U.S. alone and throughout the world. The goal of the study was to zero in on three factors: environmental impact, policies, and reputation.

Among the 500 public companies tracked in the U.S., Dell came out on top. The PC maker was lauded by Newsweek for its environmental policies, such as free product recycling and a ban on the export of … Read more

A win today for those bothered by unsightly overhead wires snaking through otherwise pleasant views of cities, towns, and countrysides around the world.

Today, American Semiconductor announced it's filling its biggest order to date for its high-temperature superconductor (HTS) wire, which is used in underground direct-current superconductor cables.

Superconductor cable manufacturer LS Cable of Korea has ordered over 3 million meters of the HTS wire. The wire, which will be manufactured in Massachusetts, will be used in LS Cable direct-current superconductor cables to be laid across Korea in conjunction with a project with the Korean utility KEPCO, and also … Read more

IBM announced today it has partnered with Alstom Wind Power and Ikerlan-IK4 to develop an automated platform for better manipulating wind turbines and predicting their output of electricity.

The product improves the amount of power that can be gleaned from wind energy, which is often debased by critics for its unreliable nature compared to other energy sources.

Using IBM's existing Rational Software originally intended for model-driven development, and its BigLever Gears, originally intended for product line engineering, Alstom Wind Power and Ikerlan-IK4 have developed an automated wind control development platform.

Real-time electronic sensors on wind turbines gather data on … Read more

Belkin on Thursday introduced a router capable of offering real-time information and advice on home energy use via a Web interface.

The Conserve Gateway router connects with a home's existing smart meter, but is not just an overview of the energy usage for the home. It can be used to monitor and control specific devices and appliances hooked into the home network. It operates via Wi-Fi or Ethernet as a standalone router, or can tie into an existing broadband router, and also has an antenna for ZigBee communication.

The Belkin router software, which like many routers is Web accessible, … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Aaron Feaver's bio below.

Humankind has seen the Stone Age, the Golden Age, and the Iron Age. Some would argue the 20th century should be called the Silicon Age. Based on the events of its first 10 years, the 21st century may very well become known as the Carbon Age.

An important tension is unfolding between two types of carbon--atmospheric carbon in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and elemental carbon as a building block for a new generation of devices designed to manage and abate those same pollutants. Our way of life has become dependent on energy generated by the process of extracting carbon from the earth in the form of fossil fuels and then burning it to form carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, we have begun developing carbon in solid form as an advanced material to counter the effects of its atmospheric cousin.

From the days of Thomas Edison, when an exhaustive list of carbon fibers were pyrolyzed, or thermochemically decomposed sans oxygen, from natural materials to form the filaments of the first successful lightbulb, to the development of activated carbon as the first commercial nanomaterial, to the discovery of buckyballs and the invention of carbon nanotubes, carbon has always generated an abundance of near-term change, cutting-edge breakthroughs, and even economic prosperity.

Our future will be brighter because new materials built on the many allotropes of carbon will function as the base-building blocks for a host of solutions--including cleaner batteries, cleaner water, and cleaner air--that will benefit our society, our economies, and our planet.

There are legions of carbon-based innovations to watch between now and 2020. As the research deepens and expands, and the technologies are fully developed and rolled out, new products and processes will be embraced by the automotive industry for hybrid electric vehicles, by electronics manufacturers for enhancing the life and usability of consumer goods, and by a variety of industrial customers to deliver an ever-increasing breadth of new ways to improve energy efficiency.

Here are the highlights of what we can expect:

Lithium ion batteries They are among the best-performing batteries because of their combination of relatively high power and energy density. They also, unfortunately, have a very high cost. While relatively well known in the market, the role of their carbon ingredients is less understood and appreciated. These batteries use a lithium-based oxide cathode, which can store an abundance of lithium but is not conductive. … Read more

Data center start-up Power Assure today launched a system for reducing wasted energy in corporate data centers and announced that energy conglomerate ABB is an investor.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has developed a system that scales back power usage of data centers' servers based on the computing load. By fine-tuning power management, the company says that it can cut energy costs by about 50 percent.

The system includes an appliance that goes into the data center and a hosted application which analyzes operational information from a data center, explained founder and chief technology officer Clemens Pfeiffer.

The application … Read more

Yahoo today is scheduled to officially open a very energy-efficient data center in upstate New York, a building that shows how design often trumps high-technology widgets.

The facility in Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo, will get almost all of its cooling from outdoor air, which is a significant energy saver. The Yahoo data center, which can hold 50,000 servers, will have a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.08, far less than the industry average of 1.92.

The cool climate of upstate New York helps reduce the need for the chillers usually used in large data centers. The … Read more