Green IT

Toshiba is in talks with a company backed by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to jointly develop advanced nuclear reactors, the Japanese electronics maker said Tuesday.

The Japanese electronics maker, which is also the world's No. 3 chipmaker behind Intel and Samsung Electronics, added it will restart plans to build a factory to make NAND flash memory chips as the global economy recovers.

Toshiba, which owns U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse, said it was in preliminary talks with the Gates-backed firm TerraPower to develop so-called traveling-wave reactors, which are designed to use depleted uranium as fuel and thought to hold … Read more

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has authorized Google Energy to buy and sell electricity in bulk like any other utility.

The FERC, the agency with oversight of the U.S. power grid, signed an order (PDF) on Thursday that grants Google Energy market-based rate authorization. This paves the way for the search giant to not only better manage its own energy costs, but to possibly add electricity marketer to its repertoire of services.

The order specifically grants Google Energy--a subsidiary of Google--the rights "for the sale of energy, capacity, and ancillary services at market-based rates" while acknowledging that … Read more

What's an enterprise software company doing getting into sustainability? After all, the environmental footprint from software production pales in comparison to resource-intensive industries such as power generation or even running data centers that deliver Web services such as search.

SAP is trying to get ahead of the curve in environmental sustainability strictly for business reasons, according to Peter Graf, who last March was named chief sustainability officer at the Germany-based software heavyweight.

SAP's customers are businesses, which need to comply with regulations, such as reporting greenhouse gas emissions or tracking hazardous substances it may use.

But that's … Read more

Good old-fashioned guilt and frugality might go a long way toward helping the U.S. reduce its carbon footprint.

Converting the U.S. electricity grid to a series of smart grids would have a significant impact on carbon emissions from utilities mainly because the shift would tend to change people's usage habits, according to a report released last week by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Researchers at PNNL's Electricity Infrastructure Operations Center (EIOC) used real-time U.S. electric grid data, advanced software, modeling computation, and data from existing smart-grid projects to determine whether, … Read more

Regardless of whether we see a gorgeous tablet from Apple on Wednesday, there is a clear trend toward using electronic devices to read what has traditionally been printed media. From an environmental point of view, that shift is a mixed bag, depending as much on user behavior as on technology.

According to reports, Apple will show off a tablet PC that can be used with a docking station or an electronic reader.

Displacing printing media with an electronic device like the Amazon Kindle can reduce the amount of energy associated with cutting down trees and making physical periodicals and books, … Read more

A handful of IT companies plan to work with the Sustainability Consortium to come up with a better way to define "green" in electronics.

The Sustainability Consortium was originally formed when retail giant Wal-Mart launched an initiative in 2008 to create a sustainability rating for suppliers. The group now employs researchers from academia and nongovernmental organizations to create methods for measuring the environmental and social impact of products from a wide range.

On Thursday, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Toshiba, Intel, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart said they will work with the Sustainability Consortium on a system for rating electronics based on … Read more

Most of us are familiar with the EnergyStar label for power-efficient goods. But what if you're shopping for something that's environmentally friendly in other ways?

Amazon has added a green category to its electronics page, using both EnergyStar and the broader EPEAT certification to rank products, the Green Electronics Council said on Wednesday.

There are now more than 800 electronics products listed on Amazon that meet the EPEAT certification, which ranks computing equipment on 51 environmental factors. Products get a bronze, silver, or gold label based on how many of the performance criteria they meet.

EPEAT-certified computing equipment … Read more

Acer is getting greener, at least according to Greenpeace.

The computer maker unveiled two new notebooks on Friday that have already received kudos from the international environmental group. The Acer Aspire 3811TZ and Aspire 3811TZG are designed to be energy efficient, recyclable, and biodegradable, thereby winning high marks from Greenpeace, which rates PCs and other electronics for their environmental friendliness.

As part of its green initiatives, Acer said it built the two new Aspires to be free of PVCs (polyvinyl chloride) and BFRs (brominated flame retardants).

PVC is a cheap but durable plastic that has been criticized by Greenpeace for … Read more

A new industry group is hoping that the same amount of energy now used to power the Internet and other global networks for one day will eventually power them for three years.

Unveiled by its organizer Bell Labs on Monday, the global consortium, dubbed Green Touch, has set a challenging agenda for itself--to plan and demonstrate the necessary technologies to make today's networks 1,000 times more energy efficient than they are today. The group's deadline is 2015, giving it just five years in which to determine and show how to dramatically slash the carbon emissions from all … Read more