Google, Intel Launch Green Initiative
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By Associated Press  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- A coalition of technology companies and environmental groups led by Google Inc. and Intel Corp.
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The software maker launches MSN Green, a site packed with eco-info. It will be interesting to see the appetite is among advertisers and readers.
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Google and Intel today kicked off an effort to help blunt the impact of global warming by bringing greater energy efficiency to personal computers and servers.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell will neutralize its carbon emissions and become carbon neutral by the end of 2008, chairman and CEO Michael Dell announced Wednesday. Dell is the first major computer manufacturer to announce its intention to balance its carbon emissions with activities that reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Companies have a responsibility to improve the environment, Dell said during a speech in Washington, D.C. "There's been a time in history of business where it's more important for organizations of all sizes to partner together to positively impact the Earth that well all share," Dell said. "It's not enough for Dell to be an environmental leader. We also need to partner with our customers ... to dramatically improve our own customers' environmental impacts." Dell will reduce its net carbon emissions in several ways, Dell said. The company will focus on creating more energy-efficient products and will purchase more energy-efficient electrical power, he said. Dell, the world's second-largest PC manufacturer, will also push its major suppliers to report and reduce their carbon emissions. If a supplier's carbon emissions are excessive, the company may penalize the supplier, although Dell didn't offer details about the penalties. Dell has also expanded itsÂ Plant a Tree for MeÂ program, which allows individual customers to pay a small amount to plant a tree as a way to offset the energy consumption of the laptops or PCs they purchase from the company. Dell has announced a Plant a Forest for Me program, partnering with companies including Salesforce.com, Ask.com, and Advanced Micro DevicesÂ in a reforesting program intended to offset carbon emissions. Companies can do many things to reduce carbon emissions, Dell said. They can purchase energy-efficient IT equipment, consolidate servers through virtualization, and use software to turn off computers and monitors after employees go home. Customers demanding energy efficiency are pushing IT vendors away from the old price/performance metric to a new "performance per watt" metric, Dell said. "Thinking about IT in terms of performance per watt forces businesses like ours to rethink the way products are designed and the way they're used," Dell said. In June, the company set the goal of becoming "the greenest technology on the planet." Governments can also play a role in encouraging companies to protect the environment, Dell added. Governments could give research credits to companies to improve energy efficiency and could provide incentives for companies to encourage green policies such asÂ telecommuting, he said. The 3.9 million telecommuters in the United States saved 840 million gallons of gasoline in a year, according to a recent Consumer Electronics Association report. Dell will continue to work with other tech vendors on environmental issues, Dell said. "While we vigorously compete in many areas in our business, when it comes to the environment, there actually are not competitors, only partners," he said. Dan Burton, senior vice president for global public policy at Salesforce.com, praised Dell's speech. With its focus on improving the environment through its business practices, "Dell is really redefining what is corporate philanthropy," Burton said.
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Google Inc. launched an initiative Tuesday to help charities and other non-profit groups use maps and satellite images to raise awareness, recruit volunteers and encourage donations.
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Nonprofit emissions advisers The  Climate Group said on Tuesday that Google Inc.  has  joined its organization to cut or offset all of its greenhouse  emissions by 2008.
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Google yesterday laid out its plan for philanthropy and announced $25 million in grants aimed at addressing climate change as well as poverty and health issues in developing countries.
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Data center operators are looking for alternative ways of powering their facilities and green technologies that are cleaner are gaining new attention, according to attendees at this week's Afcom data center conference.
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Google Inc. launched an initiative yesterday to help non profit groups use maps and satellite images to raise awareness, recruit volunteers, and encourage donations.
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Internet-age technology giants on Tuesday joined environmentalists in a campaign to dramatically cut the amount of electricity wasted by computers.
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Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard.
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Google, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard pledged this week to develop and use more energy-efficient computers and computer components.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) is stressing incentives over regulations to improve the energy efficiency of datacenters. The DOE's office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) gathered the top technology companies in Silicon Valley Wednesday to promote collaboration on strategies to improve overall energy efficiency.Â Datacenter energy issuesÂ are a growing concern for businesses and users as computers get more powerful, and the cost of running them and keeping them cool continues to increase. Technology vendors represented at the forum, including rival chip makers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, along with server vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, andÂ Sun Microsystems, have each been developing more energy-efficient products. But they and the DOE representatives acknowledged that datacenter energy usage needs to be addressed holistically. The DOE can be a resource to the industry, not a regulator requiring datacenters to meet energy efficiency goals, said Andy Karsner, head of the EERE program. "I donât know that right now thereâs a dramatic need for a regulatory move, particularly when you have the leaders of the industryâ¦coming here with a sense of purpose,â said Karsner. Industry representatives said they work independently on improving the energy efficiency of individual products but that the federal government could provide tax credits, other financial incentives, or other resources to enhance overall energy efficiency. "AMD and Intel keep doing their best to improve the performance [of processors], but the CPU is only half the story.â said Kris Singh, director of strategic platform technology programs at AMD, which hosted the daylong energy conference at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. Because this was the first meeting of what the DOE called a "tech industry working group," no specific recommendations were made and the schedule for future work remained open. The DOE can fund research that individual product makers can't fund to look at how different components could work better together, said David Rodgers, acting deputy assistant secretary of EERE. "A hardware company might improve theÂ energy efficiency of a blade serverÂ and another company might improve the energy efficiency of a transformer to convert AC to DC. Right now very few people are doing research on how to integrate those two together," said Rodgers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sponsors theÂ Energy Star programÂ rating the energy efficiency of home appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners and some commercial equipment. But some participants in the working group are skeptical that a comparable program could be applied to datacenters. âIâm not sure about that," said Roger Schmidt, chief thermal architect at IBM. Because datacenters are much more complex with components from different manufacturers, it'd be hard to develop one Energy Star rating everyone would agree upon. "What if [the rating] is bad, what do you do? Who are you going to point the finger to?â Schmidt asked.
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Hewlett-Packard has built a 70,000-square-foot data center in Bangalore that it is powering with diesel fuel. But it hopes to reduce energy costs by using a sensor-based cooling technology.
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Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google Inc., is planning to invest $10 million to speed up the production of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
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A handful of technology companies plan to announce that they are forming a consortium to accelerate utilitylike grid computing in the corporate world.
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(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ plans to announce an open-source project called LessWatts.org, which aims to improve the power efficiency of the Linux operating system and applications. The initiative is expected to be unveiled on Thursday by Renee James, corporate vice president of Intel's Software and Solutions Group, at theÂ Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. LessWatts.org has several components, including enhancements to the Linux kernel that improve power efficiency, Intel said. The project will also include PowerTOP, a tool that helps improve the power efficiency of Linux applications, and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit, which can measure the impact code changes have on power consumption, it said. Intel will also provide Linux support for the power-saving features it is building into its line of products. LessWatts.org is aimed at a range of Linux uses, from corporate data centers at the high end to small, handheld devices for consumers. Intel hopes the initiative will attract software developers, Linux vendors, and end users. Oracle, Red Hat, and Novell are expected to announce their support for the open-source initiative.