GE "green" ecomagination unit gaining ground: CEO
606592
General Electric Co.  Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said his "green" ecomagination unit was gaining steam and it launched 11 new products and services on Thursday, including a hybrid locomotive and a carbon offset company.
730701
(InfoWorld) - The IT industry's thirst for energy is growing exponentially, far outpacing the supply of reliable, clean power. Now a group of leading IT firms has banded together to try to head off an impending energy crisis in the datacenter. Eleven enterprise heavyweights including Microsoft, IBM, Sun, HP, Intel, AMD, Rackable Systems, and VMWare announced Monday that they have formed a non-profit group called The Green Grid to drive new metrics, technology standards, and best practices for curbing power consumption. Robust growth in the IT sector and in companies' use of technology is leading to an acute power shortage, according to analyst firm Gartner. Half the worldâs datacenters will run out of power by the end of 2008, Gartner estimates. That means companies face swelling utility bills as they struggle to keep their servers cool and humming. Many of the companies participating in The Green Grid are individually developing energy-efficient technologies. However, joining forces to tackle the power-consumption problem holistically is a must, according to Green Grid board member Bruce Shaw, director of worldwide commercial and enterprise marketing at AMD. "No one player owns the kingdom. It's not just a processor problem. It's not just a server problem. It's not just a memory problem. Everyone in the ecosystem needs to be involved." By working together, Green Grid companies can develop ways for their respective greener technologies to "hook into one another," thus increasing their overall effectiveness, Shaw said. The consortium started work last April, with representatives for AMD, Sun, IBM, and HP getting the ball rolling. Not surprisingly, there have been challenges from the out start, including concerns about intellectual property and developing a standard way to measure power consumption   "Do you measure by performance per watt? Per dollar? Per thread? Something different?" said Green Grid boar member Colette LaForce, vice president of marketing at Rackable Systems.Â
532549
After three years of playing down  expectations, General Electric Chief Executive Jeff Immelt has  delivered on the most important promise of his tenure by  telling analysts and investors exactly what they wanted to  hear: GE is back.
128490
Diversified manufacturer General Electric Co. (GE) said on Friday it boosted its quarterly dividend by 10 percent and earmarked up to $15 billion for share repurchases over the next three years.
57956
Call it Phase 3 of the greening of corporate America. Companies are looking at their supply chain as the next frontier for combating climate change.
45491
Diversified, international growth is the key to GE's future.
384613
TUCSON, Ariz. - The company that owns Biosphere 2 Center, 3.1 glass-enclosed acres designed to simulate the Earth's environment, has put the site up for sale.
295365
Offsetting, the practice of achieving carbon neutrality, is gaining popularity among companies wishing to make a show of their green credentials.
334956
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.
667475
Greenstone Holdings, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: GSHG) announced today that the Company will introduce its chemical product GreenShield(TM) to the industry, including potential customers, at the International Builders' Show ("IBS") in Orlando, FL this week.
282850
Hybrids, ethanol, and batteries are on the mind of General Motors' Rick Wagoner at CES 2008.
680089
Intel's new plan in Chandler, Ariz., which started 45nm production last week, was built with recycled materials, uses the town's grey water, and increases indoor air quality - in a new "holistic" approach to being green.
622176
Corporations are adding a new title to the executive suite â chief sustainability officer â not just an environmental watchdog, but someone to oversee the effort to go green.
610513
The growth of IT as an industry may work against its various green initiatives, one participant says.
153486
From budget airlines telling us how to "fly greener" to oil giants developing cleaner fuels the corporate world is pushing its eco-credentials, often tying up with well-known environmental groups.
449677
General Electric Co.  sees opportunities in nuclear investments in Europe and China, but a nuclear boom in the United States would require some form of carbon emission pricing, GE's Chief Executive said.
394617
(InfoWorld) - In a Silicon Valley speech urging businesses to push clean technology, environmentalist and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said the United Nations report on climate change released Friday makes it a near certainty that global warming is real and needs to be addressed immediately. "The degree of certainty, which was already very high, is now as close to certain as scientists are ever willing to say something is certain," Gore said in an address to Silicon Valley business and community leaders in San Jose, California. The International Panel on Climate Change's fourth report on the subject since 1990 says human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, is the primary cause of global warming. Gore implored his audience of 1,500, many of them executives and employees of technology companies in Silicon Valley, to use their collective knowledge and resources to promote green technology that causes less pollution and can reverse the effects of climate change. "The world faces an unprecedented challenge, and Silicon Valley can make an unprecedented contribution to meeting that challenge," Gore told them. "You can chart a course and change the future of civilization." Technology companies recently have been focusing more on green technology, such as designing computer processors that generate less heat, building systems that better manage electricity use in data centers, improving manufacturing processes, and recycling old computers. Gore urged them to do more. He criticized the George Bush administration's reaction to the U.N. report, which was to restate President George Bush's opposition to mandatory reductions in greenhouse emissions. "It's not as if the oil lobby has too much influence in the White House. The problem is the oil lobby is the White House," he said. Gore also describe as "unethical" a lobbying tactic by oil companies and other critics of climate change to pay $10,000 for each scientific paper produced that disputes the potential harm of global warming. "(Gore's speech) was a stirring challenge," said Russell Hancock, chief executive officer of Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network, which hosted the event. "We need to organize and mobilize so that Silicon Valley can keep doing the kind of innovation that made us famous." Chip maker Cypress Semiconductor incubated a startup that makes solar power systems, said Eric Benhamou, chairman of Cypress. SunPower is now a standalone company. "I think we are a unique center of technology innovation in Silicon Valley, and I think we have the best research universities relevant to the climate protection challenge," said Benhamou.