Major IT companies are fashioning themselves into leading worldwide proponents of clean technology as they put into use a growing battery of tools that can reduce organizations’ carbon footprint--while at the same time increasing the power, efficiency and flexibility of IT systems’ architecture.
While virtualization and more energy-efficient heating and cooling systems are proving to be potent agents in the IT industry’s green and clean tech toolbox there are a host of others, Ecommercetimes.com reported.
Thanks to recent advances in technology and new incentives, IT companies are making use of cleaner sources of electrical power, such as solar photovoltaic and hydrogen fuel cells. They are deploying wireless sensor networks capable of providing more efficient environmental management of conditions and resource usage within offices, manufacturing facilities and data centers.
Also, they are looking to take on the problem of e-waste through take-back, reuse and recycling programs, as well as designing products from a broader “cradle to grave“ perspective.
Government-industry collaborations, such as that between the IT industry and the US Department of Energy (DoE), are building a virtuous circle of activity that is leading to significant advances through development across a wide range of renewable energy and clean technology.
“Much of DoE’s work with the IT sector has focused on improving energy efficiency in data centers. Working closely with ’The Green Grid,’ a consortium of IT sector companies, DoE is helping to identify strategies that can improve efficiency over the long term--by as much as 10 percent by 2011,“ Kevin Brosnahan, spokesperson for the DoE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, told TechNewsWorld.
The DoE is taking an integrated approach in examining all aspects of data center operations and looking to find ways to reduce energy consumption and make use of renewable energy sources, including server function, heating ventilation and air conditioning, building construction and electricity use, Brosnahan explained.
DoE-IT industry cross-pollination is also taking place with regard to making use of distributed electricity generation and the revamping of the nation’s aging power grid into a smart grid that makes use of a new generation of digital switching technology.
“Distributed generation is attractive; and for renewable energy, it is increasingly attractive,“ Brosnahan elaborated.
“Net Zero Energy Homes will make use of distributed generation technologies like photovoltaic solar panels and geothermal heat pumps to generate energy on-site. For commercial applications, there are already some data centers that are using fuel cells to generate electricity,“ he said.
The growing green IT movement is one focal point for Springboard Research. The average spending by IT vendors on green initiatives, according to the company’s research, is spread across four broad categories: energy efficiency (40 percent), recycling and disposal (30 percent), green manufacturing (25 percent) and others (5 percent).
“There are some natural cross-cutting benefits to be gained by integrating the IT and clean energy sectors,“ said Pradeep Halwar, head of the NanoEngineering Constellation at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. “One is in the manufacture of solar cells, in which equipment, processes and techniques can easily be leveraged from semiconductor manufacturing.
“That is why several incumbent semiconductor manufacturers are entering this market. Similar synergies exist in other areas of clean energy technology, including thermoelectrics and fuel cells. Cost reductions and increased performance, two metrics that are needed in the manufacture of solar cells, fuel cells and other energy storage technologies are already well understood in semiconductor manufacturing,“ Halwar told TechNewsWorld.
“IBM recently announced an innovative silicon wafer reclamation process that turns scrap semiconductor wafers into a form used in the manufacture of silicon-based solar panels. Pioneered at the company’s manufacturing facility in Burlington, Vt., the new process uses a specialized pattern removal technique to repurpose scrap thin discs of high-grade silicon used to imprint patterns that make finished semiconductor chips, explained Maureen J. Baird,“ business development, winback and solutions executive at IBM South Africa.
“The new wafer reclamation process produces monitor wafers from scrap product wafers, an intermediate step of repurposed material that generates an overall energy in process savings of up to 90 percent for IBM,“ according to Baird.
The company now needs to purchase a lesser volume of ultra-pure silicon wafers to meet its manufacturing needs. When the monitor wafers reach the end of their useful lives they are sold to the solar photovoltaic cell manufacturing industry.
While interest in green IT is growing across the Asia-Pacific region, awareness is generally low and action is rare, according to Springboard Research’s findings.
However, “leading companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Dell, Ericsson, Philips and Cisco Systems have joined a United Nations initiative that aims to standardize world policy and legislative approaches to electronic recycling processes,“ noted Chris Perrine, Springboard’s chief operations officer and executive vice president of sales and marketing .

Critics claim that using land for fuel pushes up food prices and risks food shortages

Biofuels are becoming a boom industry across Latin America, but questions are being asked about their long-term sustainability.
Biofuels are moving into the fast lane, almost literally. Come the 2008 Formula One season, AT&T Williams’s racing cars will be fuelled by a biodiesel blend produced by the Brazilian energy company Petrobras.
The boom in biofuels, which are dominated by ethanol and biodiesel, owes its origins to their low cost and clean credentials when compared with traditional fossil fuels.
According to Ethicalcorp.com, as a region, Latin America is well positioned to profit. Vast areas of agricultural land, fertile soil and cheap labor lend themselves to bumper crops of biofuel basics such as sugar and soya beans.
It’s a formula Brazil has been taking advantage of for more than three decades. A state-led alternative fuel program initiated in the 1970s is, as crude oil prices soar, proving its mettle. More than eight out of ten new Brazilian cars have “flex fuel“ engines, meaning they can run on ethanol-based biofuel or standard petrol. In the sugar-producing south of Brazil, there are an estimated 400 ethanol plants in operation.
Brazil’s domestic consumption of ethanol (derived mostly from sugar and the core ingredient of its biofuel mix) is set to rise from 14 billion litres in 2006 to 39 million litres in 2012. Petrobras forecasts that use of the “green gold“ will outstrip that of gasoline in Brazil by 2020.
Investors are now looking elsewhere in the region for biofuel opportunities. For their part, most Latin American governments are only too happy to open the door.
Argentina passed new biofuels legislation in early 2007, offering tax breaks and other financial incentives to biofuel producers. The new law is geared towards a 5 per cent biodiesel and ethanol requirement in diesel and gasoline by 2010.
Other countries looking to build their domestic biofuel markets include Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Venezuela, Peru, Paraguay and Ecuador. Even Cuba and Venezuela, whose leaders have lambasted the use of crops for fuel, enjoy a shared accord to develop ethanol from sugar. The only country so far to shut the door is Mexico, where a presidential veto blocked a proposed bioenergy law in October.
The biofuel boom is by no means a long-term certainty. Critics claim that using land for fuel pushes up food prices and risks food shortages. Others blame biofuel crops for environmental damage such as deforestation, water scarcity and soil erosion.
In October, the UN Special Rapporteur went as far as declaring biofuels a “crime against humanity“ because of its price impact on cereals and other food stuffs. Prices of maize, for example, hit a ten-year high earlier this year Ð a direct effect of the rising demand for biofuels, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation maintains. The UN’s Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium, giving time to scientists to develop biofuels from non-food crops.
In Latin America, opposition to biofuels also has a political tint, especially among anti-US countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. They have painted this year’s agreement between the US and Brazil to promote biofuel production (as we reported in June) as American imperialism. For its part, the US wants to diversify its energy supply to avoid having to rely on hostile Latin American leaders such as Hugo Ch?vez for oil.
Less reported, but perhaps of longer-term concern for investors, are the latent structural problems in the biofuel market. Despite high oil prices (an incentive in the search for fuel alternatives), Brazil remains the only country in the world in which ethanol producers do not currently depend on state support, be they direct subsidies or tax breaks and import tariffs.
In 2006 alone, government subsidies for the ethanol market reached
seven billion dollars, according to recent estimates from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In addition, as the price of agricultural staples increases in many parts of the world, the relative cheapness of biofuels compared with traditional fossil fuel decreases. The cost of biofuel crops, such as maize and rapeseed, could increase by 20-50 per cent by 2016, the OECD reports.
Investors and producers are wary as higher input prices eat into biofuels’ profitability, warns Robert Vierhout, secretary-general of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association.
Industry observers are also concerned that the biofuel boom might be leading to a problem of temporary over-supply, most notably in the case of biodiesel.
Latin America knows all about commodity booms and busts. Social and environmental issues aside, if the market fundamentals cannot be made to work, biofuels could well suffer the same oscillating fate.

A hybrid version of Honda Civic, a compact car, costs about $4,000 more than a comparably equipped gasoline-engine model.

Honda Motor Co. plans to launch a small car by 2009 that uses a new “affordable“ gas-electric hybrid engine as well as diesel-powered versions of its larger vehicles as part of a strategy to improve fuel-efficiency of its US models, a senior company executive said.
Tetsuo Iwamura, head of Honda’s US sales and marketing unit, said the company could tweak its plans depending on what kind of alternative fuel technologies US consumers embrace and what kind of new legal requirements on average corporate fuel economy the US government puts in place, Online.wsj.com reported.
“At this moment, we say hybrid for small cars and diesel for large carsÉ but we have several other alternatives we are looking into,“ Mr. Iwamura said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
The executive of the Tokyo-based auto maker said his company would like to see more details of the new average corporate fuel economy legislation as quickly as possible, so that it could better prepare which of those alternative fuel technologies would be ideal for deployment in the US.
Among technologies Honda is considering in addition to hybrid and new clean diesel technologies, Mr. Iwamura said, are flex-fuel vehicles that could be powered by ethanol, as well as natural gas-fueled cars. He declined to elaborate.
But for now, Honda is moving ahead with the two-pronged approach in improving its fleet’s average fuel economy by coming up with more affordable small hybrid vehicles and betting on new clean diesel technology.
One of the first cars under that strategy is to hit the US market is what Mr. Iwamura described as a highly affordable subcompact hybrid, slated for a launch in 2009. He said Honda is planning to sell 100,000 of the new small hybrid in North America and another 100,000 across the rest of the world.
Honda officials have said in the past that a hybrid version of the Civic, a compact car, costs about $4,000 more than a comparably equipped gasoline-engine Civic model. With the new subcompact hybrid, they said Honda is aiming to cut the hybrid premium to less than $2,000--about what a consumer pays for a satellite-based navigation system as optional added equipment.
That is possible, Mr. Iwamura said, because of greater economies of scale Honda is expected to achieve thanks to the sheer number of the new hybrid it expects to sell in North America and around the world.
It is a “hybrid for everybody,“ he said.
The Honda executive said the current sentiment in the US also makes it an ideal time for Honda to introduce vehicles powered by the newly developed clean engine diesel engine that meet air-quality standards in all 50 US states.
He declined to say in what vehicles Honda plans to introduce the new diesel engine.