Across the country, cities are showing a renewed interest in taking over the electricity business from private utilities, reflecting intensifying concerns about climate change, responses to power disruptions and a desire to pump more renewable energy into the grid.
E-commerce giant shares methodology that links specific lines of business to energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Looking to walk the clean-energy and energy-efficiency talk, the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is about to flip the switch on the world's most energy efficient high-performance computing (HPC) data center.
While scientists race to develop a technology, probably nuclear-based, that can slake our energy thirst without a huge environmental cost, it would be folly to wait that long to tackle carbon emissions.
Bill Gates didn’t say if we get a carbon tax, he said when we get a carbon tax: “When we get a carbon tax we should put some of that into innovation,” Gates told energy executives gathered at Houston’s IHS CERAWeek conference Thursday evening.
AUSTIN, Texas , March 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- GreenQloud , the world's first Truly Green™ cloud computing company, today announced the launch of QloudSync, a new cloud storage syncing client (in beta) at South by Southwest (SXSW ) Interactive, a festival that brings together the brightest and most innovative minds in emerging technology from around the globe.
GreenQloud, the world's first Truly Green™ cloud computing company, today announced the launch of QloudSync, a new cloud storage syncing client (in beta) at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, a festival that brings together the brightest and most innovative minds in emerging technology from around the globe. GreenQloud will showcase QloudSync and its other services at booth #1326 in the exhibition hall.
The world's leading cloud computing provider has unveiled plans that would result in its giant global data centers being powered entirely by renewable energy. Salesforce, which provides on-demand sales and marketing software to companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford Motor Co., announced last week that it would steadily ramp up its green energy supplies over the coming years, with the goal of sourcing 100 percent of its power from renewables.
As growing numbers of European businesses look to reduce their carbon footprint, many are turning to Iceland to build datacentres and make use of cheaper energy and natural cooling resources to improve their green credentials. “A fifth of datacentre costs are spent on power and half of that is used for cooling. But in Iceland, businesses can use free-air cooling all year round and save on cooling costs,” said Einar Hansen Tomasson, project manager at Invest in Iceland, the government body that aims to attract foreign direct investment to Iceland.
Target Corporation, the second-largest discount retailer in the United States behind Walmart, is trialling Bloom Energy fuel cells at two of its California stores, in San Francisco and Pasadena. The trial forms part of a wider initiative to investigate on-site energy generation at Target stores; the company currently uses roof-mounted solar panels at 26 of its stores.
There's a maxim in the data center business that you can't manage what you can't measure, and eBay has come up with the mother of all measurement systems for calculating data center efficiency. The online auction giant has devised a methodology that looks at the cost of its IT operations in dollars, kilowatt hours and carbon emissions, and ties those costs back to a single performance metric -- in eBay's case, the number of buy and sell transactions its customers make at eBay.com.
eBay has released a trove of information about the efficiency of its data centers, and plans to do so quarterly as part of a mission to continuously track computing resources and tie them to bigger business goals.
Leading tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple are making huge inroads in the use of renewable energy for corporate facilities and data centers, but cost and delivery challenges remain.
Leading tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple are making huge inroads in the use of renewable energy for corporate facilities and data centers, but cost and delivery challenges remain.
Changes can wreak havoc in a datacentre that will outlive generations of servers. How can green facilities stay efficient in the face of IT progress?
Verne Global, a wholesale supplier of datacentre space, plans to expand its facility in Keflavik, Iceland, with 500m2 of UK-made modular datacentres to meet growing demand for storage. The facility will not use water cooling or mechanical cooling equipment, such as compressors. Instead, it will use power from Iceland’s renewable energy sources and free air cooling technology to minimise carbon emissions.
The final Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Performance League Table (PLT) has highlighted some of the legislations failings and raised concerns over data accuracy issues. Related articles Manchester United loses premier position in CRC league table Royal College of Music on track towards carbon reduction target Michelin cuts Irish energy bill with Ecotricity wind park David Lloyd Leisure raises the bar in energy saving Center Parcs engages employees in energy efficiency Following a five month delay, the CRC PLT, published today by the Environment Agency, ranks almost 3,000 organisations on their energy efficiency performance for the year 2011/12. Last year's table was the first, and this year's, the second, will be the last, after the Government announced its abolition in last year's Autumn Statement as part of a 'simplification' of the CRC scheme.
Emerson said to support the targets the European Commission released a voluntary Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency, the European Commission has focused on the data center sector because it expects electricity consumed in data centers
GREEN jobs have long had a whiff of exaggeration to them. The alternative-energy sector may ultimately employ millions of people. But raising the cost of the energy that households and businesses use every day — a necessary effect of helping the climate — is not exactly a recipe for an economic boom.
Take your pick of studies and publications listing priorities for data center operators in 2013 and beyond—energy will almost certainly be in there somewhere. It has become a perennial issue for companies, and given the various economic and political factors surrounding it, this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. So, why is energy such a mantra in the industry and in the technology press?
Given the abundance of cheap natural gas, aging nuclear plants with expensive safety problems may find it harder to survive.
Coal-burning power plants may get a new life and one that is tied to the co-firing of biomass, or wood chips, that may result in less pollution. While some are saying that this is a harbinger of things to come, others are cautioning that such technology is not only expensive but also a potential ecological hazard.
This week, Industry Perspective asks Lisa Rhodes about the relevance of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources for data center operators. Lisa is vice president of marketing and sales for Verne Global, a data center company that owns and operates a facility in Keflavik, Iceland.
On Monday, Sunnyvale-based Bloom Energy, which generated much buzz in early 2010 for its “Bloom Box” fuel cell generators, was fined by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for underpaying 14 Mexican nationals and compensating them in Mexican pesos. In addition to the $6,160 in civil penalties, Bloom was ordered to pay almost $32,000 in back wages and the same amount in liquidated damages to the workers, who were brought into the U.S. on visitors’ visas from their home in Chihuahua, Mexico.