2011

French energy company Dalkia is developing a business park whose data center heat "will be transmitted via a heat exchanger to a new heating network that will eventually supply green energy to buildings with a surface area of 600,000 sq. m. (6,458,350 sq. ft.). " Dalkia projects that "More than 5,400 metric tons of CO2 emissions will be saved each year." Some media outlets have focused on EuroDisney's ownership stake in the business park near its amusement park, but there appear to be no plans to use the heat from the former in the latter. Click the "reuse-heat" tag at the top of this post for more examples.

IT vendor Faronics released a survey which "revealed that 40 percent of UK organisations do not have any green IT policies in place, with 48 percent blaming this on the time and effort required to develop, implement and enforce the strategies. Only 27 percent of UK organisations consider themselves to be a ‘green’ organisation in terms of IT efficiency…just 27 percent of UK organisations consider Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and reputation to be the primary reason for enforcing a green IT policy." Over 48% cited "cost savings" as "the primary reason [for] for a green IT policy", only 18% cited "environmental concerns"

A "circular economy" report on UK resource security from Green Alliance delivers a message for all countries. "…the majority of insecure metals being used in mobile phones, televisions and computers are being disposed as waste, despite UK recycling policy, and in the face of rising global competition for their supply…A number of metals including lithium for computer batteries, indium for LCD televisions and palladium for mobile phones are now considered ‘insecure’ by international experts…Only a fifth of the materials entering the UK economy are from recycled sources, and Britain’s dependency on imported materials has increased significantly in recent years." The think tank calls for "Dramatically raising recycling rates for metals, currently as low as one per cent for some rare earths, through a recovery reward…and incentives for better product design and material substitution."

UK's Fourth Annual Efficient ICT, Greener Government Conference was held on 14 September. The program looks informative, but the conference has not posted presentation material.

The International Telecommunications Union held ITU Green Standards Week on 5-9 September in Rome, Italy. A day-long program was "Methodologies for Assessing the Environmental Impact of ICT". Click here to see the presentations.

BusinessGreen reports,"Linking bonuses to a system monitoring 16 standards is one method that has enabled Bill Thomas, head of sustainability at [UK bank] HSBC's technology and services (HTS) division, to take significant steps towards meeting four-year environmental targets…During 2010…Electricity use decreased 3.8 per cent, almost half the eight per cent target, and CO2 emissions dropped 3.6 per cent against a six per cent goal for 2014…'If we build a new data centre and add sustainability on at the end of the build, it can't be changed,' says Thomas. 'But if we get the guy that's building it to do it, it works from the beginning.'"

French-language resource: Green IT - Gérez la consommation d'énergie de vos systèmes informatiques, by Olivier Philippot.

Inforworld reports, "Standard Bank was set to relocate…but faced a curious dilemma: The new building's air conditioning system wasn't designed to accommodate the number of employees moving into the space…Enter Standard Bank IT architects Joel King and Paul Cotgrove, who came up with a clever, IT-oriented approach to beating the office heat: replacing PCs with low-power virtual clients…The [VMware] VDI solution certainly nipped the heating problem in the bud, saving the bank more than $380,000 (250,000 British pounds) on a new AC system. As an added benefit, the company saw energy consumption drop by 312,539 kWH per year, which translated to $50,000 in savings…the bank's PCs had consumed 150 watts each while the thin clients ran at about 15 watts per unit. "The data center does experience some increase in demand, but overall, our savings are far more than we thought. It's also easier to manage and control energy consumption at the data center. Overall, I think we have experienced a 30 to 40 percent savings," said King."

Reuters: "Amsterdam is looking to use its smart city platform to cut carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2025, a feat that would place it ahead of many other cities in the Netherlands and Europe and, perhaps, attract an increasingly sustainability-minded population." Amsterdam's Smart City site.

French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent says of its new lightRadio™ mobile/broadband infrastructure products: "lightRadio reduces energy consumption of mobile networks by up to 50% over current radio access network equipment. (As a point of reference, Bell Labs research estimates that basestations globally emit roughly 18,000,000 metric tons of CO2 per year)." lightRadio uses chip technology from Freescale. (India company VNL had previously announced energy efficient mobile base stations that are also solar-powered.)

Click here for regional Green ICT updates from around the globe. Click on 'Europe' tag above for all news about the region.