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French start-up Hedera Technology offers "open source" servers. The company touts the energy, CO2e, and e-waste benefits of its products, but, most intriguing is the claim that "Designed to be produced from basic materials, Microclusters are easily manufactured. All the components can be made by small industrial structures, present everywhere around the world, even in remote areas." We will be following the company to see if they succeed in licensing production in areas of the globe not traditionally associated with server manufacturing.

Cloud computing is considered a Green ICT tactic because it allows granular scalability and demand response and because computing services can be located in very low PUE mega-data centers. The New York Times reports, "cloud-based breakthroughs face a formidable obstacle in Europe, however: strict privacy laws that place rigid limits on the movement of information beyond the borders of the 27-country European Union…Europe is expected to remain a relatively modest user of cloud services, accounting for...about 26 percent of the global total… even though the bloc’s economy is larger than that of the United States."

German software giant SAP announced continued progress toward its goal "to reduce its total carbon emissions to the year-2000 emissions level". Key is "significant progress in improving energy efficiencies in data centers through the use of data center design, virtualization technology and efficient hardware. The company’s largest data centers have been certified as “energy efficient” by the German standards organization TÜV Rheinland."

The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics' October 2009 issue of ERCIM News has a Green ICT theme. It contains articles on energy-efficient networking and storage, data center operations, and other Green ICT topics.

Liverpool University won the Green Gown's Green ICT award for its freely-available PowerDown power management tools for Windows, which is says eliminated 1,000,000 hours/month of idle time. But even while receiving the award, the University was already in the process of replacing PowerDown with a more "aggressive" commercial product (PowerMAN) which it predicts will double the reductions. Green ICT never stands still!

makeITfair describes itself as "a European project focusing on the electronics industry, especially on consumer electronics like mobile phones, laptops and MP3 players. We want to let young people across Europe know about the labour abuses and environmental problems that are going on right now around the world...And we want young people to get active to improve the situation." Good Electronics is a Netherlands-based network whose participants track a set of 'Common Demands' that "cover the overall production cycle of electronic equipment, from extractives to production, to e-waste and recycling".

CNET reports "For those who believe the European Union is more green than the U.S., here's a statistic that may shock. For all its talk of a green economy, the EU as a whole only spent the equivalent of 0.2 percent of its GDP on green tech investment, according to UNEP statistics." (See right.) By comparison, the US "…spent the equivalent of 0.7 percent of its GDP on green tech investment…" Both are well behind world leaders China and Korea.

Grüne IT is a recently-launched Greman language blog about Green ICT. It includes recommendations of Green ICTers who tweet in German, French, and English.

German regions participating in the 100% EE program pledge to achieve 100% renewable energy for homes, businesses, and government agencies in a two phases culminating in 2020 and 2030. (Green ICTer @ecologee tells me its home of Ulm, birthplace of Einstein, is a participant in this ambitious program.) Availability of renewable energy has made locations from Oregon to Iceland attractive to green data centers. We'll watch with interest to see if 100% EE regions prove similarly attractive.

I'm going to be following GREENSOFT with interest. It is a German project to apply Green ICT principles to "software products, software development processes and their underlying software process models." Not the same as the usual meaning of 'green software', which is software for green apps.

The first community-focused Green ICT site of which we are aware is GREEN ADDICT, sponsored by the Bristol (UK) City Council.

Russian IT company Sibers now promotes Green IT, but apparently only to its German market. It's English-language site appears silent on the topic; readers fluent in Russian can comment on its Russian site.

IBM Switzerland publishes its Greenbook online in French, German, and English.