Companies and individuals are advancing innovative ideas for more sustainable. These range from products and services available today to futuristic concepts for tomorrow. Free solar recharging stations for mobile devices in New York City is the latest.

Updates from Asia-Pacific. Click here for regional Green ICT updates from around the globe. Click on 'Asia-Pac' tag above for all news about the region. (Information about the ICT implications of Japan's earthquake and tsunami have been moved to its own post.)

2013

Fast Company's list of 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012 is topped by Chinese activist Ma Jun, Director of the nonprofit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). Ma's focus on pollution began in the 1990s and became critical to Green ICT a few years ago. "In 2009, his team began to notice several cases of health problems due to heavy-metal pollution being reported in local newspapers. 'To our surprise, the source wasn't mostly mines or government-operated smelters,' he says, 'but factories manufacturing global IT equipment'…By April 2010, Ma had discovered 29 major tech brands using factories with hazardous operations." Ma and IPE gained global recognition in 2011 by challenging the Apple, allegedly the largest and least responsive of the tech giants implicated in Chinese pollution. Learn more from our 2011-12 coverage of Ma, IPE, and Apple.

We noted in a 2008 post about the SMART 2020 report that while ICT emits GHGs, its potential to reduce them in other sectors was 5X greater. Now, a follow-up report - SMARTEer2020 - calculates ICT's leverage at 7X.

Sep 2011: Marlow Industries has announced, "a complete range of thermoelectric-based energy harvesting devices, offering customers a low-cost, zero-maintenance power solution for wireless sensor applications…By converting small degrees of temperature difference into milliwatts of electrical power [they] can perpetually power wireless sensors for the lifetime of the application. This green innovation offers a solid-state, reliable energy source for sensors, actuators, valve solenoids and other small devices by recycling wasted heat…With new building codes requiring sophisticated lighting, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems (HVAC), 'smart' designs are key to moderating usage…builders will have a cost-effective and green alternative that will relieve resources spent powering these devices."

Click here for recent Europe posts.

2011

One of the six goals in the US National Broadband Plan (NBP) is

Goal No. 6: To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

Clean Tech is technology that reduces the consumption of resources (like energy) and the emission of toxins (like CO2e).

All aspects of Clean Tech will depend on ICT - information and communications technology. You can see below some of ICT's potential across a spectrum of Clean Tech applications.

It is important that the huge growth of the ICT infrastructures necessary to do all this are as sustainable as possible. Clean Tech needs Green ICT to stay clean, itself.