Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami had a huge impact on the country's ICT infrastructure, much of which is still being felt by businesses and consumers. Here information and insights we have collected over the past year about data centers, communications networks, e-devices, and other ICT topics.

Japan Trends noted a year later, "On the back of electricity concerns in Japan last summer as a result of the Fukushima disaster, we have seen a growing amount of innovation in the energy sector appealing to a much more energy conscious consumer." It cites Sony's demonstration of a wireless communication and authentication systems for connecting e-device users with power supplies. Sony's video suggests the ability of consumers to purchase renewable energy for their e-gear. Japan Trends wryly observes that the system could "discourage those who nurse a single small cup of coffee for hours on end whilst sucking on the electricity taking up the space and working away in a busy coffee shop."

Chemical batteries have a host of life-cycle sustainability issues, so ICT manufacturers and practitioners are constantly looking to innovate in this area. I've previously taken a look at alternatives to chemical batteries in ICT facilities and infrastructures. What about e-gear? Mitigate, more than eliminate, is the current state of practice.

Apple filed a patent application in December 2011 for a "fuel cell system for a portable computing device". Here are some excerpts from the application speaking the social/market forces to which Apple sees itself responding.

Fujitsu announced that it has established a consolidated green product development standard based on the IEC 62075 framework covering the environmentally conscious design of AV and ICT equipment. The standard will encourage product designs which "promote resource efficiency and recycling", "reduce power consumption during…use", "reduce noise levels", and "avoid…use of hazardous materials".

Mobile devices and services are growing cloud computing at a dizzying pace. How clean are these clouds?

All the naturally-occurring elements in the universe are forged in the cosmic fusion reactors we call stars. This is true of the atoms in our our bodies and of those in our e-gear. We are truly stardust.

The process of fusing atomic nuclei together to form ever-more-complex atoms is called 'nucleosynthesis'. Average stars like our sun can power basic reactions like fusing hydrogen into helium.

Specialty metals recycler Umicore uses grams per tonne of gold to illustrate the potential for urban mining of e-waste.

Here is a summary of studies on the e-delivery of software, movies, music, and books, compared with physical delivery, based on three studies from 2009.

The US ENERGY STAR program looks only at energy efficiency and not other sustainability factors. Twenty set-top box (STB) units for cable, IP, or satellite from seven manufacturers came in at less than 100W in the program's Total Energy Consumption (TEC) metric. Apple TV is the most efficient, helped by its very low stand-by power consumption. The unit has a number of other sustainability features, as well. Here is the list we derived from the ENERGY STAR database.