Tech companies dominated the top of Newsweek's "Green Rankings 2009", but Apple came in #133 overall and had an undistinguished middle-of-the-pack position within the tech sector. Its response to this and other mediocre ratings as a green enterprise doesn't do the company or its customers (like me) credit.

A lot has changed since we wrote three years ago: "Yahoo plans to go carbon neutral by the end of 2007. Part of this will be achieved through carbon offsets, including hydroelectric and sustainable agriculture projects in Brazil." Co-founder and Chief Yahoo David Filo now says, "Reducing our carbon footprint has always been a priority and we’ve decided to focus all our energy and investment on that philosophy. We will no longer purchase carbon offsets as announced in 2007. Instead, we’ll focus our resources on reducing our carbon impact while helping the rest of the industry do the same. We believe creating highly-efficient data centers will have a greater long-term, direct impact on the environment and gives us the best opportunity to play a leadership role in addressing climate change."

Another focus appears to be reducing the amount of water typically consumed by a data center. Here is Yahoo's report about its newest data center, the Lockport, NY "Chicken Coop":

I asked a person involved in a green initiative how her organization assembled evidence of their material impact on the community's carbon footprint. She was clearly taken aback by my question and replied to the effect that, "We haven't, but I believe that we are moving the community toward a tipping point." Her response was instructive on two counts.

An investment in effective stakeholder engagement is critical to obtain support prior to commencing a project, to ensure effective and efficient implementation, and to assess and share value afterward. This is an often-neglected element of Green ICT projects.

It's time to embrace an evidence-based discipline for designing and executing green initiatives. The value of this extends well beyond Green ICT.

The CIO Executive Board has identified what it calls "two critical activities to successfully sustain green IT projects." These tie to our "Keeping It Real" criteria, which are critical to long-term credibility of any green initiative.

Proposed California Energy Commission (CEC) regulations to improve television set energy efficiency by 49% could mean significant changes to its consumer electronics market and possibly that of the United States as a whole. This activity comes at a time when the International Energy Agency is expressing concern about the energy/carbon implications of global television set ownership soaring past the two billion level.

The German company scored A+ while the three American companies scored B+ in Claremont McKenna College's Entertainment Sector Analysis of sustainability. Ten others scored B- to D+. But even the top performers have a long way to go.

We can't emphasize enough that behavioral/cultural change is the oft-overlooked challenge to Green ICT. We have seen what happens when green is not the default behavior or when cultural entitlements thwart good intentions. A couple more examples come from academia.

There have been growing concerns about the misuse of PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) in PR. Uptime Institute Director Kenneth Brill weighed in with widely noted critiques a year ago. Last week, Loose Bolts blogger Michael Manos raised the specter of PUE PR becoming embedded in RFPs. But what I liked best about Manos' post was his attention to an unintended consequence of the quest for efficiency.