Sony was one of a few vendors who covered green initiatives in their NAB 2010 show booth. It responded to my post-NAB query by telling me about a program that is a good example how just about any business can find an industry-specific contribution to make to Green ICT.

That's 'green' as in 'sustainability', not 'green screen'. Here is what I discovered when I went looking for green at the annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show, attended by over 80K people from 150+ countries.

SMART 2020 defines "dematerialization" as the process by which an ICT product or service replaces a high carbon activity with a low carbon one. It concludes that a total dematerialization of CDs and DVDs by online media could reduce global CO2 by 17 million tonnes annually. This assumes 17 billion discs produced annually at 1 kg of CO2 per disc. How does that 1 kg figure stack up against other analyses?

The television broadcast segment of the telecom industry is at the focus of many Green ICT issues, ranging from the e-waste implications of global analog-to-digital conversions to rapidly evolving technologies for studio lighting. Despite the challenges, there is upside here for media enterprises. How are industry conferences preparing broadcasters and others for the challenges and opportunities of Green ICT? I took a look at broadcast conferences around the world.

The DTV conversion is gaining momentum worldwide, along with e-waste problems and solutions.

A comparison of two studies of physical media distribution reveals that manufacturing, not shipment to retail outlets, emits most of the carbon.

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.

Newsweek has released its Green Rankings 2009. It provides a rank for each the 500 largest US companies and a "Green Score" normalized to a 100-1 scale. How did companies in industries of interest stack up?

The number, size, and energy consumption of television displays has increased despite competition from computers and mobile devices. The International Energy Agency (IEA) puts the number of sets at 2 billion; that pushes Vertatique's count of the edge gear we've attached to the global ICT infrastructure up over 11 billion items.

What is the carbon footprint of a large file download? A paper comparing digital and physical delivery of Microsoft Office is light on detail, but provides some useful clues.