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

Green ICT becoming increasingly important to sustainability initiatives at educational institutions. Here is an update on resources for that sector.

We recently added Greenpeace and Newsweek green rankings to our directory of companies making products used by the media industry. This side-by-side comparison reveals the divergence among rating systems.

Repurposing military facilities into green data centers appears to be a growing trend in Europe. We recently noted a Swiss data center built in an old military bunker and an Icelandic facility in a decommissioned NATO base. Now Sweden offers another variation on this theme: an underground data center with a Cold War pedigree.

Mega data centers are capturing much Green ICT press these days, so it is useful to remember that more modest enterprises can benefit as well. Monte Vibiano is a family-owned wine and olive oil producer that is taking an aggressive approach to Green ICT. Vibiano's actions include:

The 20 most populous countries comprise about half of the world's population. Yet 18 of these lie outside of what is generally perceived as the North American/Western Europe Green ICT nexus. These nations aspire to rapidly build out their ICT infrastructures. Nigeria, for example, already has GSM networks connecting ~50 million phones; over 130 radio and television broadcasters; domestic communications networks utilizing satellites, coastal submarine cable, land fiber, and microwave relays; and international connectivity via satellites and submarine cable.

These countries' ICT build-outs will have a significant future impact on global energy, carbon, and e-waste. Yet we hear very little about GreenICT challenges or progress in these countries. Go to our Global Green page to see what we've learned and to contribute by posting information about these countries.

The 18 countries, listed left-to-right in order of descending population, are:

Here are some public data centers and ISPs offering various shades of green computing

In what the (UK) Times termed "a considerable embarrassment", the Met Office "has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own. . . 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year . . ." The Met Office appears to be rationalizing this based on the virtue of the project.

@geekygreen, a rich source of information on Twitter about UK Green ICT, quotes a speaker at BSIGreenIT, "I would venture that 'Green IT' is actually 'Energy Efficient IT'." This references a reoccurring misconception well worth challenging.

I became interested in Green ICT after managing a business with ~100 servers for a weather app, so I took note of this story about UK Met Office's efforts. The Met Office is doing many of the right things, but here's the ironic bottom line: