Carbon Footprint: News

Greening your business has short-term effects that will save you money, let employees breathe better, and maybe even help land you a few more customers. These tips, sites, and kits can help your business go green for 2012.

Mitsui, a massive Japanese conglomerate, will invest US$12 million in an ambitious smart grid project that is being constructed in New Mexico.

The controversial Carbon Tax has been passed by the Senate, making the legislation a fact of life for most Australian IT businesses.

The parent of Apple supplier Foxconn has broken ground on a new R&D (research and development) facility in Taiwan to produce what could be robots that will be used in the company's manufacturing facilities.

Many have seen it: that picture of a small child playing in a heap of discarded metal scraps and wires in a Third World country. Images such as these have raised awareness about a fact of life in the computer era that's tainting corporate brands and creating a huge environmental problem: electronic waste.

Since January, David Filas, a data center engineer at Trinity Health, has been running decommissioned servers, networking gear and storage systems in a simple generator shed on the grounds of the healthcare provider's headquarters in Novi, Mich.

The Uptime Institute has launched its first Server Roundup Contest to encourage data center operators to retire obsolete servers and reduce their energy consumption.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be wearing out her shoe leather and hitting the airwaves to sell her carbon price package to a tough audience.

The federal government will set up a $10 billion fund to invest in clean and renewable energy as part of its carbon pricing package.

Julia Gillard’s controversial carbon tax has seen some support from businesses, with more than 50 signing a statement backing a price on carbon.

Datacentre inefficiency is a growing concern for all organisations, regulatory commissions and employees and employers worldwide, according to APC by Schneider Electric software application engineer, David Sweikert.

The WA Department of Treasury & Finance (WA DTF) has won an award at the The 14th annual Australasian Shared Services and Outsourcing Network conference in the 'excellence in people and communication' category.

The Government’s controversial carbon tax will bring the green issue back to the table – an issue that the IT industry is well poised to capitalise on, according to the AIIA.

ASX-listed integrator, UXC Group, is set to make a large compensation claim against the Federal Government due to its cancellation of various green schemes.

Most of the talk about IT energy efficiency has focused on the data center, but office equipment like PCs and printers can offer plenty of opportunity to cut costs as well. Fujitsu is rolling out some new services Wednesday that aim to help companies tackle both areas at once, and it claims they can reduce a company's IT energy bills by 20 percent on average.

A group of organizations led by The Green Grid has recommended a standard way for data centers to measure their Power Usage Effectiveness, aiming to bring consistency to the metric and make it easier for different facilities to compare their results.

Broadreach Services has been recertified as carbon neutral for 2009 by the Carbon Reduction Institute (CRI).

Colt Technology Services Group is looking to attract companies that want to increase their data-center capacity without committing to building a large-scale facility.

US-based company, American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC), has been brought on to build a smart grid for the 111 turbine Collgar wind farm in Western Australia.

A group of 47 companies and organizations, including several in the IT sector, have asked U.S. President Barack Obama to take new steps that would allow homeowners and businesses to better monitor their energy use.