Group items tagged

Dubbed the "missing greenhouse gas," nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) was found by a recent study to have a global climate impact 17,000 times greater than carbon dioxide. The chemical is found in the LCD panels of cell phones, televisions, and computer monitors, as well as in semiconductors and synthetic diamonds. The chemical is not one of the greenhouse gases monitored by the Kyoto Protocol, due to the fact that LCDs were not produced in significant quantities when it was drafted.

a battery that is "charged" by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). The new technology is a step towards the creation of computer hard drives with no moving parts, which would be much faster, less expensive and use less energy than current ones. In the future, the new battery could be developed to power cars. The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Nature and is available in an online advance publication of the journal.

The thought of a driverless, computer-guided car transporting people where they want to go on demand is a futuristic notion to some.

A cyberattack has caused a power blackout in multiple cities outside the United States, the CIA has warned. The SANS Institute, a computer-security training body, reported the CIA's disclosure on Friday. CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue told a SANS Institute conference on Wednesday in New Orleans that the CIA had evidence of successful cyberattacks against critical national infrastructures outside the United States.

The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, has announced its technology roadmap and key deliverables for 2007. For the next several months, The Green Grid will focus on data collection through the documentation of existing standards and the evaluation of metrics; data assessment through a market study of current efficiency practices; and technology proposals that outline The Green Grid's recommendations for the future of energy efficient data centers.

A new process for using aluminum alloys to generate hydrogen from water could make fuel-cell vehicles more practical,

The paper itself is flawed suggesting that virtualisation can reeduce the number of servers required to 7% - enough to handle the average processing load. Webusers want instant reaction during the peak - for that you need spare capacity. Is this a surprise?

The Internet doesn't produce belching smokestacks or toxin-spewing drainpipes. Instead, the environmental impact of the data centers that power the Web and private networks is about as visible as the electrons moving around a company's servers. But visible or not, the ecological and economic costs of those servers are massive. A report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. data centers (collections of computers used to power businesses' and government agencies' IT infrastructures and Web sites) consumed around 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006 at a cost of about $4.5 billion. That's about 1.5% of total U.S. electricity consumption, more than the electricity used by American televisions, or equivalent to the output of about 15 typical power plants

Emerson had originally considered placing condensers separate from the building. Instead, the condensers were installed on the data center roof near the computer room's air conditioning systems, saving about 2.5 miles of copper piping.

Nanotechnology researchers at IBM's Zurich lab image the chemical structure of molecules to revealing insight in how charge transmits, potentially improving computer components and solar panels.

The European Commission (EC) and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have agreed new energy efficiency specifications for computers, printers, copiers and other office equipment.

"Every continent on the planet is surrounded by a cleaner, safer, more efficient answer to our energy needs. The power in ocean waves. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is a leading renewable energy company specializing in cost-effective, advanced, and environmentally sound offshore wave power technology. The electrical power generated by OPT's technology is key to meeting the energy needs of utilities, independent power producers and the public sector. OPT's PowerBuoy® system extracts the natural energy in ocean waves, and is based on the integration of patented technologies in hydrodynamics, electronics, energy conversion and computer control systems. The PowerBuoy is a "smart" system capable of responding to differing wave conditions. The result is a leading edge, ocean-tested, proprietary system which generates reliable, clean, and environmentally-beneficial electricity."

**Extremely useful comparison + charts** Covers 11 technologies from 6 data sources. Source detail included in appendix. Costs: capital, fixed, operating, learning factor; Technical: size, heat rate, [potential] capacity factor, service life. Note on unit life: not all data sets include this, some run as long as plant is economic (no pre-determined retirement age), can represent max service life or is just used to compute economics (e.g. LCOE).

"Electro Magnates is a cutting edge carbon-reducing sustainability project at the intersection of computer science, social media and behaviour change. The project's deliverables are to design, implement, and evaluate a suite of social software applications - including games - to encourage positive behaviour changes in energy consumption. The project will specifically design software interventions to be used by employees and students in educational and public sector work-places and environments in the county of Lincolnshire in the UK."