World is Green

Team SOAK (Smart Operational Agricultural ToolKit) impressed the judges with its unique software designed to help farmers monitor their water usage. Team member David Burela, 24, said about six months was spent consulting with engineers and farmers and developing the software. It gives farmers a virtual image of their farms and the ability to work out how much moisture is in their fields and what their dam storage levels are.

THE powerful Group of Eight developed nations have taken a cautious step towards a new global climate change deal, agreeing to a goal of at least halving world carbon emissions by 2050.

That is changing with the company’s relatively new corporate environmental site. One big shift in the past six months has been the focus on software as a means of controlling or affecting carbon footprints. The potential for analytics and management technology that helps businesses run scenarios to better plan around emissions, geographic concerns and data center limitations suddenly seems boundless. The other big transition that Microsoft faces, of course, is the Software as a Service (SaaS) movement, which will see its data center footprint mushroom extensively in the coming years.

That corporate Australia would realise the business opportunities provided by aligning core business with the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to eliminate global poverty.

Today, the State of Utah announced moving to a four hour work week beginning August 1st in order to reduce expenses.  Workers will work ten hours for four days, Monday through Thursday, with no cut in salary.  Some offices will close on Fridays reducing the cost of utilities and saving the State $3 million per year from their $11 billion budget.  This is also being promoted as a green strategy as it's anticipated the State of Utah will also reduce its consumption of gas as Fridays it's fleet will be parked. 

Garnaut describes a few categories of economic modelling: The first category is ‘conventional market economic effects’, things you can measure and have data for. The scond category is ‘things you can measure and model but for which you have no real data’. Tourism falls into this category and so his core model excludes tourism for now. The third category is ‘things we value but that fall outside conteporary economic models’, things such as the Great Barrier Reef, which, when we lose them forever there’ll be a national sense of mourning. He emphasised that the numbers only tell a story in category one, tell a made up story in category two, and tell no story at all in category three.

The CEOs of 100 large multinational corporations -- including companies from carbon-intense industries -- have signed a World Economic Forum statement [PDF] that calls on the G8 to create a strategy to cut global greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050.

As biofuels soar in popularity, the cost of filling Americans’ gas tanks could be influenced as much by hail in Iowa as by the bombing of an oil pipeline in Nigeria. - Inspired by Jad Mouawad, The New York Times

So what I propose here is that every house should have a dumb terminal that connects to broadband internet with a powerful server at the end that serve thousands, maybe hundred of thousands people. These servers, enable people to do their job at home, collaborating using teleconference, and many more. With this scheme, actual reduction of CO2 emissions can be achieved.

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah

WE have been altogether too gloomy about climate change. Just look at the fun Arnold Schwarzenegger is having in California, which contains the sixth largest economy in the world. Where Australian politicians see only risks, the Governator sees opportunities.

Rudd locks in green power plan Chris Hammer Canberra July 3, 2008 THE Rudd Government has set Australia on course for a new era of greener but more expensive electricity, pressing ahead with a plan to make 20% of ou

THE Rudd Government has set Australia on course for a new era of greener but more expensive electricity, pressing ahead with a plan to make 20% of our power come from renewable sources within just over a decade.

Speaking at the launch of the new strategy, which sets out how the U.K. plans to meet its target of generating 15 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the "green revolution" would result in a tenfold increase in the U.K.'s current renewable energy capacity.

IBM can then assist clients in a range of CSR areas, including: -- Carbon footprint analysis and management; -- Environmental procurement; -- CSR policy development and monitoring for suppliers; -- "Green" data center; -- Information sharing and engagement with customers, shareholders, regulators and advocacy groups; -- Linking philanthropy to corporate strategy; -- Diversity and labor practices; -- Engagement with employees on CSR.

If Tesla can supply the drive trains for electric cars made by major auto manufacturers like Mercedes that not only would be a huge vote of confidence in its technology, it could also lead to a bigger business than selling its own cars. Are the Tesla Roadster and its upcoming sedan merely demo products for Tesla’s real business—supplying the electric “engines” for the world’s future gas-free vehicles?