One of the foremost thinkers in the business world today sees the trend for going green as seat belts were to the automotive industry back when they were first introduced.

“I’m one of those people who believe that green technology now is now in the process of becoming like safety in the automotive industry. In the beginning, when safety was introduced with seat belts and everything, everybody was a little bit like, ‘oh safety, it’s so expensive…’ Today you can sell a car that is not safe. It’s possible and it’s illegal in many cases,” said Kjell Nordstrom, a lecturer at the Stockholm School of Economics and best selling author of a couple of business books – Karaoke Capitalism: Management for Mankind and Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance. “Even the small cars are becoming safe. And some small manufacturers cannot sell cars in some countries as is – they are not safe enough.” Read the rest

Qualcomm says its Mirasol displays, which use reflective technology to display the spectrum of colours instead of active lights, can reduce the carbon emissions from gadgets over their life time of use.

The Mirasol display technology works by mimicking the wings of a butterfly, which basically have no colour on their own, but reflect specific wavelengths in the light spectrum that show up as colour to your eye. In that way, it doesn’t require power for illumination, but uses ambient light to form the images. Read the rest

PRESS RELEASE: RICHARDSON, TX – Aug. 16, 2010 – Eltek Valere today announced the Trilogy DC power system, a 40A-600A, 48V high-efficiency (HE) power system with 15” shelf depth and special cable management to fit into short-depth outside plant and central office applications.

Although not exclusive to solar applications, the Trilogy DC power plant does offer convenient solar energy management, allowing service providers to use the sun as a back-up power source without the need for a separate, discrete power plant. This capability is made possible with the Smartpack controller—standard with the Trilogy system—which can manage AC power input from the grid and DC solar energy input from a solar array to optimize power conversion. Read the rest

PRESS RELEASE: HONG KONG, August 16, 2010 — APC by Schneider Electric, a global leader in integrated critical power and cooling services, announced the formation of a new specialized data center software business to focus and drive a leadership position across all aspects of the data center environment . The Data Center Software business will be responsible for advancing all software and management systems for the data center physical infrastructure. The team will have direct accountability for software development, offer creation, sales, service, marketing and partner programs.

“By establishing a new and dedicated software business with a clear strategy and focus, we are showing our true commitment to become the global leader in software for data centers,” said Laurent Vernerey, President and CEO of APC. “This evolution within APC is well aligned with the Schneider Electric vision of becoming the world leader in energy management.” Read the rest

A university researcher has called for telecommunications operators to offer up their subsea cable infrastructure to help with climate monitoring. John Yuzhu You, a scientist at Sydney University, says that submarine cables laying at the bottom of the sea can help climate change scientist monitor key changes in world’s environment, including ocean currents, salinity, seismology and sea temperatures.

According to this report from ITNews in Australia, devices called, Voltmetres, can be installed in cable landing stations that can measure the electromagnetic current created by water moving around a subsea cable. Read the rest

PRESS RELEASE: SINGAPORE, Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ — The Asia-Pacific video conferencing endpoints market is expected to see strong growth with revenues rising at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 13.6 percent till 2016 reaching nearly US$820 million. Unit shipments meanwhile are predicted to grow at a CAGR of 16.3 percent (2009-2016).

“Spending on video conferencing solutions picked up in the final quarter of 2009 and has shown similar upbeat trends so far in the first half of 2010,” notes Frost & Sullivan industry manager Pranabesh Nath. He expects this optimism to continue assuming the economic recovery proceeds as anticipated in most Asia-Pac markets. Read the rest

PRESS RELEASE: Brisbane R&D startup Cool Door Pty Ltd has won a prestigious iAward at the Australian IT industry’s biggest annual awards event in Melbourne last week.

The Cool Door is an energy efficient cooling solution for data centres invented by Brisbane bayside residents Bernie Gee and Shaun Vosper.

The mens’ invention took out the Tools and Infrastructure iAward for Queensland at the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) event held in Brisbane in July and on 5 August the Cool Door was named national winner in the same field at a prestigious event at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. Read the rest

PRESS RELEASE: BEND, ORE, USA, August 9, 2010 – IdaTech plc (AIM: IDA), a global leader in the development and manufacture of clean and reliable PEM fuel cell products for the critical backup power market is pleased to announce the Phase III roll out of the latest generation hydrogen backup power fuel cell systems on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Lombok. As part of this Phase III roll out, IdaTech received an order for 154 ElectraGen™ fuel cell systems.

IdaTech’s partner Cascadiant has been awarded the Phase III expansion contract to install and support the ElectraGen™ fuel cell systems. Cascadiant has successfully installed over 100 fuel cell systems across Indonesia with several of the wireless operators. Read the rest

The Australian government has released an overarching plan to transform its ICT operations with sustainability practices.

The Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan 2010-2015 outlines strategies and actions for its agencies to lower their emissions and is consistent with the current administration’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the country by 60% of 2000 levels by 2050. Read the rest

A new report by Pike Research estimates that investment into ‘green’ data centres will increase from US$7.5 billion to US$41.4 billion by 2015, which would in turn equal some 28% of the total data centre market.

“Cost of energy has seldom been a concern for IT departments in the past,” says industry analyst Eric Woods, “and there was little incentive to invest in energy efficiency improvements. But as data centre energy costs become more visible, the financial benefits of moving to a greener mode of operation are being recognized by CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs.” Read the rest