Tag archive: Energy

Earlier today, Honeywell announced a partnership with a cloud-technology company named Opower, a business that analyzes home energy patterns to provide specific recommendations on how to effectively save on energy costs. The collaboration between the two companies will integrate the cloud-sourced information from Opower with Honeywell's lineup of smart thermostats. The smart thermostats require a broadband Internet connection to provide… Read More

Not long ago, as the Internet, mobile phones and the rest of the connected computing universe hit the elbow of its growth curve, experts and the public alike began to worry about the amount of power the sprawling data centers would require. In 2007, the EPA projected that energy needs for data centers would double from 2005 to 2010 and cost an annual $7.4 billion. Yet in a study prepared by Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University at the request… Read More

Greenpeace has released a 35-page report detailing the environmental impacts of various data centers around the country, including those of Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple. The report, titled How Dirty is Your Data?, takes a look at the footprint that companies are leaving due to the massive amounts of energy they need to power their products and respond to the ever-increasing data demands from their customers. “We expect these… Read More

It's not unusual for Silicon Valley startups to run in “stealth mode” for a while, keeping their technology and developments to themselves and a few key partners while they work out the kinks and a business plan. But for Bloom Energy, the secrecy has been surprisingly effective, considering what they're intent to spring on the world: small, clean, inexpensive, emission-free power plans that will enable homes and… Read More

Check out Part I and Part II in our series about life in the year 2020. Our cities are a mess. Based on grids of pavement for devices of transport that pump poisonous fumes into the atmosphere, they and their inhabitants are slowly but inexorably being choked into submission. Many of them are rotting from the core – their eroding downtowns often unattainable in heavy traffic from the distant, sprawling suburbs that surround them. And in those… Read More

China potentially could be a $500 billion to $1 trillion a year market for environmentally sustainable "green technologies," a group of businesses and experts said in a report Thursday that urges governments to ease the way for such initiatives. The report by the China Greentech Initiative, a group of more than 80 leading technology companies, non-governmental organizations and policy advisers, pinpointed opportunities from 300… Read More

A Swiss company developing zinc batteries for electric cars has chosen Portland, Ore., as its U.S. headquarters and manufacturing center. ReVolt Technology also announced Tuesday it's applying for $30 million in research grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to answer the government's call for technology that drives energy independence. ReVolt says zinc-based batteries deliver more than twice the energy of lithium-ion… Read More

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) is warning the technology industry that the amount of power consumed by household electronics and communications gear could double by the year 2022 and triple by the year 2030 to 1,700 terawatt hours—basically equivalent to the entire residential electricity consumption in the United States and Japan today. The increased electricity consumption fueled by consumer electronics, of… Read More

Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross thinks computers could be greener. He’s been researching how much energy they use, and his results are, well, a little surprising. He’s found that undertaking two Google searches produces 14 grams of CO2, about the same amount produced by boiling an electric kettle. He says the carbon emissions come not only from the computer itself, but from the data centers that produce the information… Read More

Fear not, environmentalists. CES may be a sea of neon, flashing video displays running 24 hours a day, and taxis idling in bumper to bumper traffic, but LG is doing it’s part to go green by… charging a couple cell phones with renewable energy. Yes my friends, the grid is safe, for now, from an additional 1.8 kW of electricity being drained because LG has set up it’s very own Skycharger, an outdoor kiosk that uses wind… Read More

Inverness, in the North of Scotland, is definitely going to be part of 21st century computing. IT firm Alchemy Plus is partnering with Microsoft to build a cloud computing complex in the city’s harbor area. Why Inverness? Basically, because it never gets too warm there, which means less energy will be needed to cool the huge number of computers, cutting down on the need for refrigeration. As it stands, the 20,000 square foot building… Read More

Computer maker Dell has announced that it has reached its goal of being a carbon-neutral company a full year ahead of schedule. “We're driving 'green' into every aspect of our global business,” said Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell. “This includes setting new standards for energy efficiency and green power, delivering environmental and cost savings for customers and aligning key growth priorities with… Read More

We know it’s tough to get excited about the raw spreadsheet-crunching power of a middle-of-the-line business PC, but with the skyrocketing price of energy, Dell’s new, lean and green Vostro 410 might just set a (small and efficient) fire in your heart. Dell claims the machine’s Energy Smart technologies could cut your computer-related energy costs nearly in half without sacrificing performance. If that sounds like a… Read More

Some kids (and parents!) probably think they're doing themselves a favor by spending quality time with so-called “active” video games like Wii Sports rather than sitting down to another round of Halo or World of Warcraft. And a new study from the UK finds that active games do burn more calories than traditional video games…just not enough to make much of a difference. The results of a new study published in the… Read More