December 6, 2010: ITU and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) have released a new report detailing the role of ICT in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It refers both to the IT industry and to those sectors in which IT is applied: "For every watt of energy saved by a billion end users of ICT equipment, a whole power plant is no longer required. And all sectors of the economy can significantly reduce their energy needs ... through ICTs". The report also discusses ongoing efforts to develop standardized methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of ICT.

For more information, please follow the link to the source.

November 23, 2010: A new data center by DeepGreen which is being built in Switzerland will use the nearby Lake Walensee as a source for water cooling. This approach avoids conventional cooling systems. It is expected that the facility will have a PUE of 1.1 thanks to this innovation and further measures.

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November 10, 2010: The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a consortium working on improving the energy efficiency of ICT, recently announced the creation of a new industry workgroup focused on the energy efficiency of networks. The global power consumption of network equipment might increase up to 6% per year (if left unchecked) and the initiative estimates that up to 38 million metric tons of CO2 emissions could be offset worldwide by 2015, using more efficient network equipment.

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November 9, 2010: The Story of Stuff Project released an educational video on the lifecycle of products from production to end-of-life and associated issues such as eletronic waste: The Story of Electronics - Why designed for the dump is toxic for people and the planet.

To see the video, please follow the link to the source.

November 5, 2010: A white paper by Accenture and WSP (which was commissioned by Microsoft) describes that, compared to individual data centers, cloud computing facilities can significantly reduce the energy usage and carbon emissions from a company's computing services. For large deployments (10,000 users) these improvements might reach 30% and for small deployments even up to 90%.

For more information, please follow the link to the source.

November 1, 2010: CNET writer Martin LaMonica presents an overview of the important role of rare earth metals. The topic has received increased media attention in the past month and the article provides a good introduction to some of the underlying issues.

For more information, please follow the link to the source.