·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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Read the full story at News.com.

The United States can slash its use of petroleum dramatically by 2035 by adding a heavy dose of hybrids to the market, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To return U.S. fuel use to pre-2000 levels, however, carmakers would have to improve efficiency and consumers would have to learn to love hybrids, trading features like increased speed and size for higher fuel efficiency.

Read the full story at News.com.

The “slow food” movement came first, followed by “slow work” and even “slow medicine.” Next, will people let the Internet relax a little for the sake of ecological sustainability?

Researchers are finding that data centers can make relatively simple power consumption tweaks that mimic those long available for personal computers, as New Scientist reports.

Read the press release.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected Drexel University as a winner in EPA’s fourth annual People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition for an innovative biodiesel project created by Drexel students.

Read the full story in the Sacramento Bee.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency probably won’t follow California in ridding drinking water of a rocket fuel chemical that has contaminated supplies in Rancho Cordova and in dozens of other communities around the country, a top agency official said Tuesday.

Federal inaction on regulating the drinking-water contaminant perchlorate has left the Pentagon, NASA and defense contractors free to negotiate levels of cleanup with government agencies, potentially trimming the cost of restoring groundwater.

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing entitled “Perchlorate and TCE in Water.” Statements, photos, and a webcast are available on the committee web site.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

The mayor of San Francisco wants to make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary, on the pain of having garbage pickups suspended.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

The suit is aimed at pressing Italy to take action against a problem that has enraged locals, embarrassed national pride and influenced recent national elections.

For a full-color, graphic version of this newsletter, go to http://www.greenercomputing.com/enewsletter.

How to Develop a Green IT Culture
By Andy Lawrence, The 451 Group
IT has suffered an ‘eco black eye’ over the course of the past year even though its contributions to climate change are minimal compared to other sources. Andy Lawrence shows you how you can make IT a better environmental citizen by developing an eco-efficient IT department.

IBM Creates Data Center Alliance, Releases Energy Efficiency Tools
IBM is continuing its efforts to green data centers, bringing together vendors to support energy standards and creating new tools for data center users to monitor energy use.

Virtualization Common Among Retailers: Survey
Out of 205 IT decision-makers surveyed, almost three out of four have adopted virtualization for reasons ranging from saving energy to better security.

Digital Realty Trust Releases Data Center Efficiency Stats, Receives Green Award
The data center owner and manager has adopted the Power Usage Effectiveness metric and is measuring the energy efficiency of its data centers throughout the world.

Corporate Execs Must Take Charge of Green IT, Report Says
Hiring a C-level ‘Energy Czar’ position and creating a corporate average data-center efficiency metric are among some of the top-level changes companies should adopt in order to make serious reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report released by the Uptime Institute and McKinsey.

SynapSense Software Offers Real-Time Imaging for Data Center Energy Use
The company’s LiveImaging feature allows operators to gauge efficiencies in energy use, heating and cooling, humidity and pressure differentials, making possible on-the-fly adjustments to data center performance.

Microsoft Invests $500K in Energy Efficient Computing Research
The funding is part of the companyís Sustainable Computing Program, which focuses on energy efficiency and the ìpay for playî principle where the amount of energy used by a computing device is proportional to the demand placed on it. The award recipients include University of Tennessee, Stanford, Harvard and University of Oklahoma.

Craft a Green IT Action Plan
This report, made available specially to GreenerComputing readers by InfoTech, explains how to create an overall green IT plan and set up different types of projects.

Read the press release.

Climate Counts’ (www.climatecounts.org) second annual Company Scorecard shows scored companies making climate improvements across most industry sectors. Eighty-four percent of the scored companies — among them some of the world’s largest — made improvements in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and to make information about those actions easily accessible to consumers. The Scorecard, first released in June 2007, scores 56 major corporations in well-known consumer sectors – from apparel to electronics to fast food – on their commitment to reversing climate change.

Energy Matters, the Best Practices quarterly of DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program, is now available online. The issue focus is Resources to Save Energy Now. Highlights include:

• Utility Companies and ITP Pool Efforts to Help Industry Save Energy Now
• Isothermal Melting: Reaching for the Peak of Efficiency in Aluminum Melting Operations
• Assessments Reveal Steam Energy Savings Opportunities for Chemical, Automotive, and Paper Manufacturing Companies
• Ask an Energy Expert: Optimizing Process Heating Systems
• Self-Assess Your Energy-Saving Opportunities Today with Resources from DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program
• Boost Process Heating System Performance with New Sourcebook and Software

Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.

Your personal computing habits may need a green makeover. Today’s power-hungry computers are eating an ever-bigger share of the energy pie chart. With new, more energy-efficient technologies and green initiatives like the federal Energy Star program and the Green Electronics Council’s Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), consumers can finally shop with energy efficiency in mind. But that’s just the beginning. It helps to know that computer companies like Dell are taking steps toward becoming carbon neutral. And knowing about PC components—when to power down and when to use the energy-saving options of new operating systems such as Microsoft’s Vista—can do much to save money and reduce the environmental impact of personal computing.

Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.

Fifteen members of the Rockefeller family publicly called on ExxonMobil Corporation, the company which emerged from family patriarch John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire, to start looking beyond short-term oil profits in planning for a carbon-constrained future. The Rockefeller descendents, who today own a sizable but minority portion of shares in ExxonMobil, would also like to see the company fund a task force to study the consequences of global warming on poor economies as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emission at its own facilities around the world.

Read the full story at News.com.

Solar company HelioVolt and Architectural Glass & Aluminum on Tuesday announced a partnership to produce glass windows capable of generating electricity.

Read the full story at News.com.

In a sign of “green” going mainstream, an IBM survey of CEOs finds that socially oriented customers are wielding more power, aided by social networking on the Web.

The survey, published Tuesday, drew on face-to-face interviews with 1,130 CEOs around the world. It found that CEOs feel less prepared as they would like to deal with the pace of change.

What You Need to Know About Energy. Washington, DC : National Academies Press, 2008. Available free to read online or download. Good resource for middle and high school teachers.

This overview begins with a description of the status of energy in 21st-century America, including the main sources of energy used in the United States and a survey of the nation’s energy demand versus the world’s available supply. Then it looks ahead to the quest for greater energy efficiency and emerging technologies. Along the way it addresses how social concerns influence our choice of energy options and how those options affect our everyday lives. The goal of this booklet is to present an accurate picture of America’s current and projected energy needs and to describe options that are likely to play a significant role in our energy future. No one can afford to remain uninformed about the energy future because we all have a stake in its outcome.