·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
• • • • •

Read the full story in Technology Review.

Researchers at Duke University are hoping to develop methods to reversibly turn off harmful or unwanted genes in bacteria. If they succeed, gene silencing could be used to treat persistent infections by turning off antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria and in environmental and industrial applications, including water filtration. The technique could also make it possible to engineer bacteria to more efficiently make biofuels and other industrial products.

Read the full story at News.com.

Tiny algae is ready for some long-haul trucking.

Solazyme, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based company that creates synthetic biological products, said Wednesday that its microalgae-derived fuel is the first renewable diesel to meet the American Society for Testing and Materials’ D-975 specifications.

Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.

As green living goes mainstream, compact fluorescent light (CFL) bbulbs burn brightly in millions of homes. And there lies the problem: CFLs require mercury to produce light. On average, 25-watt CFLs contain five milligrams (mg) of mercury, an amount that would fit on the tip of a pen.

When the glass breaks in landfills, the mercury escapes, and, over time, leaches into topsoil and ground water, eventually winding up in streams, ponds and lakes. And long-term exposure to mercury poses severe health risks.

Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.

Best Buy has launched a pilot program to test free “take back” of used electronics. The nation’s largest electronics retailer will accept electronics purchased anywhere at 117 stores in the San Francisco, Minneapolis and Baltimore/Washington, DC metro areas.

Read the full story at News.com.

Propelled by a servo-actuated two-link tails and flapping pectoral fins, a new breed of robofish programmed to swim in schools may soon be used to track oil spills or wildlife such as whales, according to researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Read the full story at News.com.

To wring efficiencies out of data centers, IBM has gone back to a familiar playbook: standard-size building blocks.

The company on Wednesday will launch an expanded line of data centers that use a modular design to cut energy consumption in half, compared with existing data centers.

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

Sustainable IT: The Many Shades of Green
By Robert Houghton
http://www.greenercomputing.com/column/2008/06/11/sustainable-it-the-many-shades-green
As a concept applied to IT, “green” is one of those terms in danger of becoming
whatever the marketing departments at hardware and software makers want it to
be. Robert Houghton, President of Redemtech, offers advice on how to measure and
work towards true sustainability.

WWF Proposes Global Green IT Strategy
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/10/wwf-proposes-global-green-it-strategy
In a new report, WWF International explains 10 IT strategies that can help
reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

SoftLayer Shrinks Packaging for Servers
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/09/softlayer-shrinks-packaging
Hosting company SoftLayer has worked with its server manufacturer to cut down on
packaging materials and the shipment of unnecessary components.

Verizon Develops Its Own Efficiency Metrics
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/06/verizon-develops-its-own-efficiency-metrics
In a bid to boost energy efficiency in new telecommunications equipment, Verizon
on Thursday unveiled a set of metrics that will be applied to new products
beginning next year. The company is pushing equipment manufacturers to make new
products such as broadband, data center, network and customer premises equipment
20 percent more energy efficient.

HP Labs Aims to Cut Data Center Carbon Footprints by 75 Percent
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/05/hp-labs-aims-cut-data-center-carbon-footprints-75-percent
The lab unveiled the new initiative as part of an overarching researching drive
in five areas, including sustainability. The research center also introduced two
additional projects aimed at curbing data center energy use and measuring
environmental impacts.

Internet Evolution, Greentech Media Provide Green IT Tutorial
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/04/internet-evolution-greentech-media-provide-green-it-tutorial
Media sites Internet Evolution and Greentech Media have teamed up to provide a
range of green IT resources to help companies just getting up to speed on issues
make the most of their time.

Kaseya Software Supports Power Management Initiatives
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/03/kaseya-software-supports-power-management-initiatives
Kaseya’s new User State Management module includes technology allowing remote
control of power management settings.

Dell Releases Energy Efficient Desktop PC for Small Businesses
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/06/02/dell-releases-energy-efficient-desktop-pc-small-businesses
The Vostro 410 desktop is designed to save users 47 percent on energy costs.

An Inconvenient Balance? Can the Data Center Go Green Without Stifling Corporate
Growth?
http://www.greenercomputing.com/resources/resource/an-inconvenient-balance-data-center-growth
This report provides a look at how virtualization and consolidation of data
center security systems can bring down energy and emissions.

Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sensitive to their enrollment numbers and the plight of their fuel-cost-fatigued students, administrators at rural community colleges are looking for ways to help students stay on track with their studies even as their monthly transportation bills rise, in some cases approaching the several-hundred-dollar range.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Airlines are scrutinizing every step of their their operations, searching for new ways to cut fuel bills.

The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:

• Stumbling Blocks Still Exist for Wind Energy but the Future Looks Bright
• Storage Boosts the Power of Renewable Energy
• Japanese Automaker, U.S. Firm Team Up To Convert Cars to Electric Power
• Kyoto’s Great Carbon Offset Swindle
• Utilities and Net Metering
• Utility Business Model Report Provides Roadmap of Emerging Solar Strategies
• The challenge of growth: Supply chain and wind turbine upscaling challenges

Read the full story at NIST.

New research* shows that while engineered nanomaterials can be transferred up the lowest levels of the food chain from single-cell organisms to higher multicelled ones, the amount transferred was relatively low and there was no evidence of the nanomaterials concentrating in the higher level organisms. The preliminary results observed by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggest that the particular nanomaterials studied may not accumulate in invertebrate food chains.

* R.D. Holbrook, K.E. Murphy, J.B. Morrow and K.D. Cole. “Trophic transfer of nanoparticles in a simplified invertebrate food chain.” Nature Nanotechnology, June 2008 (advance online publication).

Read the full story from NIST.

After a close examination of crude oil made from pig manure, chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are certain about a number of things.

Most obviously, “This stuff smells worse than manure,” says NIST chemist Tom Bruno.

But a job’s a job, so the NIST team has developed the first detailed chemical analysis revealing what processing is needed to transform pig manure crude oil into fuel for vehicles or heating. Mass production of this type of biofuel could help consume a waste product overflowing at U.S. farms, and possibly enable cutbacks in the nation’s petroleum use and imports. But, according to a new NIST paper (L.S. Ott, B.L. Smith and T.J. Bruno. “Advanced distillation curve measurement: Application to a bio-derived crude oil prepared from swine manure”. Fuel (2008), doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2008.04.038.) , pig manure crude will require a lot of refining.

Read the full story at News.com.

Algae, it seems, is the new darling of the biofuels world. Aurora BioFuels on Tuesday announced that it has raised $20 million to build open-pond algae farms to make bio-oil.

It’s one of several funding announcements from start-ups looking to make algae a commercially viable alternative to soy, canola, or fry grease to make fuel for diesel vehicles.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

Some industry sectors are posting impressive profits from America’s poor environmental progress, including waste collection and management companies, recycling facilities, and environmental consultants, according to IBISWorld, Inc., an independent publisher of business intelligence research.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

A survey by the Aperture Research Institute (ARI) of more than 100 data center professionals has shown that organizations are unable or unwilling to meet the expectations set by their adoption of green initiatives for the data center.

Read the full post at Green House Effect.

Trailer park chic is nothing new. From restaurants in New York City (serving Philly steak sandwiches and Sloppy Joe’s) to renovated trailers gone upscale in spectacular spots, this architectural type has been culturally decriminalized.

But even if hipster trailers, like the Sustain miniHome—a portable condo of recycled corrugated steel, fume-free paints, solar panels, rainwater collection systems, an optional wind turbine, and, should you jones for some fossil fuel, a propane system—are on the market, it’s fair to say the trailer park itself still looks pretty much like, well, a trailer park. We’re still waiting for the fab pre-fab park to be unveiled (an idea I’ve been pushing for years, if only I happened to have a team of investors and an old trailer park in a great location for sale…).

Read the full story in InfoWorld.

Dell’s updated M-Series blade server gives more horsepower for less juice.

Read the press release.

EPA plans to award up to $4.2 million in targeted watershed grants to reduce the hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico. EPA is soliciting proposals that will use water quality trading programs to reduce nutrient loads, particularly from the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River, or the Lower Mississippi River. These three sub-basins provide the most nutrients to the Gulf, contributing to the hypoxic zone, an oxygen-depleted area that cannot support aquatic life. Excess nutrients come from a wide range of sources, including runoff from developed land, atmospheric deposition, soil erosion, agricultural fertilizers, and sewage and industrial discharges.

Read the full story at News.com.

I had a lively discussion with Susan Wood, CEO of SCC Americas, at the Carbon Finance North America Conference last week. SCC Americas is the U.S. arm of Syndicatum Carbon Capital, one of the largest developers of Kyoto-based CDM carbon credit projects in the world. Susan herself has been doing emissions trading for more than a decade, after starting out as an environmental engineer.

The punchline in our chat was quite fascinating — the U.S. voluntary carbon market does not reward complexity in projects, Susan says. Basically, U.S. carbon credit developers are only doing a few limited types of projects, like methane destruction. Why? Because the buyers, who dictate the voluntary markets, tend to be scared off by anything complex that they do not understand, or anything that does not appear to be future proofed against coming U.S. regulations. This stands in stark contrast to the CDM market, where complexity is often the hallmark of the major developers since the methodology and standards process is trusted to a much greater degree by compliance buyers than the voluntary standards are.

Read the full story at News.com.

If fry grease can run a Mercedes, why can’t it power the restaurant it came from?

That’s the idea behind Owl Power Company’s Vegawatt power system, a machine that converts a restaurant’s waste oil into electricity and hot water.