·:[ Environmental News Bits ]:·
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http://www.greenercomputing.com/enewsletter.

Virtualization Servers: The New Green Platform for IT
By Andrew Binstock
http://www.greenercomputing.com/column/2008/07/09/virtualization-servers-the-new-green-platform-it
Any attempt to green IT should begin with virtualizing your servers, which is one of the fastest and easiest ways to reduce energy use and costs, and reduce the overall carbon footprint of your IT organization. In this column, Andrew Binstock offers clear advice on how virtualization can help, and includes links to useful benchmarks.

More Companies Concerned With Power Efficiency, Fewer Willing to Pay for Green Tech: Survey
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/08/companies-concerned-with-power-efficiency
Rackspace’s second annual survey investigating companies’ attitudes toward green vendors and efficiency finds expenses have become a stronger force in making green decisions.

Energy Star Standards for Servers May Launch in 2008: EPA
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/07/energy-star-servers-launch-2008
Despite the daunting challenge of developing a performance-based rating system for servers, the EPA plans to have a phase-one version of the new Energy Star standards ready by year’s end.

Cisco Boosts Virtualization With New Products
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/07/03/cisco-virtualization-new-products
The technology company has announced new products and services that support virtualization in data centers.

Green Electronics Design and Manufacturing
http://www.greenercomputing.com/resources/resource/green-electronics-design-and-manufacturing
This book provides insight from experts in the electronics industry into how to meet global environmental regulations for greener electronics, manage corporate strategy and design teams, and implement methods for testing and analyzing green electronics products.

Read the full story in CQ Today.

Senate appropriators aligned with the House Tuesday in rejecting proposed cuts by President Bush and boosting spending for renewable-energy and energy efficiency programs in their 2009 draft spending bill for energy and water programs.

But the bill approved by the Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee by voice vote funds nuclear programs at close to the White House request. The House version proposed spending much less on those programs.

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

The United States for the first time joined the major industrialized countries Tuesday in committing to try to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. President Bush immediately began promoting the plan with skeptical developing country leaders who would be crucial to its success.

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

Members of Vice President Cheney’s staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official about health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said yesterday.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney’s office ordered last October that six pages be edited out of the testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gerberding had planned to say that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern.”

Read the full story in the New York Times.

After hearing from constituents, many lawmakers believe that they cannot afford an energy policy stalemate.

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

• Massachusetts Enacts New Energy Bill Promoting Renewable Energy
• Geothermal Project To Provide Jobs for Nevisians
• Practical Tools To Speed Up the Transition Away from Petroleum
• Investing in Wind Companies

Read the press release.

Gerhard R. (Gerry) Andlinger, an alumnus and noted international business executive, has made a gift to Princeton University to accelerate research on effective and sustainable solutions to problems of energy and the environment. Princeton will use the gift, which will total $100 million, to create the Gerhard R. Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment within the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The Andlinger Center will include a major state-of-the-art engineering research laboratory and several new faculty positions as well as endowed funds for innovative research, outreach and a visitors program. The gift provides the foundation for a series of investments the University plans to make in fundamental science, public policy and technological solutions related to sustainable energy production, climate change and related fields.

Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Buildings & Grounds blog.

It’s the time of year when many peoples’ thoughts turn to air conditioning. Most college and university employees take it for granted, but with energy prices continuing to rise, those responsible for paying the bills are painfully aware of what a luxury all that cool air has become: The chillers that produce cold water to operate large-scale air-conditioning systems are among any college’s biggest users of energy, and they typically run most when electric costs are highest—on summer afternoons. So some colleges have turned to a pretty basic technology to save money.

It’s called “ice.”

The strategy is so simple a kid could understand it: A college runs its chillers at night, when electricity prices are lowest, and makes ice in big, insulated tanks. Then, as the day heats up, water for the chilled-water lines is run through the ice facility, rather than through the chillers. The University of Arizona, which has just installed a second ice plant, expects it to lower the university’s electric bills by $30,000 a month. The University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University are among other institutions that make ice at night and use it for air conditioning during the day.

Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

To satisfy many of the largest sources of grants in the biomedical sciences, including the National Institutes of Health, researchers must place copies of their published papers in free online repositories, like the NIH’s PubMed Central. That requirement is one of the successes of the open-access movement’s push to making research journals available to anyone, regardless of whether they subscribe.

Now a leading subscription-based journal, Nature, along with many of its offshoots, like Nature Cell Biology and Nature Neuroscience, have announced that they will offer to deposit authors’ papers in the repositories.

For a critique of the announcement, see Nature’s Offer To “Let Us Archive It For You”: Caveat Emptor.

Read the full story in E The Environmental Magazine.

Toyota can’t keep up with demand for its gas-sipping Prius hybrid. Many would-be customers have added their names to six-month-long waiting lists for the cars. Surging gas prices in the U.S. are driving demand, and Toyota’s inability to supply the hybrid and other small fuel efficient models played a large role in a company-wide 11.5 percent sales lag in the month of June.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

Dramatic progress in renewable energy technology is needed if the United States desires to produce 25 percent of its electricity and motor vehicle fuel from renewable sources by 2025 without significantly increasing consumer costs, according to a RAND Corp. study issued recently.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

Old computer equipment can now be disposed in a way that is safe to both human health and the environment, thanks to a new initiative launched June 27 at a United Nations meeting on hazardous waste that wrapped up in Bali, Indonesia.

The Partnership for Action on Computing Equipment (PACE) will provide a forum for governments, industry leaders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academia to tackle the disposal of old computer equipment, including through global recycling schemes.