Computerizing Green at Oberlin College

Who’s at the cutting edge of computerizing green? Article in the Times today about Sustainability House at Oberlin.
Creative design ideas for lowering resource use: shower timer, energy Olympics, and my favorite coming in the fall: “24-hour energy-use monitoring system”.
Coming soon to a Facebook wall near you?
“My buddy Juan at Oberlin is averaging a 2-minute [...]

10 Green Heresies – According to Wired (Part II)

Continuing the post from last week re: Wired’s article – “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green“.
6. Accept Genetic Engineering
Genetically engineer crops to lower greenhouse emissions.
Role of IT: Unclear.
7. Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work
Carbon credits and trading (whether you think they work or not) are enabled by electronic markets. Role [...]

10 Green Heresies – According to Wired (Part I)

Wired magazine devotes its June cover to the thesis that when it comes to environmentalism: “only one thing matters: cutting carbon.”

The article “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green” proposes “10 Green Heresies”, such as “Live in Cities” and “A/C is OK.” To their credit, they include a rebuttal, and [...]

Virtual=Green

Nice post over at Greenmonk discussing the ability of virtual environments such as SecondLife to cut carbon emissions.
For example, the photo above is a training room for the French banking group Crédit Agricole. According to their Wikipedia entry, Crédit Agricole are the 8th largest bank in the world! Stonefield have purpose built training rooms [...]

Energy Equivalents: Part I

I’m a sucker for measurement, so when I came across this Solar Thought Experiment I couldn’t resist.
According to Robert Rapier, all electricity consumption in the US is equivalent to … drumroll… every house in america having a solar panel on a south facing roof that is 8.4 square feet.
Go figure.

Green IT @ Sun

Mark Monroe, Director of Sustainable Computing at Sun, talks about green products and services in this podcast. About halfway in, Mark discusses power management software, and the need to start thinking about things like whether an email server really needs to be operating at full capacity 24X7. Another interesting thread is about customer awareness of [...]

(Green) Web 2.0

There are some interesting web 2.0 sites that harness social networks to make us more green. From the MakeMeSustainable blog:
How MakeMeSustainable Can Help
MakeMeSustainable was created to fill the void between how we feel about our environment and what we do about it. We bring you the tools to take action. Our Carbon and Energy Portfolio [...]