Intel boosts Green Power stocks

CHIP-MAKER Intel has moved to boost its Green credentials by becoming the largest corporate buyer of Green power in the United States.

The US Environmental Protection Agency latest Green Power Partners Top 25 list puts Intel in the number one position.

Intel also announced yesterday that it would purchase more than 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours a year of renewable energy certificates as part of a broad plan to reduce its impact on the environment.

The company said it hoped the record-setting purchase would help stimulate the market for green power, which should lead to additional generating capacity and ultimately, lower costs.

Renewable energy certificates, or RECs, are the “currency” of the renewable energy market and are widely recognised as a having credible and tangible environmental benefits.

Intel's REC purchase includes a portfolio of wind, solar, small hydro-electric and biomass sources.

“We have a long history of commitment to the environment and energy efficiency is an important consideration in everything we do, from building transistors to designing microprocessors and running our factories,” said Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini.

Mr Otellini, who is also a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a global group of leaders working to achieve an effective global climate treaty at next year's UN Environmental Summit in Copenhagen, said the renewable purchase was just one part of a multi-faceted approach to protect the environment.

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IBM unveils green retail platform

IBM has launched a suite of technologies and services aimed squarely at improving both the energy efficiency as well as operational efficiency of retail stores.

Called the Green Retail Store portfolio, the suite includes high performance point of sales systems, blades servers, and system management software that drive deployment of energy-efficient and environmentally friendly retail systems from the front of store to the back office.

IBM says retailers were always looking for ways to differentiate and build customer loyalty – and that consumers were showing a preference for environmentally responsible retailers.

The core of portfolio is a SurePOS 700, the number one selling point of sale system in the world, which offers a choice of three energy-efficient processors that help reduce power consumption by 36 per cent and more.

A large retailer considering replacement of 5,000 terminals with new units operating at 33 per cent more energy efficiency can reduce annual energy cost for POS terminals alone by US$131,000 (A, or nearly US$1 million over the average seven-year life of newly deployed IBM machines.

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Google enters clean energy business

Google has entered the race to develop the technology to develop cheapr sources of renewable energy, promising to spend hundreds of millions on research and development efforts.

The Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal project will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies

The company will spend “tens of millions” on R&D for the project in 2008. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Google co-founder and president Larry Page. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

“With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one Gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades,” Mr Page said.

One Gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco.

“If we meet this goal and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well.”

Coal is the primary power source for many around the world, supplying 40 per cent of the world's electricity.

“Lots of groups are doing great work trying to produce inexpensive renewable energy. We want to add something that moves these efforts toward even cheaper technologies a bit more quickly. Usual investment criteria may not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr Larry Brilliant, the executive director of Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org.

“Google.org's hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal.”

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Asia’s datacenter energy needs double

THE energy demands of datacenters in the Asia-Pacific is far outstripping growth in data centre power consumption in other regions, and will double by 2010, a new study has revealed.

The study, by US expert Dr Jonathon Koomey using data from industry analysts IDC said the Asia-Pacific’s (excluding Japan) world share of data centre energy use would jump from 10 per cent in 2000 to 16 per cent in 2010.

The absolute electricity consumption for servers in the Asia/Pacific region under this scenario would more than double from 2005 to 2010, requiring electricity capacity equal to output from two new 1000 megatwatt power plants.

The US share of total world server electricity use from datacenters will likely decline from 40 per cent in 2000 to about one-third by 2010,

Examining electricity use by region from 2000 to 2005, Dr Koomey found that server electricity use in the Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan) grew at a 23 per cent annual rate, compared to a world average of 16 per cent a year, making this region the only one with server electricity use growing at a rate significantly greater than the world average.

“Our hope is that this research helps bridge the gap between knowledge and action by furthering worldwide understanding of the economic and environmental costs associated with escalating data centre energy consumption,” AMD server and workstation marketing director Bruce Shaw said.

AMD has launched a program called AMD Green that seeks to develop more energy efficient data centre solutions.

“Clearly, we must work harder than ever to not only deliver more efficient server and cooling technology, but also just as importantly, to work with our industry and government partners to develop environmentally sustainable solutions in areas where we see the most dramatic increases in energy use,” the company said.

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