Sustainability standards for handhelds,  RIM's Balsillie on UN climate panel, Ernst & Young sets its sites on the clean tech sector, Samsung invests US$865M in greener products, manufacturing, IISD urges Canada to use ICT to build green economy, From coin counting to e-cycling, and more.

There are more than 4.6 billion cell phones in the world, but no consistent way to compare the environmental impacts of different brands and models. A new project by UL Environment hopes to change that by creating sustainability standards for handheld consumer electronics. UL Environment, the environmental evaluation arm of safety certifier Underwriters Laboratories, is starting with a mobile phone standard. The standard will take into account the entire life cycle of products, from raw material extraction to disposal. It will include energy efficiency, recycled content, packaging and other environmental information.

Some companies have created their own guidelines for designing and labelling cell phones with lower impacts, such as Sony Ericsson's GreenHeart line, but there is no industry-wide method for determining the sustainability of phones. The standard development process will include input from UL Environment's Standard Technical Panels, made up of stakeholders like manufacturers, governments, non-governmental organizations and consumer groups. An initial draft is expected by the end of the year.

RIM's Balsillie on UN climate panel

Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion, has been appointed to a new 21-member United Nations (UN) panel on global sustainability. The panel is intended to "think big, to be bold and also practical. The time for narrow agendas, narrow interests and narrow thinking is over. The challenges of the 21st century require nothing less."

The panel will issue its final report by the end of 2011 and it will help intergovernmental processes, including preparations for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 and the annual meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a press release said.

Ernst & Young sets its sites on the clean tech sector

Ernst & Young claims to be the first of the Big Four consulting companies to establish a dedicated Global Cleantech practice at the centre of a worldwide network of consultants addressing Cleantech-specific issues. As part of this focus the firm has also launched a Global Cleantech Centre of Excellence and has established leaders and teams in over 40 countries around the world.

Samsung invests US$865M in greener products, manufacturing

Samsung spent US$865 million last year developing greener products and making its manufacturing sites more efficient as part of a multi-pronged effort to become one of the most environmentally friendly companies in the world. The South Korean company committed to a slew of environmental goals last year with the launch of its PlanetFirst initiative. Among the targets: a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, normalized by sales and measured against a 2008 baseline; improving the energy efficiency of Samsung products by more than 40%; and investing US$4.28 billion in its eco-management programs. One year in, Samsung said its new products are now 16% more energy efficient when compared to 2008 levels.

IISD urges Canada to use ICT to build green economy

The International Institute for Sustainable Development has urged Canada to secure sustainable prosperity by using the Internet and other digital technologies to help build a green economy and address the major social and environmental challenges facing Canadians and others around the world. The Digital Economy and the Green Economy: Opportunities for Strategic Synergies—IISD's submission to Canada's Digital Economy Consultation— sets out ways for information communication technologies (ICTs) to contribute to sustainability objectives. It suggests Canada take a leading role in the promotion of "green ICTs" as the ICT sector needs to "clean up its own act". The ICT sector currently generates around 2%-3% of global CO2 emissions — an amount larger than the emissions of the airline industry and roughly equivalent to those of Canada, according to the report.

The green data centre market: $40bn by 2015

Pike Research has just released a report on “green” data centres, pointing out that the evolution of this trend is closely connected to technical innovation, new design principles, operational improvement, changes to the relationship between IT and business, and changes in the data centre supply chain. The report forecasts that the revenue from green data centres will exceed $40bn worldwide by 2015. North America and Europe will lead the way in the short term, but the Asian market will catch up quickly as its data centre capacity grows.

GreenStar Network launched in Canada

The GreenStar Network Project has been launched to initiate a Canadian consortium of industry, universities and government agencies with the common goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from information & communication technology (ICT) services.  The expected result is the creation of tools, protocols, procedures, and use cases for a growing network of ICT service providers that offer customers the lowest price and greenest services.

Solar-powered data centre launches in Green Internet Network

 A rooftop solar-powered data centre has been connected to Canada’s first “green” powered internet network. On June 29, 2010, Cybera, with national partners CANARIE and the GreenStar Network Project, connected the Calgary node, which is managed by Cybera. It will draw more than 1,840 watts of power from eight solar panels (230 watts each) installed on roof space donated by Calgary Technologies in the Alastair Ross Technology Centre. Over the next few months, the GSN Project will connect five different nodes across Canada, each powered by renewable energy sources as they store and transfer research data for pilot user groups.

From coin counting to e-cycling

Coinstar, which runs kiosk businesses that count coins and rent DVDs, announced that it has invested in San Diego, CA-based ecoATM, a startup that has developed a kiosk for recycling electronics. How does it work? You drop off old electronics at one of these machines, it calculates their value, then pays you on the spot, in cash or coupons. The company says its secret sauce is its kiosks’ ability to automatically estimate — using electronic and visual techniques — a price of the unwanted items that will give consumers an immediate financial incentive to recycle at the station.

Green printing options

Software such as Fineprint and GreenPrint, which sit between the user and the printer, can act as the default print option, making it easy for users to take the greener option of removing pages, text or images, enabling multiple pages per sheet, duplex printing, etc. The GreenPrint offering can also show the accumulated cost saved and the consequent financial and environmental impact. GreenPrint claims printing savings of 17% or more, saving the average user over US$90 and 1,400 wasted pages per year. The company offers enterprise and home solutions as well as a free, advertising-supported version.

Web servers that generate power

What if your web server could generate its own power? Applied Methodologies has been working for several years to develop prototypes of servers and switches that use waste heat from the devices to generate power. The Wantagh, NY-company says it’s Thermoelectric Generation Systems (TGS) for servers and switches can recapture a portion of the energy used by the servers, with thermoelectric effects converting temperature differences into electric voltage. Applied Methodologies says that although thermoelectrics is less efficient than other methods of waste heat recapture, it can have value when applied across a large number of devices. Power generated by racks of TGS-equipped servers could be used to support equipment in other parts of the data centre (such as UPS units or networking gear) or to reduce the servers’ power draw from the utility grid.

China leads in cleantech

In 2009 China accounted for almost three quarters of all cleantech IPO proceeds worldwide, well ahead of the U.S., which had only 26%. To date in 2010 the top three cleantech IPOs of the year have all been Chinese companies. Overall, the top region for cleantech M&A activity in 2009 was Asia (35% of total), followed by Europe (31%) and North America (26%). As well, seven of the ten largest solar manufacturers in the world by production volume are now Asian. China controls 97% of commercially available rare earth element supplies, critical raw materials for wind turbines and electric motors, and has recently begun to reduce the amount it exports.

The amount of stimulus funding China has allocated to clean technologies, including water, waste and other non-energy cleantech infrastructure, is four times that of the U.S. (221 billion vs. ~60 billion). There's also been a doubling of private R&D in China in recent years. As a result, China could soon surpass the U.S. in R&D spending, according to Lund University in Sweden. Finally, China is making decisions quickly.

Microsoft: green IT means more than a low PUE

A new white paper from Microsoft says that power usage effectiveness (PUE) shouldn't be the only focus of an IT department. PUE – the ratio of a data centre's energy use that goes to computing instead of HVAC or lighting – was developed by The Green Grid to move the IT industry toward more efficient operations. But according to Dileep Bhandarkar, a distinguished engineer in Microsoft's Global Foundation Services, PUEs can be a misleading figure because it is inconsistently reported.

The IT sector drops emissions by 32 million tons since 2007

A recent study has concluded that the IT sector has reduced annual CO2 emissions associated with IT equipment by more than 32 million metric tons worldwide since 2007. The report was conducted by Natural Logic to assess the progress of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s (CSCI). The organization was set up in 2007 and is led by CSC, Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft and the World Wildlife Fund. It now has a total of 645 members. Its aim is to reduce the environmental impact of IT equipment through energy efficiency, with a goal of reducing annual CO2 emissions from the IT sector by 54 million metric tons by June 2011.

Academics call for climate insurance role

A group of academics working from the United Nations University think tank and industry-backed Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII) have stepped up calls for diplomats at the Bonn climate talks to incorporate support for new insurance models into the draft negotiating text being prepared ahead of the Mexico Summit in November. The group issued a 28-page policy brief entitled Solutions for Vulnerable Countries and People, arguing that pilot projects undertaken by the insurance industry suggest that the sector could play a key role in reducing climate change risks and leading climate adaptation projects.