“Green” Open Source Technologies For Earth Day

April 22nd was Earth Day (visit the open source Drupal-powered website for details from the Earth Day Network). In September 1969, at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda. This would be the first Earth Day. Now the event is celebrated twice a year at different times depending on what hemisphere you are on.

In recognition of Earth Day, here are a few open source ideas that might help save the planet or at least extend its shelf life.

* Recycle Desktop Computers into Thin Clients – Rather than buy a bunch of new computers that use environmental resources and add carbon to the atmosphere during the manufacturing process you could recycle aging desktop computers by creating a thin client setup. You could use the popular Linux Terminal Server Project to re-purpose those old computers into thin clients driven by a single server.
* Consolidate servers–Rather than bring up a separate for every new application use the Xen hypervisor to consolidate under-utilized servers on one machine.
* Contribute to an Open Source Automobile Project–The Open Source Green Vehicle Project is the backed by the Society for Sustainable Mobility. While the OSGV is really about open design it does adhere to the spirit of open source. See my previous post on the OScar for other OSS inspired auto designs.
* Use OSS Monitoring Software to Shutdown Idle Equipment–You would be surprised how many under or un-utilized pieces of equipment are left on for extended periods of time. You could use OSS software like Zenoss Core to discover devices on your network and use the auto-remediation feature to turn off servers, desktops and other equipment after being idle for a number of hours or days.
* Upgrade your HVAC System–Use the open source DIY Zoning Project to figure out how to upgrade your HVAC to be more efficient.
* One Laptop Per Child–There’s always the hand-crankable One Laptop Per Child for the ultimate in self-sustaining powered computing.
* Ethernet Powered Server–You can always use low power consumption servers like the Ethernet Powered OpenMicroServer for uses that don’t require a big honking multi-core server.

What other open source technologies could be considered environmentally friendly?

Via By Mark Hinkle

Finally, Nations Agree On Formation Of Agenda For 2009 Global Warming Agreement

Climate negotiators agreed on Saturday on an ambitious agenda for talks they hope will lead to a global warming pact, overcoming a heated dispute between Japan and developing countries on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The schedule came after five days of talks in Bangkok and requires negotiators to settle contentions issues, including how countries will cut their emissions and how rich nations will help the poor adapt to climate change.

“Not only do we have the certainty that critical issues will be addressed this year, we now have the bite-sized chunks which will allow us to negotiate in an effective manner,” UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said.

Delegates also welcomed the agreement, but warned significant differences remain over demands from the US and Japan for developing countries to accept binding targets as part of a pact to stabilize greenhouse gases in the next 10 to 15 years and cut them in half by 2050.

“We can live with the work program, but the negotiations ahead will be tough, very tough,” said Prodipto Ghosh, a member of the Indian delegation. “There are wide divergences between different groups over the nature of the conclusions to be reached.”

Talks had bogged down because of developing nations’ opposition to discussion of a Japanese proposal to set industry-specific emissions reduction targets. Developing nations want rich countries to agree to set national targets first.

Representatives from 163 countries, including India and China, met in Bangkok for the first negotiations on a pact meant to take effect after 2012. Scientists say quick action is needed to prevent the worsening floods, droughts and violent storms that would affect billions of people worldwide in a warming world.

World’s Fastest Industrialised Country’s Height Of Madness!! Please Dont Go Mad After Reading This Article

Idiotic idea comes here.   A perfect height of madness causes like this in below article

Germany’s policy of blending ordinary diesel with biodiesel to combat climate change is failing because 20 percent comes from soya beans grown on once Carbon dioxide-absorbing deforested land.Greenpeace said it had tested diesel sold at 46 fuel stations across Germany to identify the vegetable oils used for for the compulsory biodiesel componentOnly 20 percent was soya oil rather than rape-seed oil from the German harvest.

Greenpeace added that Germany’s blending programme would not reduce global warming as soya oil imports largely came from South America, where rain forests were being destroyed to cultivate soybeans.

“Huge areas of forest are being destroyed for plantations, for example in Argentina,” Greenpeace said.

Heckled Germany’s biofuels industry association VDB, however, said Greenpeace’s charges were groundless.”Soya oil comes from North America, Argentina and Brazil,” It’s chief executive Petra Sprick said. “Soya oil from the US and Argentina does not have rain-forest issues and imports from Brazil are largely handled by major trading houses that have voluntary agreements to buy soya oil only from sustainable agriculture and not from areas using cleared rain forest.”Germany introduced compulsory blending of biodiesel with fossil diesel in January 2007 as part of its programme to combat global warming. Fossil diesel must contain 4.4 percent biodiesel by energy content.

A vegetable oil trader said the Greenpeace figures displayed the growing volume of biodiesel imports into Germany.

“A large volume of soya oil-based biodiesel seems to be coming in from Argentina, which only started large-scale biodiesel output in2007 and is apparently concentrating hard on exports,” the trader said.

Austrailan news mag says “Clean, Green Rail Metro… Melbourne? Sorry, Try Delhi”.

AS MELBOURNE tinkers with its largely pre-World War II public transport system and puts up with congested roads, commuters in the Indian capital, New Delhi, are revelling in a state-of-the-art Metro.  Although India’s average income is only about one tenth Australia’s, its rapidly growing cities are pouring money into new rail networks.  Delhi had no metropolitan rail system before part of its new Metro was opened in 2002. Now, authorities expect that, by 2020, it will be bigger than London’s underground.  Further read here.

 

Mega-Agent Wants Whole Sports World To Go ‘Green’

Longtime mega-sports agent Leigh Steinberg,  is the man who helped coin the phrase “Show me the money!” is now altering that iconic cinematic and sports bite to “Show me the Green!” As in global-warming, carbon-footprint, clean-up-the-planet’s-act Green.  Further Read here.

GE Goes Developing New Green Technologies

When most time, most large corporations across the world are still paying mere lip service to environmental sustainability, and climate change, there are some exceptions such as GE, DuPont, BP who have turned “green” issues from being peripheral, yet unavoidable corporate social responsibility obligations to a cornerstone of their future business plans. And the incredibly quick commercial success the $175-billion General Electric has tasted in its ambitious plans to turn every part of its gargantuan operations environmentally sustainable is proof that green begets greenbacks.  Further post here.

IFC Signs Its First Carbon Delivery Guarantee In India

International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group, has signed its very first first carbon delivery guarantee agreement in India.

IFC signed a deal for 8,50,000  carbon credits from Rain CII Carbon (India) Ltd, an IFC client for over 15 years and now the largest merchant of calcined coke in the world with production in India and the US.

In a press release, IFC stated that it facilitates delivery of carbon credits from companies in developing countries to buyers in developed countries.

The Indian company used IFC financing to install waste heat recovery facilities that help eliminate its dependence on fossil fuels for power generation and generate carbon credits as a result.

The carbon finance product is expected to give companies selling carbon credits the chance to access a wider range of potential buyers by mitigating country and project risk, and it, therefore, helps to boost the carbon market in these regions.

World Bank Seeks $ 5 Billion For Clean Energy Fund

“Donor commitments to finance a World Bank clean technology fund for developing countries have not yet reached the $5 billion target…Kathy Sierra, World Bank Vice President for sustainable development.  She said the fund would accelerate and scale up low carbon and climate-resilient investments in the developing world.

So far, the fund has commitments of $2 billion in climate funds from US President George W Bush, part of $1.6 billion Britain pledged for ‘environmental transformation’ and undisclosed promises from Japan.

She said the World Bank would try and help countries switch to cleaner energy through so-called ‘transformational projects,’ citing Mexico as an example of a country looking to transform its transportation system to cut emissions.

Sierra said the clean technologies fund would provide the World Bank with the opportunity to bulk up investments in clean energy, also by bringing in the private sector. … As countries shape a new global agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol…Sierra said the World Bank was seeking ‘practical solutions’ to tackle climate change and environmental issues.

Looks like Thomas L. Friedman Got Bugged Too Much With India these days!!!

Though too old post at NYT, I thought it would be wise to put here again,

Here is the post →

→ Remember Y2K? That was the “millennium bug,” the software glitch that threatened to melt down millions of computers when their internal clocks tried to roll over on Jan. 1, 2000, because they were not designed to handle that new date.

And remember that the only country that had enough software programmers to adjust all these computers so they wouldn’t go haywire, and do it at a reasonable price, was India. And remember that it was this huge operation that launched the Indian outsourcing industry — which is why I have long felt that Y2K should be a national holiday in India. Further post here.

Wonderful Case Study Of TetraPak UK’s Carbon Program

A magnanimous case study of a company offsetting its carbon Credit was recently published on Ecosystemmarketplace.com. The website analyzes how TetraPak UK, the packaging company, goes about offsetting its carbon footprint by investing in Ugandan trees.TetraPak UK started its carbon management program in 2003 and sought outside help to create a technological monitoring system. The Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management ECCM, consulted on devising a program that calculates the company’s annual carbon footprint based on real production data.In the first year of the program’s inception, 2004, TetraPak UK had managed to reduce their carbon emissions (11,780 tons) by 13% compared to 2001 levels. The company self imposed a 15% target for 2005 (below 2001 levels). Almost all, 80%, of TetraPak UK’s offsets are purchased in Uganda –including Beatrice’s carbon–while the remaining 20% comes from bio-mass and solar energy projects in India and Sri Lanka.

Beatrice Ahimbisibwe is a widow, single mother, and school-teacher. According to Ecosystemmarketplace.com, when she first signed a contract to sell carbon sequestration credits from her small parcel of land, ‘her neighbors thought she was crazy’. They showed distrust as well. None of them had ever heard of carbon dioxide, let alone who would want to pay for ‘offsetting’ it. “You are giving away your land for nothing. One day she thought some buyers just come and take it.”

Good for Beatrice, she didn’t believe them. Then she did sign a deal with ECOTRUST, a Ugandan NGO which has a variety of international organizations as clients. The trees that she planted on land she was not using benefit the environment and provide her with extra income after she had filled in applications with signatures of family members and provided proof of ownership.Then Beatrice cleared and planted one hectare of her land with native species of trees, which generate 57 tons of carbon pooled over ten years (hoping that trees would survive) and is paid US$8 per ton, for a possible total of $456 over 25 years. The contract allowed Beatrice to use any wood pruned from the trees and, after some 15 years, she’s allowed to use/sell the wood.