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This week, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly convened a dialogue on the ENERGY STAR® program that has reaffirmed the benefits that strong and focused public-private cooperation can generate. The groundwork that was laid this week could evolve the ENERGY STAR program to achieve greater energy savings with significant benefits [...]
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The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) strongly supports today’s introduction by Sens. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ed Markey (D-MA) of the “Access to Consumer Energy Information Act” or “E-Access Act.” Since the Green Button initiative launched just over two years ago, ITI, through its Digital Energy & Sustainability Solutions Campaign (DESSC), has been active in the industry-led effort to provide [...]
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This week, the U.S. House of Representatives will consider HR 2126, "Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2014," formerly the “Better Buildings Act of 2013,” which will help the federal government harness information technologies and data centers for improved energy performance and efficiency. The bill, which will save federal resources and therefore taxpayer dollars, should pass easily, and it deserves [...]
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Yesterday eBay Inc. formally opened its new Salt Lake City data center – a world class facility that is on track to help facilitate an estimated $300 billion in enabled commerce volume by 2015. Long story short, eBay is proving that environmental considerations can go hand-in-hand with good business strategy, and many transactions on eBay and PayPal will now be a little bit greener. The data center [...]
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The U.S. House of Representatives has taken an important step forward to protect thousands of American jobs at risk by an arbitrary closure of the Federal Helium Reserve. With the House’s unanimous bipartisan approval (367-0!) on an amended version of H.R. 527, the U.S. Senate is given an opportunity to finally bring this matter to resolution and keep American businesses open and American jobs thriving. [...]
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With a 97-2 vote, the Senate this afternoon has given overwhelming bipartisan support to legislation that would extend the life of the Federal Helium Reserve – the single largest source of helium in the nation and the source for 30 percent of the world’s total supply. Right now, the clock is ticking on the thousands of American jobs that are associated with access to the helium reserve. Current law [...]
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As we enter an increasingly digital and mobile economy, the promise of greater operational efficiency for businesses, consumers, and governments is obvious. So, too, is the need for greater reliance on data centers. What may not be as obvious is what this means for a cleaner, greener future, or, as Google queried at their large forum earlier this year, how green is the internet? I expect to have [...]
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This blog was originally published on The Breakthrough. Mark Mills’ recent report “The Cloud Begins with Coal” has received much attention in the past weeks, but largely for its comparison of the energy use of an iPhone versus a refrigerator. This factoid has become a distraction. Aside from his dependence on dubious statistics, Mills erroneously ignores the real benefits technology provides in combating [...]
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We’re in the middle of summer and, as usual during this travel season, gas prices have been rising. Thankfully, we haven’t seen the severe volatility in gas prices like we have in summers past, but most of us can recall from recent memory when an international crisis or environmental incident affected the U.S. oil supply – some kind of source disruption that curtailed a small percentage of our nation’s [...]
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In my previous blog, I talked about the importance of standards, and how the Responsible Recycling (R2) standard set the bar for the safe recycling of electronics. When I wrote that blog, the R2 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) was in the final stages of updating the original R2 Standard (R2:2008) to become the new, improved R2:2013 Standard. Since that blog, the R2 Board of Directors (which includes [...]