New Florence. New Renaissance.

China's Green Progress

China has huge pollution and other environmental issues as this article describes, but good to see progress in at least a few areas:

1. Low carbon vehicles: 13 Chinese cities have signed up to a government scheme to buy 13,000 electric vehicles this year. The aim is to manufacture half a million electric vehicles in China by 2011.

2. Energy efficiency: the energy intensity of the Chinese economy has fallen by 60% since 1980 and the government has set a goal of reducing it by a further 20% between 2005 and 2010.

3. Renewable energy: Internationally China supplies 40% of the world’s solar PV technology; domestically China is the largest wind power generator in Asia and fourth in the world - accounting for one third of the world’s new capacity.

4. Low carbon buildings: China has set a 50% energy conservation standard for all new buildings and a 65% standard for new buildings in some major cities by 2010.

ClimateBiz.com

Earth Day

On this, the 40th anniversary readers may find interesting the history of the day and other green thinking here

How IT can cut carbon emissions

"The rapidly growing carbon footprint associated with information and communications technologies, including laptops and PCs, data centers and computing networks, mobile phones, and telecommunications networks, could make them among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters by 2020. However, our research also suggests that there are opportunities to use these technologies to make the world economy more energy and carbon efficient. An analysis of five groups of abatement opportunities finds that such technologies could help to eliminate 7.8 metric gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually by 2020 (Exhibit 1)—equivalent to 15 percent of global emissions today and five times more than our estimate of the emissions from these technologies in 2020."

McKinsey Quarterly (sub required)

The EDS Green IT Series

Ed Kettler has been running a series on the EDS blog where he looks at a 360 degree view of what Green IT means - click to enlarge the aspects he has been writing about.

"Click here to read part one, around green IT with regards to green washing, and here for part two, around using IT to green the enterprise, and here for part three, about the green data center, here for part four, about influences on Green IT, here for part five, around life cycle events that have significant green impacts, and here for part six, around power generation. "

Future Cities

Discover writes about three environmentally futuristic cities - Masdar in the UAE, London and Dongtan, near Shanghai in China.

The Carbon Footprint of different lifestyles

"Whether you live in a cardboard box or a luxurious mansion, whether you subsist on homegrown vegetables or wolf down imported steaks, whether you're a jet-setter or a sedentary retiree, anyone who lives in the U.S. contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as the global average, an MIT class has estimated."

"While it may seem surprising that even people whose lifestyles don't appear extravagant--the homeless, monks, children--are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, one major factor is the array of government services that are available to everyone in the United States. These basic services--including police, roads, libraries, the court system and the military--were allocated equally to everyone in the country in this study. Other services that are more specific, such as education or Medicare, were allocated only to those who actually make use of them."

MIT Tech Talk

Earth Day

In time for Earth Day, Fortune has a nice gallery of 11 green ideas.

You can order the Earth Day poster at this site.