Month: March 2014

To pair with the much-anticipated academic ratings of colleges, a sustainability report evaluates college campuses to see where they land in going green. 

The comprehensive report is called STARS, short for Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System. It gives universities grades on their own for sustainability education and outreach efforts. As a result, universities gain a better focus on where to take eco-friendly measures, including energy efficiency, using recycled materials and cutting down carbon footprints.

Each participating university voluntarily submits institutional data on eco topics ranging from environmentally friendly buildings to education measures. Then the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education assesses each report in a scorecard-like method and provides a ranking based on the total score.

In the recent STARS report, University of Cincinnati, Ohio State University and Miami University received a silver ranking. This means that the universities are doing well with energy efficiency standards, but still have shortfalls on institutional funding and sustainability research. 

"It really points out places that could be improved," Claire Sweigart, UC sustainability coordinator, told The News Record. "It's going to help us moving forward to target our projects and try to work with different campus partners to try and move some of these forward."

The STARS report serves as a great tool for universities that want to gauge how "green" they are, and what they can do to improve.

Students Making Campuses Greener
While the bulk of the responsibility to take eco-friendly measures lands on the university itself, student bodies have proven particularly effective at getting the (electric-powered) wheels turning on such programs.

Emily Heine, the student government senator at UC, is a case in point. She has sustainability-themed ideas planned for the remainder of the academic year and plans on making going green a top priority in the fall semester. The first bill Heine pushed through student government after being elected was to bring a sustainability conference event to campus. The event, called Generation Waking Up, will take place on the last weekend in March.

Other simple steps to help campuses clean up include tree plantings, street clean ups and fun events like recycled fashion shows. If you are in college or know someone who is, this list might be a helpful step in putting environmental awareness into action.

Notably, though the STARS report isn't a definite snapshot of sustainability efforts, it certainly helps in targeting possible future areas that need improvement. 

Ilchi Lee, a strong supporter of a sustainable world, advocates efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of schools. Not only does it provide model for the upcoming generation, it teaches real-life programs that can bring about serious improvements.

The corporate carbon footprint has become a big deal for companies lately. That's why many organizations are moving their services onto the "cloud," a shared method to store mass data over the Internet, which not only saves time and money, it also cuts energy use. Without a doubt, the cloud is slowly transforming how corporate IT services are handled. Yet cloud-based computing boasts some environmental benefits.

Teaming up with outsourcing company Accenture and WSP Environmental & Energy, Microsoft conducted a study that compared the energy use and carbon footprint of cloud-based computing versus on-premise IT delivery. The research found that on the whole, cloud solutions reduced energy use and carbon emissions by more than 30 percent.

And the benefits stack up. For smaller deployments, or about 100 users, the upsides proved even more impressive: Energy use and emissions were slashed by more than 90 percent with a shared cloud service.

Boosting Energy Efficiency
For those of us who aren't technology buffs, how does that happen? Well, there are several key factors that contributed to the cloud's energy efficiency.

Unlike traditional computer hosting, the cloud is sold on demand, meaning a user can have as much or as little of the service as he or she needs at any given time; it is elastic. In turn, this cuts the amount of wasted computing resources through better matching of server capacity with actual demand.

Importantly, the cloud uses fewer machines. In many small businesses, server utilization rates stays around 5 to 10 percent. That translates to more servers to get the same amount of work done. Servers can be quite pricey to purchase and maintain, and with a low utilization rate, lots of cash may be spilling out of your company's wallet. With the cloud, utilization rates rise to as high as 70 percent. At the end of the day, fewer machines equals less energy used and fewer dollars spent.

The cloud encourages better data efficiency. Through improved cooling and power conditioning, the shared network diminishes the workload for companies, cutting power loss and downtime.

By taking advantage of the cloud, your company can cut emissions as well. Of course some cloud services are greener than others. If CEOs and leaders in business want to make save green while going green, it might be a wise idea to move applications to cloud services.

Ilchi Lee, a New York Times best-selling author and advocate of a sustainable world, encourages people and businesses to take all the progressive steps to create a greener planet. Cloud services not only make your company more energy efficient, it may boost your public image as well. While smaller organizations will reap bigger perks of the new-wave technology, all sizes of companies can benefit from lower machine costs and a shared infrastructure. Cloud computing has the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of many businesses, on top of providing cost savings.

In a world where we often focus on carbon emissions from cars and fuel-gobbling airplanes, it can be easy to overlook what's going on in our water. However, new sustainability reports released by DNV GL, said that reducing ship and occupational fatalities, cutting emissions and using new technology to increase efficiency and keep freight costs low are the three most promising ways to achieve a safe and sustainable shipping industry by 2050.

DNV GL, a leading technical advisor to the global oil and gas industry and the world's largest ship and offshore classification society, released six sustainability reports titled "Managing Risk, Building Trust: An introduction to six themes for the future," this month. The report focuses on a safe and sustainable future, adaption to climate change and the future of shipping and electricity.

In the shipping-specific paper, DNV said that the shipping industry must reduce emissions by 60 percent, the same as other industries. The report noted that it's likely that stakeholders such as charterers, insurance companies, investors and banks will set stricter requirements for owners to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

One way to reach the goal is to power vessels with alternative fuels, such as biofuels, batteries and fuel cells. Notably, more than 20 percent of shipping could adopt hybrid propulsion featuring batteries or other energy storage technologies.

Ilchi Lee, dedicated advocate of peaceful and sustainable world, promotes that as consumers, we take our own steps to lower energy waste. By conversing water, avoiding throwing paints and oils down the drain and taking care not to overuse pesticides that lead to runoffs into nearby water sources, citizens of the world can do our part. Lee wholeheartedly supports the need to reduce our carbon footprint while traveling on the roads, in the sky and at sea.