Photo credit tiffa130
And here are this week’s Green Numbers:
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“The Timberland Company (NYSE: TBL) believes it can help alleviate hunger, create jobs, protect wildlife and preserve the environment…all through the simple act of planting a tree. Make that five million trees – in five years.
It’s a bold pledge in support of a bold vision. And although the notion is pretty simple – plant some trees, do some good in the world – Timberland’s global reforestation program recognizes that success doesn’t come quite as easily as that.
“You can’t just throw a sapling in the ground and expect the world to change,” said Timberland President & CEO Jeff Swartz. “But done thoughtfully and strategically, with committed partners, planting trees really can lead to meaningful long-term solutions to a whole host of environmental, social and economic problems.” “
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Spending cuts ‘to cost 60,000 green jobs’
Plans to build three new factories to make thousands of giant offshore wind turbines that would create an estimated 60,000 jobs are set to become the latest casualty of the spending review, it has emerged.
The previous government had pledged ?60m to upgrade ports, mainly in the north-east, to enable them to handle the next generation of giant turbines for installation off the UK coast.Siemens and General Electric have announced plans to invest ?180m in two new manufacturing facilities in the UK, but say this is conditional on the necessary work on nearby ports. Mitsubishi is also interested in building a third factory.
But the Guardian has learned that the competition inviting ports to bid for the funds is likely to be scrapped
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Still quite lightweight, Microsoft have finally, with their 2010 corporate citizenship report, produced a report following the GRI reporting guidelines.
Hopefully this is the beginning of proper CR reporting from Microsoft.
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GreenBytes Nabs $3.5 Million More For Energy-Efficient, Enterprise Data Storage
According to a new SEC filing, Rhode Island startup GreenBytes Inc. added $3.5 million to the series A round they raised last year, led by Battery Ventures and initially consisted of $7.5 million.
GreenBytes provides ?energy-efficient, inline deduplication storage appliances.? In plainer English, the company makes hardware and software that IT operations teams use to store and protect huge amounts of data, and to control how much energy they must use to do so. GreenBytes claims its technology can cut storage power consumption by 50%.
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Students Find $350 Million in Savings at Bloomberg, eBay, McDonald?s | Fast Company
Major corporations can save millions of dollars with simple energy efficiency tweaks–if they know where to look. That’s where the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program can help. The three year-old program plays host to 51 MBA students that are sent to 47 corporations to dig up energy savings.
This year’s group found $350 million in net operational cost savings at companies including Bloomberg, eBay, McDonald?s, Pepsi, Target, Verizon, and Xerox. So how did they do it?
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Eurostar unveils ?700m investment in new generation of energy-saving high-speed trains
Eurostar has today announced a planned ?700m investment in its rolling stock that will result in the rail operator running some of the greenest trains on the planet from 2014.
The company revealed it is to buy 10 new trains and refurbish its existing 28-strong fleet as it looks to further build on its position as a low-carbon alternative to short haul flights.
Engineering giant Siemens is set to be awarded the contract to manufacture the new electric e3202 trains, which it estimates will consume about 10 per cent less energy than existing models.
The e3202 is an updated version of Siemens’ Velaro, the fastest high-speed train in the world, which over a distance of 100km consumes 0.33 litres of petrol equivalent per seat ? about the same as a can of cola ? and produces at least three times less CO2 per person-kilometre than a standard passenger flight.
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Global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 represented a monetary value of $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11% of global GDP, calculates a study released today by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative.
Those global costs are 20% larger than the $5.4 trillion decline in the value of pension funds in developed countries caused by the global financial crisis in 2007/8.
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IBM wins $100 million EnergyAustralia Smart Grid deal
IBM has been named systems integration partner for the $100 million smart grid initiative led by the EnergyAustralia consortium. IBM will lead the development of Australia?s first smart grid network, following the formal contract signing of the deal between EnergyAustralia and the Australian Government and work will commence immediately.
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Smart meters will reach 302.5 million units in 2015
The worldwide installed base of smart electricity meters will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 31.1 percent between 2009 and 2015 to reach 302.5 million at the end of the period.
During the next five years, penetration rates for smart metering technology are projected to increase from around 15?20 percent today to nearly 50 percent in Europe and North America, while Asia-Pacific is projected to soar from less than 1 percent to 25 percent by 2015.
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