WSJ has a blog post on The Green Side of Shopping.

The Green Side of Online Shopping

By Geoffrey A. Fowler

E-commerce reduces the environmental impact of shopping by using about a third less energy than traditional retail — but only if you skip the express airmail.

A study out Tuesday by the Carnegie Mellon Green Design Institute offers a scientifically rigorous estimate of e-commerce’s green benefits. E-commerce not only uses less energy, but its carbon footprint is also a third smaller than bricks-and-mortar retail, the scientists found.

Lead researcher H. Scott Matthews and his team compared the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions required to deliver a small flash drive to a shopper via a trip to a traditional store versus buying and shipping the flash drive via Buy.com.

The methodology used:

Coming up with these calculations required many assumptions by the scientists – but they’re a lot more informed than past attempts to account for the environmental benefits of e-commerce, say the researchers. That’s because the e-commerce site Buy.com made available to them information about its data center, last mile delivery practices and other sources of energy consumption. (Buy.com is a member of the Green Design Institute’s Corporate Consortium, but didn’t pay for or direct the study.)

The scientists found that by far the largest environmental cost of traditional shopping is a consumer driving his or her own car to a store. (They assumed that the average person drives about 14 miles round-trip per shopping outing, and buys about three different items on one trip.)

Much of the energy expenditure for e-commerce also goes towards last-mile delivery. But a UPS truck delivering dozens of packages along its daily route uses a less energy per package, on average. That’s where e-commerce really shines.

What about the data center?

Data centers and computers, it turns out, are a relatively small energy cost for e-commerce.

The results based on data from Buy.com can’t necessarily be extrapolated to other e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com, warn the scientists. That’s because Buy.com operates with an unusual virtual model in which products are shipped directly from distribution partners to customers, eliminating a step in the supply chain that many other e-commerce companies still use.

Symantec published its 2008 Data center report as a press release.

Symantec’s 2008 State of the Data Center Report Reveals Managers Pressured to “Do More with Less”

Struggling with adequate staffing, data center managers worldwide are compelled to deliver better service levels to meet increasing demands while reducing costs

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Jan. 12, 2009 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today released the findings of its 2008 State of the Data Center report. The second annual study found that data center managers are caught between two conflicting goals – more demanding user expectations and higher levels of performance, yet reducing costs remain the primary objective for the data center. The report also found that data center staffing remains problematic, servers and storage continue to be underutilized and disaster recovery plans are out of date. Finally, the respondents indicated that while they are pursuing green data center initiatives, they are doing so primarily based on cost benefits.

“This research confirms what we are seeing in the field,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Symantec’s Storage and Availability Management Group. “Attention has turned to initiatives that will drive immediate cost reduction, rather than longer term ROI driven programs.Storage has been a primary focus of these initiatives as the demand for capacity continues to rise, despite economic challenges.”

Green Data Centers are a subject of the study.

Green Data Center Driven by Cost

Continuing the trend first spotted in 2007, the data center’s focus on “being green” was driven by cost issues in 2008 with social responsibility on the rise. The study asked companies why creating a Green Data Center was important to their workplace. Reducing electricity consumption was mentioned by 54 percent, followed by reducing cooling costs (51 percent) and a sense of responsibility to the community (42 percent).

Found this post on Accenture’s Green IT blog.  As the author Andrew Skinner, says this is not necessarily a scientific approach, but useful to gain some perspective.

Have you seen a development in clients' interest in Green IT over the past 6-12 months?

• Australia: Recently we have seen an increase in the focus from the media with regard to Green IT. A number of major events have been planned (such as a symposium and CIO roundtables) and we are beginning to see the topic enter the CIO agenda.
• Netherlands: Our clients are increasingly interested in the developments in the topic of Green IT, but they still find it very hard to prioritize the topic on the overall IT agenda. When it comes to a discussion about cost or service versus green then the former two topics seem to gain much greater support.
• Spain: In Spain we have seen an overall interest and movement, but clients are only now beginning to look at establishing Green IT programs. Typically Green IT is a collateral result of projects such as cost reduction or virtualization. Clients are now beginning to see that projects with a different focus can also be used to deliver green benefits.
• Japan: In Japan we have seen a significant increase of interest in Green IT. We are, on a weekly basis, being asked to present material to interested organizations and external seminars as well as develop proposals for our clients. It is great that Accenture can leverage the work that we have developed on a global basis for these sessions, but even better that we get to feed information back and help set the overall agenda.

It is interesting how the different countries are finding different interest from Sectors in Green IT.

Is there a noticeable difference in interest in Green IT from clients in different industry sectors?

• Australia: In Australia, it looks like government organizations will take a leadership position early, with other sectors following closely behind. Typically, lT is seen as both an enabler and leader in a client’s wider sustainability goals.
• Netherlands: I have noticed that all industries are influenced by the growing call for sustainability by regulators and consumers. There is no noticeable difference in interest between industry sectors; the actions a company takes are more dependant on its sustainability strategy and related corporate citizenship programs.
• Spain: Within the Spanish market the clients within financial services and resources (particularly the utility companies) have taken a strong lead. We are now beginning to see more activity in public sector and from products organizations.
• Japan: The consumer goods, automotive and retail industry groups within Accenture have taken the lead on a move towards greener IT within Japan and they are potentially leading the drive globally. We have seen little activity within the financial sector at present but this is probably due to external influences. Although resources clients have shown an interest, the impact of Green IT is very small compared with their overall emissions.

News.com reports on a Jupiter study funded by BuzzLogic.

Study: When it comes to influence, bloggers beat friend lists

Posted by Caroline McCarthy Post a comment

Facebook likes to trumpet the value of "trusted referrals"--recommendations and ads with the endorsements of members of your friends list. But a new study from Jupiter Research, commissioned by analytics company BuzzLogic, says that consumer purchases are more likely to be influenced by what they read on a blog versus what their social-networking rosters recommend.

Half of all those surveyed who identify as "blog readers" (people who read more than one blog per month, a fifth of total survey respondents) say that blogs are important to them when it comes to making purchasing decisions. But they don't necessarily find them to be all that reliable: only 15 percent of blog readers, and five percent of all those surveyed said that in the past year they had trusted a blog to help them make a purchase decision.

One interesting point is

real take-away point is that the results seem to indicate most blogs are less mainstream than you might think: Only a fifth of respondents say they read a blog at least once a month.

That's actually really surprising--or maybe blogs have become so ingrained on the Web that people don't even know they're reading them.

EquityBulls has a post about Wipro Technologies focus on Green IT Offerings.

Stock Report

Wipro focusing on Green IT offerings

Wipro strengthened its suite of Green IT offerings which includes Consulting, Green Data Centers, Carbon Accounting, Paperless Office and Freight Management solutions. The green suite of offerings saw traction both in terms of deals as well as industry recognition.

Wipro embarked on a first of its kind initiative for a leading Telecom Service provider in India which involves construction of a completely “green” N ational Data Center for the company’s nationwide IT and Telecom requirements. The project will not only ensure visible environmental benefits but will also bring potentially huge cost savings in terms of power, water and lighting ensuring natural resources are optimized to the maximum. The scope of the project includes futuristic design, supply, installation, commissioning and operations for Data Center and NOC.

Wipro Technologies and a leading Retail organization in the US recently collaborated to win Oracle’s 'Empower the Green Enterprise' award for Implementation of Oracle I-Expenses module with integration to Peoplesoft payroll. Wipro helped the client organization move their legacy travel expense system to Oracle I-expenses platform and significantly reduced the consumption of paper, making the process more eco-friendly.

As Enterprises world-wide are beginning to consciously reduce their contribution to Global Warming by reducing emissions of Green House Gases, Wipro has introduced a Carbon Accounting Tool, that will help enterprises to measure, manage, monitor and monetize their carbon di-oxide emissions resulting from their operations globally.