Innovation entries related to Energy efficiency

Earlier this year our colleagues in Global Foundation Services shared a concept for what they called a Data Plant, a fuel cell-powered data center designed to run on biogas generated from landfills or water treatment plants. 

Microsoft has a long tradition of tackling tough challenges at a global scale. We have always focused on how our technology can enrich people’s lives, build businesses, and inspire and change the world.

Three years ago, Microsoft adopted a broad environmental strategy. This strategy included commitments to reduce the impact of our operations and products, and to accelerate the use of information technology in addressing serious environmental issues. Our CEO sent out a company-wide email detailing our strategy, and highlighted some of the steps the company would take to be more environmentally responsible.

Microsoft Ireland Research has been working on electricity grid research that allows the exact energy consumption and emissions to be measured for any piece of computation performed in a data centre. This allows past or predicted emissions to be calculated for any computation performed in the cloud and opens the doorway to measuring and reducing the emissions produced by data centres around the world.

IBOR (Intergraal Beheer Publieke Ruimte) is an innovative smart control and management system for public areas. By remotely maintaining and controlling public infrastructure such as street lights, IBOR helps to save energy, decrease maintenance costs and reduce CO2 emissions. Delivered through the cloud, the tool is expected to help reduce urban area energy use by 25 to 40 per cent.

In the thousands of apps available for download on our phones, most of which used for entertainment or enhancing productivity, it is sometimes difficult to find those that serve as tools for us to contribute to our environment, and live more sustainable lifestyles. We’ve selected 5 of the best apps available today in the EU, and what’s more, they are all free for download on the Windows Phone...

It is strange for me to talk about my own interview (starts at 01:16) but I had the honour of speaking on TV2 Danish National television on an initiative called Sustainia. The book entitled “Guide to Sustainia, Exploring the sustainable society of tomorrow” imagines a fictitious place in 2020 that hopes to inspire us into making it a reality.

We have recently run a pilot programme on our corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., USA, aimed at using technology to improve the energy efficiency of the buildings.

Several months ago, we released a new whitepaper, The IT Energy Efficiency Imperative, which explores the critical importance and substantial benefits of embracing IT energy efficiency in a world where almost every facet of business and society is dependent on IT-based services. Added to this we’re also releasing a new video featuring Mark Aggar, Senior Director of Technology Strategy, talking about...

Information technology (IT) departments in organisations across sectors are facing difficulties in meeting the growing demand for IT services, due to tight budgets, rising energy costs, and limits on electric power availability. To answer the existing and new demands while remaining productive and competitive, it is important for organisations to embrace IT energy efficiency principles and practices.

When Richard Banks’ grandfather died about five years ago, he left behind a suitcase filled with hundreds of photographs, many depicting his time as a pilot during World War II. Looking through those images made Banks think about the legacy he would leave his daughter, and about the physical limitations of photos and floppy disks that become obsolete as images and information are increasingly stored...

Governments around the world are racing to invest in smart electricity grids to reduce energy consumption and battle climate change. The European Union’s Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan includes a €2 billion investment in smart grids over the next ten years. By 2020, the EU aims to have smart meters in 80 per cent of homes.

“Report issues with city infrastructure in real-time” StreetCare is a Citizen Service Platform solution which enables governments to do more with less, meeting their citizens’ needs to participate and connect with their local government.

VENUS-C is a pioneering, multidisciplinary initiative between industrial partners and scientific user communities that enables cloud computing for research and industry applications. Microsoft invests in Windows Azure resources and manpower through Redmond and its European research centers. VENUS-C is co-funded by the GÉANT and e-Infrastructure Unit and DG Information Society and Media of the...

EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger has said that “The cheapest energy is the one we don’t consume”. Private households also need to reduce their energy needs, and doing so makes economic sense too: lowering your room temperature by just three degrees can save 20 percent on heating costs. Even reducing temperature by a single degree can cut consumption by 6 percent.

Microsoft’s latest products are geared towards enabling users to be more productive and to do their work faster and more efficiently. But as well as being user-friendly, its products have also been specifically crafted to manage power efficiently, reducing both energy use and your overall electricity bill.

I underlined in several of my previous posts that cloud computing brings great benefits such as scalability and increased energy efficiency, but what about the next phase? As data centers grow in capacity and the rate of adoption increases, we need also to look to the future.

I had the pleasure some weeks ago to attend the first Green Growth Council meeting in Copenhagen, led by Monday Morning a leading independent think tank in Scandinavia. The Council gathered leading scholars, politicians, as well as representatives from the business sector that discussed the state of green growth, barriers, policy frameworks and best practices in transitioning to a low-carbon...

Electricity companies around the world are racing to develop equipment to help homes and apartments automatically slash energy use. These “smart home” technologies are being tested from San Francisco to Seoul, but many of the do-it-yourself kits are complicated to install and configure. More sophisticated systems are expensive and require professional installation. As a result, global rollout of...

An article in the French newspaper Le Figaro, began with the words ‘Smart grids will be to energy what the internet was for computers’. In other words, a revolutionary concept.

I would like to highlight a recent example from the Netherlands where, Microsoft Partner, Capgemini, will provide a ground-breaking pilot of a smart public lighting system based on Microsoft’s cloud environment, Windows Azure in the Dutch city of Texel.

A recent article in The Guardian has profiled how, thanks to an Oxford University project supported by the European Commission and Microsoft Research, citizens now have the opportunity to help scientists track the regional and local weather events caused by climate change. 

At Microsoft, we are committed to software and technology innovation that helps people and organizations improve the environment. We work closely with governments, NGOs, businesses and academia, on the best ways to use technology with the aim to resolve issues facing the environment such as climate change and energy sustainability.

The Greek government created the Public Power Corporation (PPC) in 1950 to implement a national electric energy policy and utilise domestic energy resources. Today, PPC provides 93 percent of the power capacity in Greece, generated by lignite, fuel oil, hydro-electric, and natural gas power plants and wind and solar energy parks. PPC is the largest business in Greece in terms of assets, with 98 power plants...

Stockholm is one of the most networked cities in the world. It is also considered one of the happiest and one of the most environmentally aware. In fact, the city was recently named European Green Capital of 2010. Now, Stockholm is using Microsoft Windows 7 to achieve even better results.

I wanted to share with you an interesting article that my colleague Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist for Microsoft, recently wrote. His piece offers up some insightful thoughts on a recent study ran to better understand the potential that cloud computing may have to abate carbon emissions and reduce energy consumption for small to large companies.

On November 8-11, I took part in the 2010 Care Innovation summit on ‘Going Green’, held this year in Vienna. Participants from across the ICT sector attended the two-day event to better understand how our sector should be part of the answer to reduce greenhouse gases and not part of the problem.

I just saw Rob Bernard our Chief Environment Strategist in an interview on CNN on how we and the ICT industry are trying to tackle the increasing energy consumption of data centers.

I'm often asked why Microsoft is getting involved in environmental issues: people assume it is not our issue or that internet and communication technologies can help. Wrong! Technology is not the solution but an important enabler for energy efficiency and reductions in greenhouse gases.

Computer science can play a major role in fuelling scientific breakthroughs in other fields, but only if it can meet its own grand challenges, said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft at a symposium in Brussels debating how best to use EU-funded research programmes to solve grand challenges.

The European Commission as part of the EU Sustainable Energy Week (23-25 March) will once again run the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign which contributes to realising the European Union's energy policy to amongst other things promote energy efficiency, new renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and clean transport. The 2009 EU Sustainable Energy Week will sponsor 149 events inside and outside of...

I recently attended the European Commission’s ICT for Energy Efficiency event in Brussels where four associations representing information and communication technology companies have come together to ensure our industry will be part of the solution instead of the problem.

As you may have read before on this site, we opened one of the largest data centres in Europe just last year in Dublin. Large-scale facilities such as this can play a big role in the development of cloud computing, providing companies with better and cheaper computing facilities. Great news to resource-strapped companies in particular.

Scientists from Microsoft Research in the United Kingdom and the United States and University of California have developed a prototype that allows computers to run low-energy tasks while in sleep mode.

The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables midsize businesses to easily track their environmental impact and energy consumption from within their Enterprise Resource Planning solution.

Join our partner – EEA – and  help build a community showing how we can IMPACT and CONTRIBUTE to addressing Climate Change!!

A group of scientists from Microsoft Research in the United Kingdom and the United States and University of California have developed a prototype that allows computers to run low-energy tasks while in sleep mode. This saves both energy and money.

We were very proud to announce the grand opening of our Dublin data centre last month. This state of the art facility helps to improve cloud computing capacity and network infrastructure throughout Europe to meet the demand generated from Microsoft’s online, live and cloud services (like Bing, Windows Live and the Azure Services Platform).

There’s a new technology coming into your home. But unlike many, this one should save you money.

In May 2009, a Brussels seminar examined the potential of computers to save energy – and the obstacles to realising that potential.

Software tools that help researchers to study the role of forests in climate change could make it easier to understand a wide variety of natural and artificial complex systems.

Microsoft’s first European “mega data centre”, which opened recently on the western outskirts of Dublin, uses 50 per cent less energy than a traditional data centre built some three years ago.

On June 20th 2012, in the presence of Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, sustainability legend Gro Harlem Brundtland, IPCC Chair Rajendra K. Pachauri, EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard and 150 VIP guests at Rio+20, Eye on Earth has been chosen for the prestigious SUSTAINIA 100 list of solutions. For more information, you can visit:...

Atlas, an online portal, uses the intuitive interface of Bing Maps to allow people to view stories about the impact of climate change across Europe.

  Car Manufacturers have made tremendous progress in reducing vehicle emissions. Today’s cars create far less pollution and emit far less carbon dioxide compared with those built a decade ago.

Healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing our societies, economies and governments over the coming decades. At a personal level almost everyone has an experience, not only about healthcare, about healthcare innovation. At the organizational level, the private sector has a key opportunity to contribute to transform and innovate in the healthcare field.