WSJ has a few interesting articles on Green efforts winning vs. other industries due to the fact that Green strategies uses less resources. In this article they make the point that energy intensive products are increasing in prices faster than Greener products.

Green Products Gain
From New Price Equation

They Find New Buyers
As High Energy Costs
Hurt Regular Brands

By ARDEN DALE

Does it finally pay to go green?

Consumers typically have paid a premium for environmentally friendly products. But with soaring energy prices pushing up the price of mainstream goods, green products are becoming just as -- or even more -- affordable these days.

The reason is that environmentally friendly products usually have less fossil-fuel content than competing nongreen brands. Their manufacture also tends to consume less oil, since green entrepreneurs favor renewable-energy and energy-saving practices.

TerraCycle Inc.

A TerraCycle bag made from juice pouches

The new price parity -- and, in some cases, advantage -- is allowing businesses to draw in the growing ranks of consumers who want to go green, but have so far resisted because of the higher cost. It also is giving some companies incentive to branch out into other eco-friendly products and even adopt more energy-saving manufacturing techniques.

"We try to leverage situations like this to grow into new markets," says Jeff Mendelsohn, founder and chief executive officer of New Leaf Paper LLC, a maker of recycled paper. "Where there's instability in prices, buyers tend to be more open to new sourcing, and that's a general market strategy, not just green."

This same phenomenon will occur in data center operators.  The Greenest data centers are going to be more competitive as energy costs increase.

WSJ has a few interesting articles on Green efforts winning vs. other industries due to the fact that Green strategies uses less resources. This article compares Monsanto an engineered food company which claims it is 30% more efficient in using land, water, and energy to produce food than other food.  The article then goes on to compare the stock price of Monsanto vs. Whole Food.  Monsanto is the winner.

Food Shortage Recasts Image of 'Organic'

By KAREN RICHARDSON
June 25, 2008

The salad days of organic salad are wilting in favor of high-tech tomatoes.

As global food shortages threaten to ignite social and economic instability from Nigeria to India, the popular aversion to genetically modified foods is turning into more of a luxury for the wealthy than a practical option for the masses.

This trend is evident in the share price and earnings growth of Monsanto, the world leader in agricultural biotechnology by market share. Its stock has soared 22% this year, trading at a breathless 37 times estimated 2008 per-share earnings. On Wednesday, the company is expected to report a third-quarter profit of $1.39 a share, up 35% from a year earlier.

Gourmets' fears of "frankenfoods" that make corn taste like cardboard seem to be taking a back seat to the growing global demands of feeding emerging middle classes in developing countries with limited natural resources.

Monsanto's seeds produce insect-resistant, drought-tolerant crops. It has pledged to double crop yields by 2030 for corn, soybeans and cotton and to reduce the need for water, land and energy by 30%, an effort to position itself as a solution to concerns about mounting strain on the globe's natural resources.

The firm is in a strong position. Farmers who want to raise their yields of corn for feed or ethanol have to pay the price, while buyers of that corn have to eat it. Monsanto has already increased its earnings outlook several times this year because of demand and higher prices.

It stands in stark contrast to Whole Foods Market, the supermarket for all things organic. It is a price taker that can't easily pass higher costs to its customers. From 2001 to the end of 2006, the company's earnings grew an average annual rate of 25%. In 2007, earnings were down more than 10%, and they're falling further.

Engineered food is clearly getting an upper hand.

http://www.smart2020.org/ has launched with a press release.

Smarter technology use could reduce global emissions by 15 per cent and save global industry EUR 500 billion in annual energy costs by 2020

Friday 20 June 2008 – Transformation in the way people and businesses use technology could reduce annual man-made
global emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over EUR 500 billion [GBP
400 billion/USD 800 billion], according to a new report published today by independent non-profit The °Climate Group and the
Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).

The report – SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age – is the world’s first comprehensive global
study of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector’s growing significance for the world’s climate.
The report’s supporting analysis, conducted independently by international management consultants McKinsey & Company,
shows that while ICT’s own sector footprint - currently two per cent of global emissions - will almost double by 2020, ICT’s
unique ability to monitor and maximise energy efficiency both within and outside of its own sector could cut CO₂ emissions by
up to five times this amount. This represents a saving of 7.8 Giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) by 2020 –
greater than the current annual emissions of either the US or China.

One of better architecture points made is in the press release.

KEY FINDING 3: Getting SMART about ICT
Going forward, the report recommends a SMART framework is implemented, outlining key actions required by the ICT sector,
national governments and industry. Transformation of the economy will occur when standardisation (S), monitoring (M) and
accounting (A) of energy consumption prompt a rethink (R) in how we optimise for energy efficiency and how we live, work and
play in a low carbon world. Through this enabling platform, transformation (T) will occur when the business models that drive
low carbon alternatives can be developed and diffused at scale across all sectors of the economy.

It’s too bad they made this the 3rd of 3 findings listed, and last in the press release.

Had a meeting with Microsoft’s Pat Helland and he mentioned this NYTimes article. Pat and I met to see if we can work together on a keynote presentation getting developers motivated to write more efficient software, and articles like this are good for education and awareness.

Demand for Data Puts Engineers in Spotlight

Paul Marcoux, vice president for green engineering at Cisco Systems, has worked on the design of about 100 data centers.

In Silicon Valley, the stars have long been charismatic marketing visionaries and cool-nerd software wizards. By contrast, mechanical engineers who design and run computer data centers were traditionally regarded as little more than blue-collar workers in the high-tech world.

The New York Times

For years, they toiled in relative obscurity in the engine rooms of the digital economy, amid the racks of servers and storage devices that power everything from online videos to corporate e-mail systems. Their mission was to keep the computing power plants humming, while scant thought was given to rising costs and energy consumption.

Today, data center experts are no longer taken for granted. The torrid growth in data centers to keep pace with the demands of Internet-era computing, their immense need for electricity and their inefficient use of that energy pose environmental, energy and economic challenges, experts say.

That means people with the skills to design, build and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are their salaries — climbing more than 20 percent in the last two years into six figures for experienced engineers.

“The data center energy problem is growing fast, and it has an economic importance that far outweighs the electricity use,” said Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor of environmental engineering at Stanford. “So that explains why these data center people, who haven’t gotten a lot of glory in their careers, are in the spotlight now.”

Advertising Age has a video from their Green Conference where "What's the carbon footprint of a banner on your website or your website itself?" was asked.

A link to the video is here.  The presenter is Don Carli, Institute for Sustainable Communication.

Thanks to Jamey Tisdale for sending this my way.