Practicality abounds in IT shops these days; first, we had the realization that 99.9 uptime was good enough for most business applications, preventing us from overspending on hardware. Now several vendors have taken this thinking into the data storage arena, and it’s reducing costs and energy consumption dramatically.

Forget the Globes! It’s All about the Green Grammy Awards - LIME
Lime reports on the Grammys going greener as celebrities also take more steps to do and promote the same.

At the Hollywood Goes Green conference held in early December, there was discussion of how the Natural Resources Defense Council will be “greening” the Grammys—which air Feb. 10 at 8pm on CBS — by reducing emissions, using recycled products and biodegradable dishware and providing presenters and staff with hybrid vehicles…

In other award show news, The Office’s Rainn Wilson has been tapped to host the Independent Spirit Awards, which I told you are majorly green this year… down to celebrities —gasp!—carpooling to the event. In a press release, Rainn expressed his excitement at being show host, saying: “It is truly an honor to be asked… I like to think that I bring a bit of an ‘independent spirit’ to the proceedings as I recently installed a gun rack in my Prius.”

Utility Will Use Batteries to Store Wind Power - New York Times

American Electric Power, a coal-burning utility company that is looking for ways to connect more wind power to its grid, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will install huge banks of high-technology batteries.

The batteries are costly and their use at such a big scale has not been demonstrated, but they may be an essential complement to renewable power, experts say.

“We’re looking at what we believe the grid of the future is going to be,” said Carl L. English, president of A.E.P. “We’re going to need a significant amount of storage if for no other reason than to take greatest advantage of alternative energy sources like wind power.”

Wired.com reports on the Democratic presidential candidates’ views on climate change as documented by the journal Science.

What do the would-be Presidents say about science? The journal Science just released its rundown of the most prominent candidates’ positions. None of the campaigns gave Science direct access to the candidates, though that may be a good thing: when it comes to details, advisers are probably the best sources of information. Below is a quick synopsis of the leading Democrats’ positions; the Republicans are here, and expect a future post on less-prominent candidates excluded by Science.

Barack Obama. The freshman senator from Illinois promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and spend $150 billion on biofuels. He’s supported embryonic stem cell research and increased funding for avian influenza programs. He also wants to double federal spending on basic research, expand internet access and spend $18 billion on science-related education initiatives. However, he’d take money from NASA programs to pay for this. Like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, he promises to end political interference with science; unlike them, scientists applaud him for already doing this in his work as a community activist, state legislator and freshman Senator. But in that credit, some find reason for concern: will his ideals hold up on the national stage?

Wired.com Full article »

Xerox Corp. on Monday unveiled a new paper it says uses half as many trees as traditional paper and reduces mailing costs.

Xerox has gone green! The company has just introduced a new kind of paper that is more beneficial to the environment, not made with the traditional chemicals, and is produced in a factory that is run off of hydroelectricity.