Racing Going Green

When I came across this article, Vroom, Vroom: Formula 1 Orders Teams to Go Green by Chuck Squatriglia, it made me think that sporting events is something that is very rarely talked about when it comes to going “green”. Sporting events would be an excellent avenue to promote the concept of “going green” out to a large mass of people. Where else could you share a message with an audience numbering 75,000 to 250,000 people all at the same time? A Formula One, F1, race would be such a sporting event.
Formula One and the sport of racing in general has been trying to become more eco-friendly. Some of the ways in which they have been trying to improve is to use biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells, and even hybrids. This article states that it is the sports responsibility to show the universe what can be accomplished by “going green”, and I think it is an excellent idea.
Kinetic energy recovering systems is a recent way the sport is trying to better itself when it comes to the environment. These new systems use a flywheel in the transmission to capture the energy created when a car brakes and uses it during the acceleration process. The result of this new technology is that the car can now generate 80 more horsepower without burning another drop of fuel.
As you can see, huge strides are being made in the sport of auto racing so it will become more environmentally friendly. If the major automakers would follow F1 racing’s lead and create better cars with the same technology, the world would become a more efficient, cleaner, and better place.

Airline Industry - What can be done to go green?

In my eyes, the aviation industry has long been a contributing factor to global warming and climate change. To me, the industry has not done enough to address this problem, and they need to be held accountable for it. I found an article, How technology can help aviation go green, by Paul Willis, and it made me feel a little better about this issue because it has shown me that the industry is actually working towards reducing their emissions.
Biofuels is one option they are looking at, but some environmentalists say that the farmland needed to produce the crops which are then used to produce oil, would lead to higher food prices and more deforestation. If this is in fact true, then this option does not sound like a viable one to me. Another option being explored is using algae which forms on ponds and lakes. Scientists have been able to extract vegetable oil from this algae which can burn much longer than other biofuels and would not require us to utilize an abundance of farmland for its production. This concept seems to be the most effective, and I just hope that the airline industry continues to find ways to reduce their emissions and clean up the environment.

Keeping Data Centers Cool

Companies are learning now that by going green, they also appear to be improving the way the company is viewed in the eyes of the consumers. Data centers must be maintained at a very cool temperature. Obviously the more servers in the data center, the more heat that will be generated. This scenario does not sound like a very efficient one to me. Even though, servers are more efficient than in the past, the amount of energy used by these data servers is expected to double in the next few years as demand continues to grow.
Companies are now using sophisticated computer programs to help design data centers to improve the airflow so less energy will be required to keep the servers at optimal temperature. Some companies have also began to use computer programs to build air conditioning systems which simply circulates fresh air from the atmosphere in the cooler months as opposed to using Freon or other coolants to keep things cool. These techniques are much more energy efficient than typical air conditioning systems.
Major chip manufacturers such as Intel have heavily invested in improving the way the electrical efficiency of their microprocessors, while IBM and Hewlett-Packard continue to explore ways to improve cooling systems. Recently some companies abroad have gone solar or are powered by a renewable resource called “biomass”. Wind is also becoming a more utilized natural resource when it comes to providing energy to data centers. Another one of the most recent technologies used in data centers is called virtualization. This concept enables one computer to handle the functions of several others which reduces the amount of energy needed to maintain the server.
Companies both domestic and abroad are making progress when it comes to reducing the energy required to maintain their data centers, and it is obvious that technology plays an important role. As technologies improve and companies continue to invest and discover more ways to be efficient, the closer they will become to being truly “green”.