Green tech wrap-up: Microsoft’s green vision bears fruit

Every Thursday, InfoWorld sends out my free Green Tech e-mail newsletter in which I point to some of the top green IT articles of the week. Following is the content of yesterday’s. You can subscribe to the free InfoWorld Green Tech newsletter (and others) right here.

Oranges. Oranges. So many oranges.

I’ve been the proud owner of a rather impressive navel orange tree since moving to my Sacramento home just over a year ago. It’s clearly a happy and healthy tree, judging by the multitude of fruit dangling from its various branches. But my girlfriend and I honestly don’t know what to do with all of them. There’s only so many oranges two people (and a cat) can eat. Any ideas?

Fortunately, green-tech news remains fruitful, though not to the point of being completely overwhelming. Here are some of my picks for the past week:

Steve Ballmer talks up Microsoft’s green vision – At the greener-than-ever Cebit show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used stage time to highlight Redmond’s efforts to address customer demand for energy-saving software. Among them: He told the audience that with newly released Windows Server 2008, “We’ve driven down [customers’] power consumption needs by, in some cases, up to 40 percent.”

IT can clean up on clean tech – Prominent members of the “Who’s Who Guide to IT Heavyweights” continue to invest heavily in renewable energy. It’s not just a safe way to hedge bets on the rising costs of electricity; it opens the door for new business opportunities as the nation’s power grid evolves.

Greenpeace finds much room for green improvement among electronics – Greenpeace rated the greenness of 20 electronic devices from eight vendors– including desktop PCs, notebooks, mobile phones, and PDAs. Even the best scores weren’t very good.

Forrester: Green IT consulting market to hit $4.8B by 2013 – The research company expects the market for green-tech consulting services to grow 60 percent annually over the next five years. Organizations will turn to third-parties such as Intel, HP, IBM, Sun, and others for strategies to not only reduce datacenter costs, but to create and implement holistic sustainability plans.

That wraps up this week’s Green Tech newsletter. I expect I’ll be neck-deep in InfoWorld Green 15 award nominations over the next few days. And oranges. Oh Whiskers, why can’t your voracious appetite extend to citrus?