Chinese bank cuts paper use

IBM has reportedly helped the Bank of China's London operations cut its paper requirements from 50 pounds per day to roughly 2.5 pounds per day, writes GreenBiz.com.

At the same time, IBM was able to improve the efficiency of how the bank's employees conducted their financial transactions.

IBM helped the bank achieve this success with a combination of its Informix and Centric iSolutions software programs; the paper reductions were implemented by cutting down on the roughly 3 000 messages that the Bank of China sent between branches every day; each of which needed to be manually printed and distributed.

Turnkey solutions have been deployed in the past by some telecommunications companies, notably Alcatel-Lucent, to extend the mobile telecommunications network in the absence of an established electricity source according to ZDNet.com.

Now, two World Economic Forum technology pioneers - Vihaan Networks and Boston-Power - are testing a similar solution that is powered by solar energy.

The technology, called the VNL WorldGSM base station, can offer communications services for up to three days in the absence of solar energy. (That's where the Boston-Power technology kicks in, to act as an energy storage mechanism for the base station.)

It's hard to call president Obama's goal to get 80% of US energy from clean sources by 2035 a walloping victory for the green tech industry, says GreenTechMedia.com.

In the State of the Union speech, Obama said the US should end oil subsides and added that the US needs to shift from conventional fossil fuels to clean energy over the next 25 years. Solar lobbyists have been ferreting through bills to uncover fossil fuel subsidies. It has been reported that 70% of all energy subsidies currently go to fossil fuels. The president and green energy advocates will have plenty of fodder to combat oil companies in the next go-round over energy bills.

The problem comes in on what gets included in the definition of 'clean' and ultimately might benefit from federal programs designed to boost production or R&D in 'clean' energy, the report says.