Here is today’s sustainability news, research and analysis for technology partners, renewable energy consultants and green IT service providers. Today's sustainability news also involves management consultants, CIOs, chief sustainability officers (CSOs), c-suite members and climate accounting professionals.
A. Sustainable Technology, Talent, Partnerships and Green IT Alliances
1. MSPs and Managed Energy Consumption: Roughly 50% of organizations will leverage sustainability monitoring technology to manage hybrid cloud energy consumption by 2026, Gartner predicts. The emerging trend, known as GreenOps, may require MSPs and IT departments to monitor energy usage, water efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and more -- especially as when those metrics involve data centers and cloud services.
2. Launch - Carbon Accounting Software: CBN Expert, a climate consulting firm, has spun out Notch -- a carbon accounting software platform.
3. Launch - Climate Risk Software: At the IBM Think 2024 partner and customer conference, the company unveiled IBM Environmental Intelligence. The platform is "designed to empower data scientists and application developers with environmental data sets." The software is designed to help customers "mitigate potential financial impact from operational losses and liabilities caused by climate disruption," IBM said.
4. Launch - Supply Chain Management: Worldly has launched Facility Data Manager (FDM) to "help businesses more effectively track ongoing progress towards their decarbonization targets and make decisions that drive environmental improvements faster," the company said.
5. Supply Chain Management, Visibility: Keep an eye on Sedex, a software platform that allows customers to "build visibility and improve sustainability throughout their global supply chains. Yes, Sedex has a partner program...
6. Data Centers: A Google data center in Hamina -- located on the shores of the Gulf of Finland -- in 2025 will begin to provide sustainable heat to the local area. The effort, in partnership with city-owned energy provider Haminan Energia, is an "offsite heat recovery project to reduce" that will reduce Google's environmental footprint, as well as help warm homes and businesses in this historic port city," the company said.
7. Leadership - Software: Google veteran Tim Collier has joined Scope3, a sustainability platform that seeks to decarbonize media and advertising, BusinessCloud reported. Collier will lead Scope3 business operations across the UK and Northern Europe, the report said.
8. Responsible AI: Ahead of the Microsoft Build conference, the cloud services and software company emphasized global governance and responsible AI strategies...
9. AI Strategy - Dell Technologies: The PC and data center infrastructure provider announced Dell AI Factory -- which "gives organizations the infrastructure, solutions and services needed to quickly adopt and deploy AI at scale." The effort spans AI PCs; storage, data protection and networking; integrated partner software and hardware; AI Professional Services; and an Nvidia partnership. Dig a little deeper, and partner Broadcom vowed to enable AI infrastructure with "open, scalable and energy efficient networking solutions."Â
10. AI PCs - Hype Cycle Starts: Microsoft, Qualcomm and multiple PC partners unveiled Copilot+ PCs -- which are designed to run "AI-intensive" applications. Still, we don't know if the AI capabilities will drive a PC refresh cycle. Nor do we know the potential implications in terms of PC sustainability and energy consumption.
11. Partnership - AI Data Centers And Green Energy: ASOTO OÜ and CATALSYS plan to jointly develop and commercialize green energy solutions for European data centers. The effort will leverage ammonia as a green fuel source.
12. EV Charging: EVgo -- an EV charger network -- now has one million registered customer accounts nationwide, up 400% since April 2020, the company said. Also of note: Revenue was $55.2 million in Q1 of 2024, up 118% compared to Q1 of 2023. Net loss was $28.2 million -- considerably lower than a $49 million net loss in Q1 of 2023. Still, EVgo's stock fell down roughly 42% from January 2024 through May 21, 2024, amid continued EV industry growth challenges.
13. Refurbished Smartphones: It sounds like Samsung plans to more greatly emphasize Certified Re-Newed Smartphones...
B. Sustainability M&A, Investments, Funding and Green IT Business Launches
1. Activist Investors Target Johnson Controls: Soroban Capital Partners has amassed a large stake in Johnson Controls, Bloomberg reported, compounding pressure brought by activist investor Elliott Investment Management. Johnson Controls increasingly focuses on smart building technology that aligns with "customers' energy efficiency, sustainability and decarbonization goals." But the company's recent quarterly results underwhelmed Wall Street.
2. M&A - Environmental Services: Superior Environmental Solutions, backed by private equity firm Palladium Equity Partners, has acquired Arrowhead Environmental Services - a 50-person firm in Central Virginia. This is one of Arrowhead's largest acquisitions to date, the buyer said. Financial details were not disclosed.
3. M&A - Potential Solar Energy Exit? Siemens Energy may sell its Indian wind turbine business, Mint has reported.
4. Complete M&A List: Here's our database of all M&A deals involving green IT and renewable energy buyers, sellers and investors.
C. Regional and Global Sustainability Policies and News
1. Global Energy Grid Spending: Global investment in power grids will need to outpace spending on renewable energy in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, Bloomberg reported.
2. Global Net Zero Spending Requirements: Governments and companies need to spend an extra $34 trillion on the clean energy transition between now and 2050 to reach net-zero emissions, Bloomberg reported.
3. Australia - Power Outage Risks: The chance of power shortages in Australia’s populous southeast has increased as coal-fired plants are phased out and grid and battery storage projects are delayed, Bloomberg reported.
D. Sustainability and Green Technology Conference Calendar
- Circularity 2024 (May 22-24, Chicago, Illinois)
- Apidays (May 28-29, Helsinki)
- Concordia Europe Summit (May 28-29, Porto, Portugal)
- Cisco Live 2024 (June 2-6, Las Vegas, Nevada)
- ClimaTech 2024 (June 3-6, Boston, Massachusetts)
- Complete Calendar of Sustainability Conferences
E. Previous Updates & Future News
- Did You Miss Yesterday's Daily Update?: Here is our previous sustainability, green IT and renewable energy news for technology partners.
- Future Updates: If you have news to share then please email me the details.
