In the past, when I went to one of IBM’s Smarter Planet events I found it hard to write something and distill the message for readers.

At the back of my brain was always this burning question: Just what is IBM selling here? I have difficulty connecting their really big picture green IT story to what they do as a technology company.

Let me set the context and take a short detour to explain why. I’m better known as a technology journalist-blogger hybrid, but I worked for a very brief time at the Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore. In that short stint I gained an appreciation of the complex problems facing cities.

Different cities face different problems, depending on how developed a city is. A developed megalopolis like New York or Tokyo will face vastly different challenges than say, Hanoi, Vietnam or Sao Paulo, Brazil. And this is only one one aspect of a city. Culturally, economically, politically, every city is different and will have different issues.

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Green IT is one really hot meme.

At a press conference held by Panasonic yesterday at Marina Sands in Singapore, Panasonic declared their ambition to be the top number one green innovation company in consumer electronics by 2018.

This means continually innovating and developing consumer products that “save energy, save water, and are long-lasting”, said Ikuo Miyamoto-san, managing director of Panasonic Asia. Panasonic makes consumer products like plasma and LCD TVs, washing machines, and air conditioning systems.

How does Panasonic benchmark their products to be environmentally friendly? The company will work with authorities in countries to ensure that these products pass or exceed local green standards. For example, in Singapore, the National Environmental Agency (NEA) runs a mandatory energy labelling scheme for electronic products.

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Fancy your internet business being powered by cow dung?

According to a recent research paper by HP, this is not a pipe dream. At the 4th ASME International Conference on Energy Sustainability in Phoenix, Arizona, which started May 17th this week, HP outlined how a farm of 10,000 cows could fufill the power requirements of a medium-sized 1-megawatt (MW) data center. The research was done by HP Lab’s sustainable IT ecosystem division, which seeks to design efficient green data centres using renewable energy resources.

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