IT trade fair CeBIT has a green theme this year.

IT trade fair CeBIT has gone green this year, with exhibitors presenting solutions, products and innovations addressing the issues of energy efficiency in the ICT industry, from 4-9 March in Hanover, Germany.

Joining the global fight against climate change, the IT industry is doing its bit as the world’s largest technology fair aims to show. In going green, CeBIT organisers have teamed up with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group comprising leading tech giants such as Intel, Google and Microsoft – all trying to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.

The event will host around 6,000 exhibitors from 77 countries – with the individual exhibitor stands and special displays covering an area of 241,000 square metres – and is expecting visitor numbers in the region of  400,000.

One section of the show will be dedicated to ways to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced when generating electricity to power the world’s computers. Sun Microsystems plans to set up a data centre at CeBIT that runs solely on solar power.

Deutsche Telekom says its stand at the show will be 100% powered by renewable energy, while German PC maker Fujitsu Siemens will present “Green PCs, intelligent cooling concepts, low power consumption and innovative power management.”

Equally, IBM plans to unveil an emissions-free computing centre model that uses energy recycling, relying on a “smart heating and cooling circuit based on an innovative water-cooling system implemented at chip level.”

To analyse these green efforts, pressure group Greenpeace will also be there to cut through the corporate ‘green speak’ and see which companies and products are on the cutting edge of environmental innovation.

Stating on their website, “The electronics industry will be hard at work promoting its ever faster, smaller and smarter gadgets but it cannot continue to ignore the dangerous explosion in electronic scrap (e-waste) containing toxic chemicals and heavy metals that cannot be disposed of or recycled safely. These high-tech gadgets often end up dumped in Asia and taken apart by hand in primitive, highly polluting and very definitely low-tech manner.”

For more information, visit: www.cebit.de