Progressive to plant more than a quarter of a million trees in U.S. National Forests countrywide.

MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio — April 22, 2008 — To thank customers who opt to use less paper and do business electronically, Progressive will plant more than a quarter of a million trees in U.S. National Forests countrywide. Also, this month, Progressive began offering a discount to customers who choose to go paperless.

The program is simple: customers can choose to enroll in the company's Paperless Policy option and opt to receive just bills, or bills and policy documents, electronically. If they do, Progressive will plant a tree in their honor.

Most of the trees will be planted later this year — with the help of the Arbor Day Foundation — in U.S. National Forests damaged by wildfires, insects or disease.

"This program is a win-win for everyone. Trees are saved and forests restored, and customers eliminate clutter, have increased security, and get faster delivery of important documents," said Christine Johnson, Progressive's customer experience manager. "We can also reduce our costs by conserving resources used to print and ship bills and other policy documents — while also doing our part to help the environment and improve the customer experience."

The Paperless Policy option is available to all Progressive private passenger auto customers — whether they bought directly from the company or through one of the more than 30,000 independent insurance agencies that represent it.

The paperless discount is currently available in Colorado; more states will be added throughout the rest of the year. Customers who buy from an independent agent will receive a 5 percent discount; those who buy from Progressive directly will receive, on average, a 3 percent discount.

tag: Green News, Tree Planting, Progressive

DELL Goes Completely Green At Global Headquarters.

Round Rock, Texas, April 2, 2008

* Green Power Supplied by Waste Management’s Landfill Gas-to-Energy Plant and TXU Energy Wind Power
* Company Ahead of Schedule to Meet Carbon-Neutrality Commitment

Dell is now powering 100 percent of its 2.1 million square-foot global headquarters campus, home to more than 10,000 employees, with 100 percent green power, the latest step in meeting the company’s 2008 carbon neutral commitment.

“It’s time for our industry to take a lead role in creating a clean energy future,” said Paul Bell, president, Dell Americas. “Today, we are challenging every technology company to work with their suppliers and partners in integrating green power and energy-efficient strategies into their operations.”

“Powering an entire campus with green power, in partnership with these two leading companies, is an important step in becoming the greenest technology company on the planet and the right thing to do for our shared earth,” said Mr. Bell. “At the same time we’re using green technology to drive operating expense down.”

Dell is using all of the power generated from Waste Management’s Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant, meeting 40 percent of Dell headquarters’ campus power needs. The remaining 60 percent comes from existing wind farms and is provided by TXU Energy.

Dell also announced today it is increasing green power use for its Austin Parmer Campus, provided by Austin Energy, from eight to 17 percent. The company is a leading participant in Austin Energy’s GreenChoice® power program. Dell also is powering its Twin Falls, Idaho, facility with 100 percent green power, 97 percent of which is wind power and three percent solar.

In September 2007, Dell announced it would make company owned and leased facilities “carbon neutral” in 2008 through a strategy of improving energy-efficiency in its operations and maximizing the purchase of renewable power. This commitment is part of the company’s climate strategy which also seeks to minimize carbon impact of supplier operations and customer product use.

Operational initiatives to increase efficiency and reduce electricity use already implemented on Dell’s central Texas campuses are expected to save the company nearly $2 million annually in operating costs and cutting CO2 equivalent emissions by nearly 12,000 tons per year. The purchase of green power gives Dell price certainty on its operational costs for power, and the company expects it may see cost benefits to using green power in the future.

Dell’s green technology solutions include the OptiPlex 755 and Inspiron 531 desktops, Latitude D630 laptop, PowerEdge M-Series blades and PowerEdge Energy Smart servers. The company’s desktop systems alone have helped customers save more than $2.2 billion and avoid approximately 22.4 million tons of CO2.

“We’re very pleased that our Austin Community Landfill’s gas to energy project will play a key role in Dell’s commitment to using renewable energy. This project is part of our company’s environmental initiative to increase the production of waste based energy. Today, we create enough energy for the equivalent of 1 million homes each year and by 2020 we expect to double that output, producing enough energy for the equivalent of more than 2 million homes,” said David Steiner, chief executive officer of Waste Management, Inc.

“This is yet another example of TXU Energy’s commitment to offering renewable power choices that are good for business and the environment,” said Jim Burke, chief executive officer for TXU Energy “TXU Energy is dedicated to improving our use of renewable power and encouraging greater energy efficiency, both of which help preserve our environment.”

“For Dell to partner with Waste Management and TXU to source renewable energy on this scale is great news,” said Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group. “Greening the company’s Texas operations not only underpins Dell’s bold carbon neutral commitment but helps drive clean energy investment and tackles climate change.”
tag: Green News, Climate Group, Waste Management’s Landfill Gas-to-Energy Plant, Energy Smart servers, OptiPlex 755, TXU Energy Wind Power, Inspiron 531, green power, Landfill gas-to-energy plant, Austin Energy, GreenChoice®, carbon neutral,

IBM helps to build state-of-the-art data center for Telecom Egypt that includes the world's most sophisticated energy-efficient "green" technologies.

Project Big Green

Cairo, Egypt - 28 Mar 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Telecom Egypt today announced the construction of an innovative, state-of-the-art data center for Telecom Egypt that includes the world's most sophisticated energy-efficient "green" technologies.

Telecom Egypt (TE) is the leading telecommunications provider in Egypt, and the largest provider of fixed-line services in the Middle East with more than 10.4 million customers. Striving to improve customer satisfaction as a key long term success factor, TE chose IBM in 2007 to design and build the most sophisticated and energy-efficient data center in Egypt. Construction was recently completed.

IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) site and facilities division designed the highly resilient data center environment that will be fully equipped to protect TE's valuable information technology (IT) investments, taking into consideration all factors required for the project such as cabling systems, flooring trenches, switching systems, electromechanical systems and data center layout.

IBM will support TE in managing the operation of the data center that runs mission critical business and operational support systems, in addition to the maintenance of a variety of telecommunications equipment.

Egypt's economy has been steadily growing over the past several years and Telecom Egypt needed to expand beyond its existing office space. To manage the increased demand on its telecommunications network and other mission-critical operations, TE found it imperative to ensure extremely high levels of reliability and availability. To address the challenge, it required a new state-of-the-art data center capable of housing its current IT solutions, yet flexible enough to support future growth.

"Telecom Egypt was convinced that IBM was the best choice because of IBM's standards and methodologies and the experience of the IBM team who worked as a trusted consultant," said Eng. Khaled Marmoush, CIO of Telecom Egypt. "IBM provided not only the information about data centers that Telecom Egypt was looking for, but also the technologies and services that are used in today's data centers."

"IBM's long history and expertise with data center implementations enabled us to create a solution to save energy and ensure efficient server performance for Telecom Egypt," said Steven Sams, vice president of IBM Global Site and Facilities Services. "IBM's solution is part of 'Project Big Green' and provides an efficient, reliable and secure data center that will support Telecom Egypt in achieving their goals in maintaining and improving customer satisfaction, as well as helping them be more energy efficient."

Announced in May 2007, IBM's "Project Big Green" is a $1 billion initiative to dramatically reduce energy use by IBM and its clients. The initiative includes new energy efficient IBM products and services and a five step approach to energy efficiency in the data center. If followed, this approach can sharply reduce data center energy consumption, transforming clients' technology infrastructure into "green" data centers and provide energy savings of up to 42 percent for an average data center. More information about IBM Project Big Green is available at www.ibm.com/press/projectbiggreen

tag: Green News, Telecom Egypt, IBM, IBM Global Technology Services, Project Big Green,

Telephony Companies Go Green

GUILDFORD, UK - Extreme Networks® and Avaya today announced that its combined Go Green IP telephony solution is set to reduce UK businesses carbon footprint through dramatically reducing electricity usage of its phones, with energy savings between 50 and 75 percent compared to the current solution.

In addition, for the second year, Extreme Networks scooped the Technology Partner award at Avaya’s yearly EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) BusinessPartner Conference recently held in Paris. The company was recognised with this award for its advanced data equipment and business performance throughout 2007.

The new Go Green solution--built around Extreme Networks’ ExtremeXOS™ Universal Port Automation technology and Avaya’s Power over Ethernet (PoE) efficient Gigabit Ethernet Deskphones-- powers down phones when not in use, offering the potential for significant cost and environmental savings.

“With companies rightly looking to reduce their carbon footprint, solutions such as Go Green from Extreme Networks and Avaya are highly relevant and sought after,” explains Extreme Networks Regional Director, UK and Ireland, Paul Phillips. “Through the automated power down of a block of IP phones in areas of the building not regularly used at night or weekends, companies can save money and do their bit for the environment in one go.”

The Go Green solution is easy to manage and provides the speeds required by today’s bandwidth intensive users. Once the edge policies have been created and the power saving criteria chosen, the ExtremeXOS™ Universal Port Automation powers off the IP handsets outside of these time boundaries, resulting in power savings on both the switch ports and the phones themselves.

For a typical company with 200 non-essential phones that are powered down outside of normal office hours by the Go Green solution between 17:00 each evening and restarting at 09:00 each working morning, there can be a 75 percent reduction in costs associated with running network connected IP phones.

Industry leaders in network infrastructure and intelligent communications respectively, the Extreme Networks and Avaya alliance was formed in 2003 to offer secure and best-of-breed, converged network solutions for enterprises to optimise voice, data and video applications on an easily managed robust infrastructure. The relationship consists of providing jointly developed product and technology solutions as well as Avaya single point of accountability for complete end-to-end networks.

Extreme Networks products offer secure, highly available connectivity for voice, video and data. Its high performance fast Ethernet Summit® series switches used as the backbone to the Go Green solution are based on its revolutionary ExtremeXOS, a highly resilient, modular operating system that can provide high performance, manageability and operational efficiency at an affordable price.

Avaya provides the industry’s broadest selection of IP Deskphones that support a range of functionality and price point requirements, ensuring they meet a variety of user profiles. Avaya’s Gig Ethernet models are already the most power efficient on the market, requiring an estimated half the wattage of comparable competing models. Through implementing the Go Green solution, companies can save even more energy, reducing their electricity bills and carbon footprint at the same time.

“Avaya’s Deskphones provide one of the ultimate voice communications experiences available today and Extreme Networks one of the most intelligent core-class operating systems,” adds Nick Roullier, Country Manager, Avaya, UK “By working together with Extreme we have developed the Engaged Network, an integral part of Avaya’s Intelligent Communications offering that can become an integral part of UK Business’ green initiatives, encouraging responsible use of resources while delivering real energy cost savings.”

Avaya Web site: http://www.avaya.co.uk

Exterme Networks:http://www.extremenetworks.com

Tags: Green News, Go Green IP telephony, Avaya, Extreme Networks, Deskphones, Avaya alliance, ExtremeXOS