This paper outlines the energy challenge and presents the role of education as a vector in changing behaviors related to energy consumption by adopting a sustainable attitude aimed at environmental protection. The emphasis is put on teaching activities that will enhance the capabilities of youngsters and teachers from secondary schools concerning the efficient use of energy and the promotion of Renewable Energy Sources. The authors present their results of designing, experimenting, assessing and transferring an innovative approach to energy education in secondary schools that is expected to enhance the content of curricula and to renew the pedagogical methodology. The role played by schools in a green world is strengthened by on-line training delivered to youngsters via e-books and portals specially designed for this purpose or by learning by doing via interactive games

 The amount of energy needed to operate data centers increases regularly since some years at a high pace. The computer science community concentrates its efforts towards reducing these electricity costs, while keeping performances at high level. After summarizing quickly some of the approaches actually followed in particular within the European COST IC0804 Action on “Energy Efficiency in Large Scale Distributed Systems”, we will demonstrate here that these works do not address exactly the problem of energy savings and consider mainly electricity reduction. We argue in this paper that the ecological footprint is not only related to the raw energy consumption but also depends on the production means of the electricity, some being obviously greener than others and that the full life-cycle of IT equipments should also be considered. We present in this paper proposals to include additional parameters when deciding upon the allocation of tasks to the system.

 This paper presents a framework for creating intelligent power profiles that can be incorporated in operating systems to minimize the power consumption of computer systems. This intelligent power profile implements three methods at the time of login into the system that continuously measure the power consumption of running software in a given period of time. Moreover, this paper also emphasizes various effects of heat dissipation by the CPU into the environment on indoor air and on human health.

 The rapid advancements of Information Communications Technology (ICT) are leading to extreme improvements in computing power and to the design and development of innovative products and new improved versions of the existing ones. As a result, ICT products become obsolete more quickly and in increased quantities resulting to ever-increasing waste of electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste). Therefore, greater emphasis is required for integrating environmentally sound choices into supply chain management research and practice. Green supply chain management has developed into an important and growing area of strategic advantage for many countries and companies. Closed-loop supply chains are being used to recover assets that would otherwise be lost. This paper presents best practices and challenges faced by Cyprus regarding its closed loop in the ICT industry. It investigates the performance and satisfaction regarding closed-loop supply chains in Cyprus. The findings and interpretations are summarized, the main research issues and opportunities are highlighted, and recommendations are made for improvements.

 During the last decade rapidly increasing interest has been shown in the research, development, testing and implementation of a wide scope of activities related to power systems changes. These are mostly serious activities based on the assumption that analogy between power systems and information and communication technology is fully valid. The approach could be beneficial to a certain extent; however, if a number of crucial differences and facts are not taken into consideration, it is possible that most of the promises for the improved, commonly called “smart”, grid will remain wishful thinking. Regarding the importance of the issues at stake, and the significant resources mobilized, it seems reasonable to measure and balance this change. Practical examples are showing that the whole effort is potentially more costly than predicted, and without the expected benefits. Therefore, it seems that the work on finding proper criteria, measurements, simulations, and optimizations of power systems’ speed and depth of change must have priority before wider implementation is commenced. This paper emphasizes the importance of a more critical and analytically based approach to decide on how fast and to what extent the improvement of power systems could be achieved with smart grid transformation.

 At the eve of a new decade, when energy concerns are at the top of the research priorities, this work presents a new cost-benefit function for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) powered by harvesting energy sources. The models rely on a Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) that combines a super-capacitor (SC) with a Rechargeable Battery (RB). While the SC has low energy storage capability but is capable of providing high level of energy throughput and frequent charge cycles, the RB has higher energy storage capability but limited charge cycles. Our proposal for the protocol associated with HESS assigns different weights to the residual energy in both energy storage systems whilst favouring routes with more SC energy and harvesting rates. The main innovation is the application of a new routing cost metric to prolong the network lifetime. An energy model framework has been developed in MATLAB with different application scenarios to test the proposed cost metric. The simulation results show that, by using the HESS flexible energy-aware cost-benefit function, significant extension of the network lifetime is achieved by means a balance between the energy consumption and the reliable delivery of data packets.