Rogers Communication announced Friday that they are going to stop deliberately “throttling” bandwidth on certain peer-to-peer file sharing applications like BitTorrents that are used for things like movies and music files.

In a letter to the Communications Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission the company said starting in March they will start to remove traffic shaping equipment in place on their network. This in response to the preliminary finding last month where Canada’s telecommunications regulator reported that the company has been breaking the rules on how Internet Service Providers control the flow of traffic on their networks.

Rogers says that by December, 2012 the process will be complete and that as early as June, 2012 half of Rogers’ customers should see the changes in effect.

Senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, Kenneth Engelhart, said “going forward we will stop traffic shaping all together.” Adding, “we’re making some big investments this year to increase our capacity so that is enabling us to end traffic shaping.”

Steve Appleton, Micron CEO and chairman, died today at the age of 51 while piloting a small experimental plane near Boise Airport in Idaho. His plane crashed shortly after take-off Friday resulting in death of the head of the Idaho flash memory maker. Appleton, a former motor cross racer and professional pilot, has been Micron’s chairman and chief executive since 1994. Micron was founded in 1978 and has since become one of the leading manufactures of NAND, DRAM, SDRAM and NOR flash memory. Also SSD and CMOS senor chips.

Appleton was the sole person aboard the plane when it banked aggressively, stalled and rolled to the ground according to witnesses. Appleton radioed a request with air traffic controllers just minutes after taking off to return for landing. Zoe Keliher, an air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, confirmed it was the plane’s second attempt at take-off that morning.

“Our hearts go out to Appleton’s wife, Dalynn, his children, and his family during this tragic time,” the company said in a statement. “Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community, and the technology industry at large.”

In 1995, Appleton over saw the decision for a $1.3 billion computer-chip plant to be built in Lehi, Utah. Micron postponed the project only a year later due to a weakening market for flash memory chips. But in 2005 Intel and Micron entered into a $5 billion deal to finish the massive 2.3 million-square-foot plant that now manufactures some of the planet’s most advanced chips for digital devices. This joint venture between Intel and Micron resulted in the IM Flash Technologies plant which is now one of Utah’s biggest high-tech companies which employs nearly 1,600 people.

In a statement Micron’s board of directors said that, “Steve’s passion and energy left an indelible mark on Micron, the Idaho community and the technology industry at large.” After the announcement of Appleton’s death trading for the company’s stock has been temporarily halted.

This Thursday, search giant Google revealed their energy usage for the first time.

Google says that it emits 1.5m tonnes of carbon every year, but were fast to add that their data centers use 50% less energy than the industry average. The emissions numbers are just above the energy usage numbers of the entire country of Laos.

The company decided to reveal its energy usage numbers alongside its goals for the next few years. The company wants to get 35% of its energy from renewable sources by 2012.

Google has invested over $800 million in solar and wind energy sources, creating 1.7 gigawatts of renewable energy.

Newsweek’s Green Rankings looks at the five hundred largest publically traded U.S. based companies. Each company is given a total Green Score, and the Green Score is comprised of three sub scores. What are those sub scores? An Environmental Impact Score (EIS), a Green Policies Score (GPS) and a Reputation Survey Score (RSS). The Environmental Impact Score includes over seven hundred and fifty metrics and accounts for forty-five percent of the total score. The Green Policies Score also accounts for forty-five percent of the total, with ten percent going to the reputation survey (which is a survey of environmental officers, CEOs and academics).

Dell, the Austin computer company ranked as the greenest company of 2010 in the survey.
Not only was Dell number one, but they did it with a perfect 100.00 Green Score.

A Japanese research and development company called Eamex has state that they have discovered a method to increase the typical average life of a high-capacity lithium-ion battery. This claimed new technology will allow the demanding batteries to withstand over 10,000 recharges over the timespan of about 20 years.

This impressively huge increase in performance is made possible by a variety of techniques. A different stabilization process of the battery’s electrodes, which in-turn puts less stress on the battery’s tin, is cited as one of the methods that allows for this extended lifespan. The result is a battery that lasts up to 10 times as long as most current batteries.

Lawmakers in California have just introduced a new bill that would require electric utilities to provide grid-scale energy storage in their operations. The bill would call for a capacity of 2.25% of daytime peak demand by 2014 and 5% of peak demand by 2020.

A number of different technologies could be included to provide grid energy storage, including pumped storage hydro, compressed air storage, utility-scale batteries, and flywheel storage systems.

The hopes are that this will encourage utilities companies to promote efficiency measures and to encourage load shifting, in order to lower the amount of storage that would be required.

Despite a modest growing concern on the environmental impact of technology, gadgets don’t seem to be getting green enough, fast enough.

According to a recent report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) the issue of unrecycled electronics is getting worse and with a massive increase in the amount of electronic gadgets expected to be sold in the Africa, South America, China and India over the next decade, things are about to get infinitely worse.

Based on information obtained on 11 different developing nations, the following scenarios are expected to occur by 2020:

• South African, Chinese, and Indian electronic waste will increase over 2007 levels by 200, 400 and 500% respectively.

• The number of cell phones expected to hit landfills in China will multiply by 18 times.

• On a global scale, the amount of electronic waste is increasing each year by approximately 40 million tons.

If a study has ever given more cause to buy greener gadgets and to recycle electronics, I haven’t seen it.

While going green has a lot of momentum in various industries, what ultimately really matters for long-term change toward increased sustainability is where the money goes. If buying power demands green technology and green gadgets, that’s what we will see and at a much reduced price.

Sadly, a recent survey from Retrevo showed that consumers are still not very influenced by environmental factors when iu comes to their tech and gadget purchases.

When participants were asked whether they felt guilty when they bought an environmentally unfriendly gadget – 42% said ‘No.’ While 10% said ‘yes’ but that they usually strove to buy the greenest gadgets and another 16% never felt guilty because they always bought based on environmental factors.

The rest of the survey broke down into in between responses like 16% who said they carded but still only bought the gadget they liked the most and another 16% who said they felt no guilt because it all came down to price.

Coca-Cola Co. is becoming more environmentally aware by changing the refrigeration industry, replacing its conventional vending machines with a model that has less impact on the planet. Vending machines typically rely on a type of refrigerant known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a chemical 1,430 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

The proof that natural refrigerants work is our grandparents had refrigerators charged with ammonia, propane and carbon dioxide,” says Kert Davies, director of research for Greenpeace.

“We’re working with huge companies that are all working on solid alternatives to HFCs,” says Davies, naming Coca-Cola, Unilever and Pepsi-Co. “Coke prefers compressed carbon dioxide, although they also utilize hydrocarbons.”

More stimulus funding is going into green tech research, this time to the tune of $100M courtesy of the Department of Energy (DOE).

Last Week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, announced the additional funds stating, “This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries and new exports for America’s workers.”

The funds are being directed into three specific research categories including: thermodevices, energy storage and electrical power technology.