Aggressive steps in the west towards renewable energy future

The time seems has come for the western world to make investments in renewable energy sector. The below story from Bloomberg portrays the picture of the aggressive investment , the west make in Renewable energy sector. As United States left with no plans to proceed, the Europeans seems taking the lead on this sector.

From bloomberg by Stefan Nicola

Not since the allies leveled Germany in World War II has Europe’s biggest economy undertaken a reconstruction of its energy market on this scale.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to build offshore wind farms that will cover an area six times the size of New York City and erect power lines that could stretch from London to Baghdad. The program will cost 200 billion euros ($263 billion), about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011, according to the DIW economic institute in Berlin.

Vestas Wind Systems A/S. is the largest maker of wind turbines. Photographer: Ken James/Bloomberg

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg

Germany aims to replace 17 nuclear reactors that supplied about a fifth of its electricity with renewables such as solar and wind. Merkel to succeed must experiment with untested systems and policies and overcome technical hurdles threatening the project, said Stephan Reimelt, chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE)’s energy unit in the country.

Utilities running gas-generating plants in Germany lost 10.92 euros a megawatt-hour today at 12:16 p.m. local time, based on so-called clean-spark spreads for the next month that take account of gas, power and emissions prices. That compared with a profit of 20.95 euros in October 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.K. generators earned 2.06 pounds ($3.27), down from a profit of 7.02 pounds in October.

“Germany is like a big energy laboratory,” Reimelt said in an interview. “The country has a political and societal consensus to drop nuclear power but lacks a clear technological solution.”

Already, the program is expanding markets for Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP), the world’s biggest solar panel maker, and Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS)., the largest maker of wind turbines. It’s hurting utilities from RWE AG (RWE) to EON AG (EOAN), which have stepped up cost-cutting to curb losses from closing nuclear stations early.

Bloomberg Conference

Technology officers from Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), IBM Corp. (IBM) and BP Plc (BP/) will discuss innovations that are spurring renewable energy businesses on a panel at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York today.

“The German energy transformation is as challenging as the first moon landing,” said Peter Terium, who in July takes over as chief executive officer of RWE, Germany’s second-largest utility. “It’s a huge challenge we’ll be able to master only if everyone works together.”

Germany is among the first nations to grapple with a global need to upgrade power stations. By 2035, at least $10 trillion of investment is needed to add 5,900 gigawatts of generation worldwide, more than five times the capacity of all U.S. utilities, the International Energy Agency estimates. Half of that will come from renewable. A gigawatt is about enough to supply 800,000 homes in the U.S. and a bit less than the capacity of a nuclear reactor.

‘Be a Disaster’

“If Germany succeeds, it could be a role model for economies all over the world,” said Claudia Kemfert, DIW’s senior energy expert. “If it fails, it will be a disaster for Germany’s politicians, society and economy.”

Germany’s efforts in the industry are sending shocks through European power markets. When it’s windy and sunny, turbines and solar cells flood the grid with electricity, undermining the economics of natural-gas fired generators, since clean energy has supply priority over fossil fuels.

Utilities running gas generating plants in Germany lost 10.92 euros a megawatt-hour today at 12:16 p.m. local time, based on so-called clean-spark spreads for the next month that take account of gas, power and emissions prices. That compared with a profit of 20.95 euros in October 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.K. generators earned 2.06 pounds ($3.27), down from a profit of 7.02 pounds in October.

Statkraft SF, a Norwegian power generator, said last month it’s shutting a gas-fired plant in the German city of Emden near the Dutch border because prices are so low. A biomass plant at the same site will keep working, the Oslo-based utility said.

‘Negative Margin’

“The picture for last year, the year before and the next two to three years is so negative that we see a negative margin going forward,” Asbjoern Grundt, a Statkraft executive vice president for markets operations, said in reference to his utility’s gas plants.

Norbert Roettgen, the 46-year-old lawyer who is Merkel’s environment minister and protege, is managing the transition and aims for the nation to generate at least 35 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, up from 20 percent last year.

Roettgen seeks 25,000 megawatts of power generated by wind farms in the North Sea andBaltic Sea by 2030, about the same as 25 nuclear power stations. About 200 megawatts of offshore wind plants are working now.

Scale of Shift

That will require 5,000 turbines, each standing taller than Big Ben and taking up 247 acres of sea each, on average. Combined, their footprint would cover 1,931 square miles (5,000 square kilometers), compared with the 305 square miles comprising New York’s five boroughs.

In January, German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler estimated grid operators would have to add or upgrade 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) of high-voltage power lines to connect the turbines with the national electric grid. Operators also must modernize their systems to integrate fluctuating supplies from renewable with the steady output that comes from coal and nuclear stations.

“The energy transformation is the biggest modernization and infrastructure project in the coming decade,” Roettgen said in a televised speech on March 11. “Whether other countries follow our model will depend on whether we succeed.”

Others are making similar pledges, and Germany’s only ranks fifth in Europe in terms of ambition. Sweden, Austria, Spain, Slovenia, each of which have richer hydro-electric resources, are promising a bigger share than Germany for renewable by 2020. The U.S. has no federal mandate on renewable. Japan, also phasing out nuclear power, will announce policies to accomplish the goal in the next few months.

‘Open-Heart Surgery’

“The energy transformation is open-heart surgery,” Hannelore Kraft, state prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, said Dec. 20 in Essen. “We need a master plan and careful monitoring so this operation can succeed.”

After lobbying against clean-energy subsidies for years, utilities are gearing up to make money from the industry. EON, the country’s biggest operator of nuclear power stations, plans to invest 7 billion euros in renewable energy projects in the next five years. That includes 1 billion euros on the Amrumbank West wind farm in the German North Sea, a project that Siemens AG (SIE)will supply with 80 of its turbines.

“We don’t do this because we think it’s nice, but because we believe we can be successful,” Johannes Teyssen, EON’s chief executive officer, said Dec. 20 in Essen. The German energy experiment, Teyssen said, is “a task that will occupy an entire generation.”

Hurdles to Clear

Roettgen faces difficulty on a number of fronts in achieving his targets:

– Delays in connecting offshore wind turbines to the grid are threatening the government’s aim to have 10 gigawatts installed by 2020, according to RWE and EON, which say slow permitting and the short supply of cables and transformer stations are to blame.

– German solar manufactures including Solarworld AG (SWV), Q- Cells SE (QCE) andConergy AG (CGYK) are struggling to finance their operations after competition from Chinese companies led by Suntech depressed margins and panel prices. Solon SE (SOO1) and Solar Millennium AG (S2M) are in bankruptcy proceedings.

– Output from solar panels and wind turbines is highly unpredictable, which strains the stability of the power grid and has forced utilities to pay renewable generators to shut off supplies on some days. Last month, the Czech government complained it was close to a blackout because wind farms in northern Germany overloaded the grid.

Mixed Messages

Merkel herself is raising questions about how quickly companies should push into the new business, slashing subsidies for solar energy. A record 7.5 gigawatts of solar capacity was installed last year, more than double the government’s target for this year. Her government plans to cut rates for solar power by as much as 29 percent from April 1 and make further reductions each month beginning in May.

“We’re very concerned by the government’s recent steps on solar energy,” said Eicke Weber, the head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, a Freiburg-based institute researching renewable energy technologies. “They look like an about-face.”

Germany’s advantage is it was the first major economy to provide incentives for clean energy, offering a feed-in tariff guaranteeing above-market prices for solar power starting in 2004. That made it the world’s biggest market for solar panels when it comes to total capacity and an innovator in other technologies from wind to building materials.

Germany’s Edge

Already, Germany has built the world’s biggest renewable generation complex, with 53.8 gigawatts of wind and solar generators at the end of last year. Italy last year added a record 9 gigawatts of solar panels, overtaking Germany for the first time. The U.K. plans 18 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2020, up from 1,500 megawatts now.

Some of Germany’s biggest companies are entering the renewables business and backing the innovations needed to make expand the scale of the industry.

Robert Bosch GmbH (RBOS), the world’s biggest car parts supplier based in Stuttgart, has invested about 1.5 billion euros into its solar energy business by purchasing companies and building new plants. Hochtief AG (HOT), Germany’s biggest builder, has commissioned four heavy-duty ships to erect wind farms at sea including the 200 million euro “Innovation.”

Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Audi luxury car division plans to build a plant that uses water and carbon dioxide to convert electricity into natural gas, backed by 5 million euros of investment from EON in a pilot plant based on a similar technology.

“This energy transformation is about innovation,” Roesler, the German economy minister, said in Stuttgart in January. “If we do it right, there will be many chances for economic growth.

An article by the Bloomberg.com

FRP composites in Civil Infrastructure – Series 1

Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are an emerging new technologies find its way to replace steel and other corrosive material in civil infrastructure as FRP material demonstrates excellent durability compared to steel. The main intension of this article is to disseminate the knowledge in this area. The article will have three main series and several sub sections as it will be discussed in wide array of occasions where FRP is widely used.

Courtesy: Shinsung Basic Materials, Korea

The problem

Concrete considered one of the most durable material man to invent. However, the corrosion of steel in reinforced concrete often raise concerns over the durability of concrete structures. Structures exposed to corrosive conditions such as roads and highways, coastal structures, underground structural elements and water retaining structures requires frequent repair and maintenance due to corrosion damages.

Repair and maintenance of steel reinforced concrete structures is an additional expense which results in huge burden on the authorities which maintain those structures. In the United Kingdom, repair cost due of concrete infrastructure exceeds £500 million/year (Broomfield et al. 2002) and much higher in the United States and Canada (Bedard 1992). Even sometimes the repair and maintenance costs have exceeded the original cost of the bridges. Due to these concerns, there were considerations either to protect steel from corrosion or replace it with non corrosive materials.

Better quality concrete, steel protection methods such as epoxy coating, galvanizing have been practiced in the last decades in an effort to prevent the corrosion in steel reinforced structures (Clarke 1999). However, the efficiency of these methods raised concerns when corrosion was detected on epoxy coated steel reinforcement (Keesler & Powers 1988).

Less is more if we want to be sustainable with concrete: Guardian.co.uk

Using concrete wisely, and sparingly, will increase the sustainability of our roads, buildings and bridges

Leon Kaye for the Guardian Professional Network

Cement is to our buildings as corn is to our food supply. Just as corn is an ingredient in countless food products, cement is a building block for much of what is around us: our roads, our buildings, and our bridges. And, as with corn, plenty of cement substitutes promise to make our environment cleaner. But swapping conventional cement for “greener” equivalents is proving to be a tough challenge.

While many companies tout a more sustainable product than the limestone-based cement that dates back to the ancient Macedonians, cement in its current form is here to stay. One reason is logistics – most of us live within 20 miles of a cement plant, which means any drastic change will involve an overhaul of infrastructure, not to mention the massive education that will be required to retrain everyone from truck haulers to civil engineers. As more buildings rise while others are remodelled, the key to sustainable development will be the smart use of this material.

Efficiency and design has a prominent role in developing smarter cement and concrete structures. Less promising are the expectations of cement alternatives that perform well in a laboratory, but not in the concrete jungles of Seoul, Sao Paulo, and Los Angeles. Efficient design can help reduce the cement industry’s global impact, which contributes about five percent of the globe’s total carbon emissions. And yet cement and concrete are materials that offer durability and thermal properties, and can reduce energy and water waste throughout the places in which we live and work.

The holy grail of sustainable cement is for the material to be carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. Novacem is one company that promises a more viable alternative to conventional portland cement. The UK-based firm’s product has a base of magnesium oxide and magnesium silicates (ie talc). The cement only needs be heated to a lower temperature than conventional cement, which is why Novacem touts its product as a carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative process. Novacem stands behind its twenty years of research and has won a bevy of awards – but its product and those of other companies have yet to scale.

According to Peter Taylor of the National Concrete Pavement Technology Centre, smarter design and usage would be a more effective solution. Taylor and other engineering professionals with whom I spoke suggested that cement and concrete will never be truly sustainable.

The question to ask is: can we make cement better?

Fly ash is one material that could contribute to greener concrete. The byproduct of coal combustion could replace up to 30% of limestone-based portland cement. Taylor, however, points out that the conservative nature of engineers lends them to stick with construction practices that have been in place for decades. But even small reductions in portland cement can reduce concrete’s CO2 impact. One example is the reconstructed Interstate-35 bridge in Minneapolis, which used a base of only 15% portland cement. The 30-foot tall sculptures that grace both sides of the bridge also contain a cement with photocatalytic qualities that remove carbon monoxide and other pollutants from the atmosphere.

The concrete industry is listening and focusing on both sustainability and resilience, according to Kevin Mlutkowski, the American Concrete Institute’s sustainability director. Mlutkowski explained that enhanced durability will be the key for the concrete industry to meet increased building demands without compromising the environment.

What architects, designers, and consumers all must do is to start looking at cement and concrete as valuable resources. Recycling concrete into kitchen countertops, instead of slicing granite out of mountains and quarries, is just one small example. Encouraging architectural features that repurpose concrete, instead of energy-intensive processes that involve pulverising and firing it, are another idea. New approaches, and an emphasis on smart use, reuse, and design, can burnish concrete’s reputation as a sustainable, not polluting, material.

Leon Kaye is founder and editor of GreenGoPost.com

Why Google should start a publishing service for academic and technical journals!

Few days ago, there was an article on Guardian (David Colquhoun, 2011) reporting academic publishing and the way the publishing companies operate. Well, finally few were strong enough to stand up for it.

More often, the research and development in science aimed for dissemination of your findings to the rest of the world and every researcher expects it to be utilized someway or other anywhere in the world. There his work gets a fulfillment. Nevertheless, the way publishers operate and restrict the access lead the work to be contained within a circle. The way this operate is quiet a complex formula.

The first loop of this complex formula starts with Universities and funding bodies who expect their research to be published in a reputed journal. Well, they have to revise whether they need reputation or dissemination of the knowledge to a greater audience. It is very important to understand that any new technology or development should not have any restriction on further development. If happens, it cannot be a pure academical/human factor advancement. As once Bill Gates mentioned, “if the other technologies are so open as software industry, the you can see miracle in every sector of the world”. So this gives a flavour that how important is knowledge for technological advancement and greater socioeconomic development of the human race.

When it comes to technical or scientific journal, the researchers and professionals approach Google to find out those unless otherwise they explicitly have an idea about the source. In such a situation, what if Google itself owns the publishing business. They of-course know how to generate business  while keeping the source free for users.

In this perspective, I strongly believe that the Google’s entry into publishing business by acquiring a big publishing house will break all the barriers that scientists and professionals face while getting the access to journals and articles in respected streams.

Reference:

David Colquhoun, 2011, “Publish-or-perish: Peer review and the corruption of science”, Guardian.co.uk

IBM at 100: A BBC Document

How concrete pavement can save fuel?

Brits bin enough food to feed 19m people – Greenlife

Brits cook enough extra food at dinnertime to feed at least an extra 19 million mouths. 39% of us admit to cooking enough extra food to feed at least one other person and 36% suffer from ‘waste worry’ over the amount of food they waste each week. With a food wastage bill of £10billion per year, perhaps that figure should be a little higher. In its quest to get people to ‘Plan It for the Planet’, research by the online grocer Ocado into waste awareness shows 1 in 3 bags of shopping go straight in the bin, and the most concerning thing is the majority of it goes completely untouched. One man who knows a lot about reducing waste is Arthur Potts Dawson who launched eco-friendly restaurant ‘Acorn House.’ In this exciting new video he explains how running a household isn’t that different from running a business and offers his top tips on keeping food waste to a minimum. For more information visit www.ocado.com[/a] [a]www.youtube.com/ocadoFWAW

http://greenlife.thediyshop.info/home-garden/brits-bin-enough-food-to-feed-19m-people/

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

The Cloud, London

Cloud technology is fast becoming the method of choice for users that want to access all their information where-ever they are in the world… but an actual ‘Digital Cloud’ is being pondered to be a centre piece of the city’s Olympic village.

The Cloud would ‘float’ over London’s skyline and would be made up of 120m towers holding a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that would display images and data. It would also be used as an observation deck as well as a park

The unique structure has come from the minds of an international team of architects, artists and engineers and due to its ‘flexible nature’, the design team are planning to raise funds for the scheme by asking for micro-donations from millions of people.

“It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.
“We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”
Depending on the amount of contributions, the Cloud’s size could vary greatly. The concept photos released by the design team show a sprawling sight, but if the structure is completely dependant on the public, then it will be of crucial importance to convince the country that the structure is not another Millennium Dome.

Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York who has seen the design described it as a “sculptural spectacle” and “a celebration of technology”.

Championed by the Mayor

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said he is committed to building a tourist attraction in the Olympic Park “with a legacy for the east end [of London]” and thus far, The Cloud is in the short list. Despite no decision yet being reached, the Cloud’s team have decided to release details, no doubt in a bid to drum up debate and attention to their decided.

The Cloud’s team includes writer Umberto Eco and engineers from Arup and draws on work by artist Tomas Saraceno, a German-based designer who has previously shown off huge inflatable sculptures. Online giant Google have also shown support for the scheme and would provide much of the technology inside it such as the information feeds.

“We could provide a custom feed of…searches made by Londoners during the Olympics to give a real time ‘barometer’ of the city’s interests and mood,” the company said.

This combination of ‘real time’ information and art, be projected onto plastic sphere made from Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), the material used to build the Beijing Aquatic Centre. Whilst some would act as structural elements, LCD screens would be put in others to display the information. Other spheres would be habitable and even be filled with plants to become ‘high rise parks’.

Ramps, stairs and lifts would carry people to the top of the structure to look out over the city, and the design team believes the structure could be so popular that it could become a major hub for people wanting to find out the latest results or to watch The Games.

Environment impact

In keeping with the Olympic Committee’s desire to make the 2012 Olympics a ‘green Olympics’, The Cloud will also be a ‘harvesting effort’. According to Alex Haw, digital design for the project, “people can choose to ascend The Cloud on foot or bicycle; the energy that it would take to descend the Cloud is converted, on the way down, into electricity through elevators with regenerative breaking, similar to those that are present in hybrid cars.”

“The people’s energy coupled with solar energy collected through on-site and off-site photovoltaic cells and various energy saving strategies will allow us to reach carbon neutrality, whereby the Cloud produces all the energy it uses.”

With the power used, the spheres would also light up at night creating a spatial, 3D informational display over the skies of London.

The towers that would support the spheres would be similar to those used in Japanese skyscrapers to resist earthquakes, would prevent the towers being buffeted by the wind.

Now it’s up to the Mayor of London to pick the green-light the scheme and the public to support it. Google has already offered to provide free advertising for the so-called “cloud-raising” effort and have offered a sponsored link at the top of the page advertising a “£1 for 1 pixel” concept to people who search for terms relevant to London 2012.

But what do you think? Inspirational or simply another eye sore in the capital?

If you want to find out more about The Cloud and give money, go to http://raisethecloud.org. Think it’s crazy? Comment below.

 

The Cloud, London.

The law of the land

In a global economy, e-discovery is far from a purely technical issue. Alison Brecher untangles the legal complexities.

“Communication technologies that have fostered our global economy can wreak havoc when it comes to litigation”
-Alison Brecher, Marsh & McLennan

An email can travel just as quickly from New York to Miami as it can from New York to Paris. Yet, these communication technologies that have fostered our global economy can wreak havoc when it comes to litigation. That’s because data protection laws in some countries prohibit the transfer of certain data to the United States.

Take the following not-so-hypothetical situation and it is easy to understand why companies that have not yet encountered the issue will likely do so soon. An employee of Megacorp, a financial services company based in Germany, relocates to Megacorp’s New York office. He then sues Megacorp in the Southern District of New York alleging that he was discriminated against on the basis of his country of origin. Megacorp, in order to defend the action, wants to obtain emails from the plaintiff’s supervisor and co-workers who are based in Germany and other EU member states and the plaintiff’s performance reviews which are stored on servers located outside of London.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure clearly requires parties to preserve the performance reviews, email and compensation, but the law in some other countries is equally clear that preserving or collecting that data and transferring it to the United States  – even if used solely to defend the litigation – may violate international data protection laws. These laws impose financial and, in some instances, criminal sanctions for transporting certain data to the United States.

Unfortunately, the relatively few published opinions are of little assistance in navigating between this rock and a hard place. Some courts found that data must be produced in the litigation notwithstanding the international laws (in one reported decision, the court ordered the production even though the French statute at issue allowed for the imposition of criminal sanctions) and other courts ruling that the conflicting international law presents an undue burden so as to relieve the party of having to produce the data. Generally, courts invoke a balancing test to determine the reasonableness of compelling foreign discovery by considering several factors such as the importance of the data to the litigation, whether alternative means exist to obtain the information, and the hardship of compliance.

Rather than risk being compelled to produce foreign data in the US in violation of international law, counsel has a few options. If the organization is regulated by the United States Department of Commerce, it can get certified pursuant to the Department’s Safe Harbor program which examines whether the organization has adequate safeguards to transport foreign data securely to the United States.

Financial services companies are generally not regulated by the Department of Commerce, but other alternatives are available. Data protection laws in some countries allow data to be processed and transported to the United States when consent has been obtained from the individual whose data is sought. Obtaining the consent can be tricky. Each country usually has slightly different laws or interpretations of them, so consider retaining local counsel for advice on how to draft a proper consent form. Local law may also require notice to the individual and regulatory authority about the data collection. In some countries there is considerable debate about whether consent can ever be freely given when the request is made by the individual’s employer. As a practical matter, it is usually best to involve the individuals whose data could be subject to production in the United States as early in the litigation as possible to allow them time to consider how to respond to the request for consent. Also, consider contacting the international regulator. The European Commission recently developed a series of model contracts that allow for the transport of data to the United States for use in litigation.

Even after figuring out a way to navigate the legal conflict between international privacy laws and document preservations obligations, there are additional logistical issues. First, since the documents may be in one or more languages, your selection of an e-discovery vendor could be affected. Many software tools and vendors only support documents using ASCII, which does not recognize special characters of some languages. Instead, look for a vendor or software that supports Unicode. Unicode recognizes more than one million possible characters and easily accommodates symbol-based languages like Hebrew and Japanese. Also, some languages like Japanese and Thai do not have spaces between words. The vendor should be capable of reading not just the characters, but also the context of foreign languages.

Then there is the logistical issue of translating the documents into English and converting them into a standard format that can searched using the attorney’s preferred review tool. In general, translating documents is expensive and the strategy is usually to limit the number of documents that has to be manually translated. To that end, counsel can use software to automate the translation of documents during the first pass review stage; the software will produce a far less than perfect translation, but one that is adequate enough to identify which documents are privileged or relevant so as to be reviewed further.

Keeping track of relevant metadata is especially important in international data collections. Certain characters in other languages may not function properly on a US-based operating system. For instance, emails in HTML cannot always be viewed accurately. Consider sending your e-discovery vendor a sample set of data in multiple languages so that any glitches can be identified and resolved as soon as possible. The time lost will be more than made up for in speedier review.

International e-discovery presents a host of issues. It is best to raise all of them during the Rule 16 conference. Even the smallest detail can cause major (and expensive) disputes later on in the litigation.

Counting the costs

Alison Brecher is experienced commercial litigation attorney, having served as lead counsel in over 35 bench and jury trials and taken/defended hundreds of fact and expert witness depositions. She joined Marsh & McLennan, a Fortune 200 financial services company, in 2002. Brecher was one of the first in-house counsel in the country promoted to manage electronic discovery activities. Since 2006, she has managed all aspects of MMC’s e-discovery for litigation and investigations involving more than 50,000 employees in over 100 countries. In partnership with our IT and other business functions, I developed and implemented global corporate policies and procedures around new technologies, including voicemail, instant messaging, VOIP, unified messaging, e-mail retention, data privacy, and related compliance issues.

Courtesy : http://www.usfst.com/article/The-law-of-the-land/