June 2007 Archives
Ready for some non-iPhone related news? Apple is no longer Greenpeace's worst tech offender. That dishonor now belongs to Sony.
...But the company has now moved ahead of Sony, LG Electronics, Panasonic and HP to tenth place on the 14-company Green Electronics Guide ranking. Nokia, Dell and Lenovo topped the list.
You may remember that Steve Jobs recently went on record about the company's stance on environmental matters, presumably due in no small part to Greenpeace's scathing campaign -- as scathing as it gets in the world of electronics, anyway. It turns out that the group was so harsh on Apple because they hold the company in such high esteem.
Greenpeace explained to vnunet.com that the group is especially vocal in regards to Apple because it sees the company as an industry leader capable of influencing other vendors to adopt better policies.
Now, how will Sony get out of this one?
Looking for an alternative to the flickering, cold and life-stealing glow of fluorescent tube lighting?
EverLED has the answer, but it will cost you $150 a pop to bask in the LED lighting goodness of these bulbs. EverLED TR's most obvious benefit, besides the 20 percent reduction in energy use, is a design that slots right into conventional ballasts. That's right, a no-nonsense drop-in replacement.
EverLED TR is lacking in mercury (Hg), lead (Pb) and phosphor powders, which are, of course, toxic and have no business polluting your life or water table. They are also made of sturdier stuff than glass so that shards do not rain on you during a tremor or an impromptu Riverdance performance in the office upstairs, and are expected to last approximately 10 years.
Here's hoping that increased production leads to lower prices. And fast since it would cost $900 to outfit the entire track above me.
[via EcoGeek]
How do you save the earth? By pouring millions into a new datacenter, of course! It seems that IBM just can't stop talking up its eco-friendly moves lately, but at least it's backing up its PR with action:
IBM’s mega million dollar datacenter expansion will take place at their existing Boulder Colorado facility. Expected to fulfill a commitment to a currently unknown $480 million client, this newly designed datacenter will boast a 75,000 square foot increase in area -- from approximately 225,000 square today -- to more than 300,000 square feet, making it one of IBM’s largest data centers.Some of the incentives to their company include a $700,000 "incentive funding" package offered by the great state of Colorado and the city of Boulder. Also, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade have awarded IBM with a $632,000 bonus to help get things started and they have agreed to work with IBM’s staff to institute a training program for the new data center. Additionally IBM will receive $100,000 rebate from Boulder’s Business Incentive Program, which oddly enough is due to be reassessed before the end of the year.
The point is that with incentives -- which are a drop in the bucket in this case -- companies can get a jump start on the process of building out their greener/cleaner IT infrastructures to the benefit of all. The rest of the article, written by our host site's mysterious staff, is here.
HP this week added power capping capabilities to its Insight Control management suite, allowing IT shops to better tune how much electricity is consumed by servers without necessarily sacrificing performance.
"Power capping has the effect of lowering the processors' speed by a few tenths of a gigahertz," Scott Farrand, HP's vice president of industry standard software, told internetnews.com.While that may not seem like a lot, the relationship between processor speed and power consumption is not linear. Further, a server's processors may be running at full speed but only need 30 percent of that speed to handle the applications it's running.
HP joins IBM in developing advanced power management tools for data centers. Can others be far behind?
The heat generated by the Earth's interior is partly responsible for keeping some big portions of the planet's crust, and hence most of us, above sea level.
That's the news out of the University of Utah where conventional thinking on the matter is being challenged.
"Researchers have failed to appreciate how heat makes rock in the continental crust and upper mantle expand to become less dense and more buoyant," said Derrick Hasterok, a graduate student in geology and geophysics.
What if this "heat engine" died? Only the tips of some of the tallest U.S mountain ranges would peek above the water. But there's no point in worrying about that for now.
Even if the planet's interior cooled, it would take billions of years for continents to sink. Coastal areas face a more immediate threat from global warming, which could raise sea levels and flood cities, he said.
Better to worry about surface temps, it looks like.
Homes and business are prime "greening" targets. Even automakers are starting to jump on the bandwagon and are trumpeting their strides. But what about the aerospace industry?
Aviation Week reports on how a newfound eco-consciousness came to the fore at this years Paris Air Show. And while cutting down on pollution is admirable goal shared among all involved, it's the economics behind such efforts that may sway the commercial airline industry.
Even the military is getting into the mix, albeit driven more by fuel-cost concerns than environmental considerations. The U.S. Air Force is building a financial case to convince U.S. airlines to embrace synthetic fuels. It hopes a larger user base would drive down costs. "Every $10 a barrel is essentially $600 million in my annual budget," says USAF Secretary Michael Wynne.Last year, the Air Force tested and qualified a 50-50 mix of jet and Fischer-Tropsch derived fuels for use on a B-52. Wynne says the next step will be qualifying the synthetic mix on the C-17, which is powered by the Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofans.
"The C-17 engine is a direct commercial derivative," Wynne said. "So that will allow our partners in flight--the airline companies if they so choose--to essentially use the data we compile to allow them to fly with synthetic fuels."
The article also goes into some of the engineering and design considerations -- which are, well, considerable -- that must be taken into account to keep future passengers aloft in a more fuel-efficient manner.
Carbon neutral in 18 months? That's the plan according to the Green the Capitol initiative.
Last year, the House of Representatives alone was responsible for 91,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. If they follow through with all the plans, they could cut their emissions by two-thirds, and would offset all the rest. They're putting a nice chuck [sic] of change behind the greening efforts -- $95,000 for the carbon offsets, $520,000 for renewable energy, and $2.75 million to update the power plant -- but I guess those figures pale in comparison to things like, say ... the defense budget.
True, a budget of those proportions may not seem like a lot compared to what's spent on defense, but it's nice to see the government lead by example. And the military is getting it's green on too, in its own way.
Rise of the machines? Forget Skynet; it starts like this.
Here, we generally look at how tech is being employed in novel ways to combat global warming, or at the very least, limit its impact on the environment. Not this time...
TreeHugger humorously spotlights a gadget that borders on hostile to the environment. Enter the Towel-Matic, an automatic paper towel dispenser but not like the ones in public restrooms. This contraption is meant to sit on your kitchen counter, waiting for you to wave your fingers in front of it so that it can feed a paper towel to your waiting hand at a glacial pace.
And you still have to tear it off!
Where to begin? First, there's the obvious fact that most anyone (even helper animals) can snatch off a sheet in NO TIME FLAT the old fashioned way without consuming power. Speaking of which, you can plug it in or pop in four D batteries. Yes, the very same that can pierce armor plating if you have a good enough throwing arm.
Fuming yet?
I'll quit ranting now and point you to YouTube-ified footage of the device in action. That's 42 seconds of your life you'll never get back.
Need to determine your carbon footprint? If you're in the UK, you're in luck. The government, specifically the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs along with other agencies and technology partners, cooked up the Act on CO2 Calculator to help individuals work out their carbon footprint.
A flash widget helps folks account for the carbon output of their homes, appliances and personal travel and spits out the results in "tonnes per year."
Though reachable from the US, the widget has a distinctly British flavor and caters to their standards accordingly. For instance, right off the bat you're asked where you live by entering a postal code, which for non-Americans is often a fun mix of number and letters (I used the example provided to put it through its paces).
For a calculator more suitable for US users, and a lot more concise to boot, hit up the one hosted by the site for "An Inconvenient Truth".
To date, Google has installed over 90 percent of the 9,212 panels that the search giant has planned for the Googleplex. Judging from the photo above, it looks like they're squeezing panels into just about every flat surface at their expansive Mountain View headquarters.
For those itching for some statistics, here it goes: Since June 18, 2007, the panels have generated 21,791 kilowatt hours and 9,904 in the last 24 hours, enough for just over 3,600 loads of laundry.
Understandably proud of their achievement, Google has put together a Solar Panel Project webpage where you can monitor just how much electricity the system is generating. According to the Google Finance-like interactive chart, power appears to peak at around noon-1:00 pm (Pacific).
Only 920 panels to go, give or take!
...moreso, Dogbert. Also, 6/18/2007 and 6/19/2007.
Go LOL yourself silly (or giggle quietly in your cube, drone).
[via TreeHugger]
Like me, you may have been wondering how this "pounds of carbon" business works. Certainly, there is some chemistry involved to determine that material is being ejected into our skies. After all, it would be kind of hard to miss little bricks of carbon flying out of tail pipes and smoke stacks.
So here's a pretty good piece from a year ago at TerraPass that explains "How to turn 6 pounds of gasoline into 20 pounds of carbon dioxide."
Short answer:When you burn something, it might feel like you’re turning it into lightness, air, nothingness. But what you’re really doing is simultaneously vaporizing it and chemically bonding it with oxygen in the air to make it much heavier than it was in solid form.
There, now you won't feel embarrassed when your friends are talking up carbon trading schemes at the next cocktail party, which, by the sound of it, is sure to be riveting.
In a car, you generally know that you have X number of miles to get yourself to a gas station before you wind up calling AAA. Some printers, on the other hand, have this tendency of just stopping dead in their tracks while there's still plenty of ink in reserve.
A new study commissioned by Epson (grain of salt time) confirms what many of us suspected; inkjet cartridges generally get tossed out when there is still plenty of ink left. It turns out that those cartridges are quite literally little black boxes that are keeping consumers in the dark.
And not only is it a waste of money, but it looks like good ink is getting tossed out in alarming quantities
They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's EasyShare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.
Gah! 64 percent wasted anything is just plain wrong.
[via Boing Boing]
You've surely heard those urban myths (?) where common foodstuffs and household chemicals are a molecule or two removed from toxic substances. The implication is that a mere chain of atoms stands between you and certain doom.
Well, here's some molecular tomfoolery that may help save the environment. Some enterprising Pacific Northwest National Laboratory chemists have devised a clean and efficient way of turning sugar into plastic. The goal is to tweak the process to also develop fuel in a manner that's more efficient than refining crude now. They warn, however, that this scenario is likely several years out...
The research could become the basis of a process that turns biomass such as trees, cornstalks and algae into feedstock for chemicals, plastics and fuels at roughly 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), which is a lot cooler than the 600 degrees C (1,112 degrees F) needed for oil refining or the high temperatures (as well as pressure) such oil must undergo when it is formed naturally.
Promising, but for now remember that pouring sugar into a gas tank is considered vandalism, not conservation.
Update: Ha! Turns out the sugar in the gas tank deal is an urban myth too! But it can cause problems for a car and it's still not a very nice thing to do.
Al Gore is making news again, besides the installation of solar panels on the roof of his Tennessee hobbit hole. Yes, he has some harsh words for the G8, calling the climate change "agreement" disgraceful.
"The eight most powerful nations gathered and were unable to do anything except to say 'We had good conversations and we agreed that we will have more conversations, and we will even have conversations about the possibility of doing something in the future on a voluntary basis perhaps.'"
Don't hold back, Al!
[via Hugg]
A couple of days ago, my colleague Alex Goldman generously left a special report on business and climate change from The Economist on my desk. Now I share one of the most interesting reads with you.
In "Fairfield v the valley", the magazine examines the different approaches to developing and bringing to market clean/green technologies. It follows the approaches of Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, a VC firm out of Menlo Park, California, and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, which is headquartered in Fairfield, CT. The piece concludes that Khosla's involvement is great during the incubation stage but ultimately it's a company of GE's scale that will reap the windfall of those innovations. Isn't that so often the case?
In "Trading thin air", carbon trading comes under the microscope and some fundamental shortcomings are exposed. Well worth the read. You can read more of the articles by going to the issue's homepage (on the right hand side, you may have to scroll a little). If you're short on time, just click the links below.
The Economist - Special report on business and climate change
Cleaning up
Everybody's green now
Trading thin air
Irrational incandescence
Fairfield v the valley
Sunlit uplands
Boom
Dirty king coal
The drive for low emissions
The final cut
Fascinating stuff...
From ComputerWorld UK comes this interesting nugget on data centers in the UK, naturally:
IT is responsible for up to 40% of a typical large UK enterprise’s carbon footprint. But 71% of businesses are largely ignoring an area right under their noses.
Tsk, tsk.
So much for that "OFF" button.
The Times is running a story on the power hogs in our homes and businesses (and at times one and the same), namely those appliances and devices that consume alarming amounts of power even when they're supposedly off or in low-power mode.
After poking around with his new Kill A Watt EZ energy meter, author Larry Magid was shocked to find out how much power his dormant electronics were consuming.
The more devices I checked, the worse it got. My TiVo digital video recorder was sucking down about 30 watts when it was not playing or recording a show. A Comcast digital cable set-top box made by Motorola that I tested was drawing about 40 watts. My DVD player was drawing 26 watts while idle, and my audio system — which I rarely turned off — was using 47 watts. This was in addition to the numerous power adapters and chargers, each drawing 1 or 2 watts, not to mention several other devices sipping energy to keep clocks running or to be ready to turn on at the push of a button.
He also offers tips on getting Windows XP's and Vista's wonky advanced power options to work as advertised.
Sure, it's old news to the enlightened but hurray for MSM nonetheless.
A tiny post, but packs a big punch. Use it in your next Incovenient-esque PowerPoint/Keynote presentation.
Energy costs – typically around 10% of an IT budget—could account for 50% of the average IT budget in just a few years. - Source: Businessweek.com: CEO Guide To Green Computing
Google and Intel, along with seemingly everyone in tech, today heralded the formation of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Yup, it's the millionth such announcement this month alone, but this one has the makings of a winner.
Everyone has been invited to this party and they accepted. The list of initial supporters includes Microsoft (rivals on board, a good sign), Dell, HP, IBM, AMD, Hitachi, EMC, Lenovo, Sun, MIT, One Laptop Per Child, Ubuntu, Starbucks (geeks LOVE coffee), the EPA, and the list goes on and on...
So what's the point? Listen (or read, rather) to what Urs Hölzle has to say:
Today, the average desktop PC wastes nearly half of its power, and the average server wastes one-third of its power," said Urs Hölzle, senior vice president, Operations & Google Fellow. "The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is setting a new 90 percent efficiency target for power supplies, which if achieved, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year -- and save more than $5.5 billion in energy costs.
See, there’s truth to stories of PCs doubling as space heaters!
By 2010, the companies involved hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking 11 million cars of the road or "shutting down 20 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants." You can read more about it here or head over to the Climate Savers site linked above.
The Manchester City Council plans to drastically reduce CO2 emissions and it's targeting the desktop PC. The goal of the Green Shift taskforce is to usher in machines that consume 98 percent less energy (no snickering). An ambitious goal, to say the least, but one way they plan on hitting that number smells of thin client computing.
To achieve this, applications will be shifted from the desktop PC, to more energy efficient data centres. As well as cutting the power requirements of the PC, the programme will also bid to make the 'green' desktop smaller. This should help the taskforce achieve its target of a 75 per cent reduction in the resources required to produce computers, the government believes.
At least the idea seems to have some momentum behind it. A pilot program is set for next year with widespread deployments to take place in '09.
Apple may be getting all the press by shipping swank new MacBook Pros with LED backlights and Intel's efficient Santa Rosa innards, but Dell isn't about to let its Zero Carbon Initiative go unnoticed.
The PC giant wants to be known as the greenest technology company by, in part, reducing the "carbon intensity of its global operations by 15 percent by 2012."
As a first step in reducing emissions, Dell recently completed a power-management pilot on the more than 50,000 computers on the company's internal network. The pilot resulted in the savings of about 13 million kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to preventing the emission of 8,500 tons of CO2 and saving $1.8 million annually. Dell said today it would also work to identify ways to help its corporate customers achieve similar energy savings.
Dell also wants the community to get involved and is soliciting ideas via its IdeaStorm site. And in a way of spreading its influence, the company will be leaning on suppliers to clean up their act.
Dell has requested that its primary suppliers begin reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data. Suppliers risk having their overall scores reduced during Dell quarterly business reviews for not identifying and publicly reporting GHG emissions. A supplier’s volume of Dell business can be affected by the scores earned on reviews. Dell will work with suppliers on emissions reduction strategies once data is collected.
You can catch more details in the announcement.
The IT community is getting plenty of green guidance from the Green Grid and an untold number of resources that have popped up in recent months (us included). But what about law firms?
Amy Joyce of The Washington Post writes about Jonathan Martel, an environmental lawyer that got his firm, Arnold & Porter, to curtail paper usage which is undoubtedly measured in tonnage.
At the District firm, which has about 600 employees, computers are set to print two-sided. And internal documents are sent via e-mail or intranet, saving about 350,000 sheets of paper a year."If you think of lawyers using one resource the most, it's probably paper," Martel said. He said estimates show each lawyer uses 25,000 to 100,000 pages a year.
His firm is now knee-deep in the Green Office Initiative Project, and with the help of the American Bar Association and the Environmental Protection Agency, which helped to develop the program, they have established a model for other firms to follow. The upside? According to Martel, it's morally correct, saves money and makes for great PR.
Well, it got the Washington Post to write up a story, so you can't argue with that.
Have you had a look at DSIRE? No, it's not Motorola's latest stab at trendy phones. It stands for Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiencies, which is run by North Carolina State University.
The handy site rounds up incentive programs at both the federal and state level. If you're wondering about net metering in your locale, or whether utilities and state governments will help out with a solar roof install, this is the place to go.
Just click on your state and go!
EcoIron explores Jan Chipchase's fascinating post on Informal Repair Cultures. If you're anything like me, the minute something goes wrong with your PC, laptop, cell phone, TV, iPod or [insert your favorite gadget here], you go out and buy a new one. Partly because it doesn't make financial sense to repair (cheaper to buy new) and because new stuff is just plain cooler.
But that's not how it works in some developing areas
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can our society learn from them? Maybe our collective tech snobbery will someday give way to an attitude that doesn't consider "refurbished" a dirty word. Now, about that planned obsolescence... <-- Warning, contentious Wikipedia link.
Remember when Hubble peered out into the universe and it was discovered that someone left their glasses at home? That was embarrassing...
Now it turns out that our eyes in the sky - at least when it comes to climate data - may soon go blind and it looks like their replacements won't be up to the task of providing a full picture.
Forbes is reporting on a confidential report prepared for the White House and obtained by the Associated Press that outlines how the Department of Defense (?!) is scaling back plans to launch climate monitoring satellites to replace those that will soon become space junk. Instead of three pairs of satellites for a total of six, the agency plans to launch just 4 satellites, blinding U.S. scientists to some of the most critical areas involved in charting climactic change.
The reduced system of four satellites will now focus on weather forecasting. Most of the climate instruments needed to collect more precise data over long periods are being eliminated.Instead, the Pentagon and two partners - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA - will rely on European satellites for most of the climate data.
Reeks of an evil conspiracy, right? Not so much. The satellite program, it turns out, has been plagued by technological glitches and cost overruns to the tune of roughly $13 billion, twice the original budget. That, and the program is behind schedule.
You just know Hubble is orbiting the Earth with a little extra smugness at hearing the news. And yes, I anthropomorphize my spacecraft, doesn't everyone?
On the bright side, NOAA recently sent news that its satellites are ready and waiting to help rescuers pinpoint distress signals. Hurray for soon-to-be-lost hikers and ocean goers! Spelunkers are outta luck though.
Every week, it seems, there's a new turn X into electricity story. This time around, it's waste heat but with an interesting-sounding twist.
University of Utah physics professor, Orest Symko, and his team of doctoral students have developed a two-stage technology that converts heat into sound and then uses that noise to drive piezoelectric devices that generate electricity.
US Army-funded project got off the ground because the military branch was looking for a way to utilize the waste heat from radar and making it a portable power source on the battlefield.
Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. The heat engines also could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat as their electronics grow more complex. And Symko foresees using the devices to generate electricity from heat that now is released from nuclear power plant cooling towers.
The technology may lead to worries about a different kind of unwanted emission: noise pollution. There's no need to fret. First, the process knocks the sound's volume down a few pegs. What's more, smaller devices can work on ultrasonic sounds we can't hear and finally, the tech can easily be encased in sound reduction materials.
Since there are no moving parts, the devices should be long-lived and easy to maintain.
Heat to sound to electricity... Possibilities abound.
[via Treehugger]
How's this for crazy science?
Technology Review has an article on the strange attraction some mushrooms have to Chernobyl, which went through a major meltdown two decades ago.
According to Ekaterina Dadachova and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City, the fungi Cryptococcus neoformans and two other species use melanin, also a pigment found in human skin, to transform radiation into energy to use as food for growth. Researchers believe that melanin is present to protect fungi from stress, such as radiation, and that certain species use this molecule for metabolic reactions. Dadachova's lab discovered that exposure to radiation caused the melanin in these species to change shape, increasing its ability to impact metabolism and growth.
The piece posits that it may usher in a new type of alternative fuel that cleans up after our nuclear messes. But don't get your hopes up on these shrooms. As some commenters on that site pointed out, just because the organisms consume radioactive particles doesn't mean that what emerges on the other side is free of radioactivity.
Party poopers.
[via EcoGeek]
Boy, that didn't take long.
Europe let out a collective yawn (and cockeyed glare) at Bush's direction over yesterday's global greenhouse gas reduction talk. Basically, they say they've heard it before and now's the time to prove it.
Why such rancor? Reuters tells us that the Bush announcement is being perceived as a play to torpedo European efforts, specifically German Chancellor Angela Merkel's plan to drastically reduce carbon output over the next several decades.
"One of the customs at G8 summits is that the other participants grant the host a success on their big issue," the Financial Times Deutschland said in an editorial."The fact that Bush has not kept to this is an affront, and he's made Merkel's defeat even worse," it said. In Britain the Guardian said "Bush kills off hopes for G8 climate change plan".
The silver lining? Some feel that America has finally seen the light and gone on record, which may pave the way for successful future international climate initiatives. Fingers crossed.
Here's a bulleted list of what Bush is proposing.