GreenTech Pastures

November 6th, 2009

Pre-Copenhagen climate talks end in Barcelona

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 2:12 pm

Categories: Blogroll, Europe, India, Kyoto Protocol, air pollution, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, federal government, global warming, law & politics, renewable energy

Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming, Harry Fuller, Copenhagen talks, Australia, Kevin Rudd

The talking is done. But not much else was done. “Stalemate” says an Indian pub. “Rich-poor stalemate” says a Britich paper.

On a pact to end deforestation in developing nations: “toothless” says Reuters.

And a pro-action Prime Minister in Australia vented his frustration on global warming inaction. He directly attacked global warming deniers as protectors of vested interests.

“They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests. Powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia, powerful enough to so far slow down the passage of legislation through the Congress of the United States. And ultimately, by limiting the ambition of national climate change commitments, they are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond.”

Those are the words of Aussie PM, Kevin Rudd. Now who could he have been talking about?

November 6th, 2009

Update on Chinese wallboard with a side order of sulphur

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 1:36 pm

Categories: Blogroll, China, air pollution, building, environmental health, housing, law & politics, research

Tags: chinese wallboard, toxic, sulphur, drywall, Hurricane Katrina, coal ash

Lawsuits. Post-pollution huffing and puffing. Perhaps a hundred thousand homes with sulphur exhaling wallboard. Questions of free trade vs. consumer protection. This one’s got a lot of fingers pointing in different directions.

Here’s a recent summary of some of what’s happened. I first blogged about this Chinese import issue back in March.

Here’s S 1606, a bill that would require overseas manufacturers to make products that meet American industrial regulations. It is NOT legal in the U.S. to use sulphur-bearing coal ash to make wallboard. That’s apparently what happend in the Chinese drywall. And we all know that China has mountains of coal ash. The Chinese drywall was imported across the Pacific after Hurricane Katrina because U.S. domestic production was suddenly not enough to meet demand. That meant it was profitable to ship wallboard thousands of miles to the southern U.S.

The problem is so widespread there’s a conference today in Sarasota. It’s devoted to sharing all the many investigations and test results tracking the wallboard and its possible toxic effects.

Some research indicates there is a chemical trail that is causing the problems with the imported wallboard. There is elemental sulfur in the wallboard. That reacts with tiny amounts of carbon monoxide in the air and that can produce carbonyl sulfide. In turn that reacts with moisture and produces hydrogen sulphide and even sulphuric acid. So the sulphur-bearing wallboard is particularly problematic in the humid U.S. Gulf Coast region.

An opposing theory about the sulphurous wallboard: blame some sulphur-fixing bacteria.

November 6th, 2009

Seeking a bright idea on light bulbs

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 1:24 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, conservation, energy, engineering, federal government, green tech, law & politics, research

Tags:

Often the lightbulb is used a cartoonist’s symbol for a bright idea. Right now the U.S. government is hoping for a bright idea on lightbulbs.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is running a contest, and to enter you need a thousand new-fangled light bulbs that are energy efficient. The DOE’s L-Prize got its first official entry from Philips. The Philips entry is an LED bulb and would work in the standard socket. The LED bulbs can be dimmable and run off direct current. They produce no heat, a major point of efficiency compared to incandescent that regularly convert large amounts of electricity into heat.

One rule: the inner gets $10 million but the bulbs then have to be manufactured in the United States.

Another rule, the winner has to be a bulb that will replace the omnipresent standard 60 watt incandescent bulb, largely unimproved in decades. Here is the DOE’s L-Prize website. The testing will take months because the bulbs will be turned on and left on for nine months.

November 6th, 2009

It's public versus private in dispute over electronics recycling laws

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 6:45 am

Categories: conservation, energy, green tech, recycling

Tags: New York City, Law, Electronics, E-waste, Heather Clancy

Need some time to reflect on this, because I am out at a conference and I’m seriously jet-lagged. But this one slipped under my radar before, and I think it bears watching because it will be a guidepost for technology and electronics recycling laws all over the country — many of which are supposed to kick in during 2010 or 2011.

The Electronics TakeBack Coalition, along with officials from 18 state and local governments, is publicly calling on the Consumer Electronics Association and the Information Technology Industry Council to withdraw a lawsuit they filed back in late July challenging the constitutionality of New York City’s e-waste recycling law. Here’s a link where you can find the legal papers.

Those opposing the suit claim that if voluntary programs run by manufacturers were more effective, there would not be a need for local laws and that the public sector should not be responsible for bearing the financial burden of responsible e-waste disposal. The short of it is that neither side wants to be left holding the bag.

Here’s a statement from Wisconsin State Senator Mark Miller, who sponsored the state’s new law passed two weeks ago:

“This lawsuit isn’t really about the New York City e-waste law. This is really about the rights of states and cities to say that the manufacturers of toxic products need to be responsible for their products when consumers are ready to discard them. The outcome of this case could impact producer responsibility laws in all of our states, on a whole host of products.”

Think it doesn’t matter to you? Maine was probably the earliest state to pass a law on this issue, but you should care if you’re a resident of Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Here’s the letter they’ve sent criticizing the suit.

Arguments in the New York City suit are supposed to start in early December. This time, I’ll be standing by.

November 6th, 2009

Nokia Siemens helps telcos get better handle on energy consumption

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 2:49 am

Categories: conservation, energy, green tech

Tags: Renewable Energy, Nokia Corp., Siemens AG, Telecommunications Company, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Heather Clancy

When you consider all the electricity that must go toward powering the world’s cellular and communications networks — up to 10 percent of the operational costs in a mature network apparently are related to power consumption — I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more coverage of technologies and business practices that could aid the telco industry’s green profile. ESPECIALLY considering just how mobile our world continues to become.

But Nokia Siemens Networks has embarked on a major initiative to position itself as offering the most complete set of solutions for improving energy efficiency among carriers.

The company’s Energy Solutions portfolio includes both technologies and services focused on the following:

• Energy Modernization (as in, when it’s appropriate and possible to use renewable energy sources)
• Off-Grid Site Solution
• Bad-Grid Site Solution
• Energy Efficiency Consulting
• Green Energy Control
• Energy OpEx Management

November 5th, 2009

Kerry-Boxer bill gets out of the (first) box

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:38 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, biofuel, cars & traffic, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, green tech, law & politics, petroleum

Tags:

The Kerry-Boxer bill got out of the first Senate committee to consider it, but it did so over the trampled bodies of Republicans who oppose it and boycotted the committee session.

There are other energy and greenhouse gas proposal swirling through the Senate, and those will be meshed with the Kerry-Boxer bill. I blogged earlier about the tri-partite effort to negotiate some energy legislation that could get enough votes to pass the Senate.

Even though the House passed a different energy bill last spring, today the Speaker of the House said the Senate bill can be meshed with the House’s earlier version.

November 5th, 2009

X-Prize competition for ultra-efficient car speeds ahead

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 12:02 pm

Categories: India, air pollution, building, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, green tech, law & politics, petroleum, renewable energy, research

Tags: West Philly, Tata, ZAP, Delta Motorsport, X-Prize, fuel efficiency

Ten million dollars will go to the team that has designed, builds and runs the best car with a minimum of 100 MPG rating. The X-prize folks have now narrowed the field to 53 designs submitted from across the globe. Among those making the cut: Tata Motors of India and engineering students at Cornell University. Of the car designs moving forward: 28 are in the Mainstream Class and 25 in the Alternative Class.

Here you can find a list of the teams in the final competition. American universities are Cornell and Western Washington. There is also one public high entered: West Philly. Read about them here.

The only car makers I recognize on the list: Tata and ZAP. Tesla did not make the cut. Ooops. None of the big guys dare put their engineering to this test. Honda, Mercedes, GM, Toyota–nope.

One team is entering a Toyota chasis. They promise a “steam combustion” engine in a Prius! The two areas of concentration seem to be: highly efficient energy use, of course, and then very light materials in the vehicle itself.

Britain’s Delta Motorsport is building an electric car with a small hydrogen fuel celland small back-up internalcombustion engine.
Delta Motorsport’s X-Prize entry.

The X-Prize Foundation recently got $5.5 billion from the federal government for this clean car competition.
“Our clean energy future depends on our ability to design and commercialize new highly-efficient vehicles that are cost-effective for consumers and use significantly less energy,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “This funding will support cutting-edge, American innovation that can help us fundamentally transform personal transportation and address the global climate crisis.”

Here’s what the X-Prize folks have to say about their own mission: “The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. In 2004, the Foundation captured world headlines when Burt Rutan, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE.”

For the fifty-three competing vehicles performance testing will begin in spring 2010 and winners will be announced in September 2010. Exact dates and locations will be announced shortly. This could be fun to watch.

November 5th, 2009

Happy hardware: tech lobbyist brings home the bacon

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:16 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, geothermal, green tech, housing, law & politics, renewable energy, research

Tags: National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Hardware, Research & Development, Telecom & Utilities, Business Operations, Harry Fuller, HR 3183, electricity, smart grid

Not everybody in Washington these days is growling angry. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) announced today that President Obama signed into law some NEMA-advocated funding as part of the Fiscal Year 2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill.

NEMA has lobbied Congress to increase funding for federal agencies, departments, and programs that are important to NEMA companies. These increased funding amounts include:

· $2.24 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, including $200 million for the Building Technologies Program, a 43 percent increase
· $32 million for the Federal Energy Management Program, a 45 percent increase
· $125 million for the research and development for Smart Grid, energy storage, and clean energy transmission and reliability technologies
· $27 million for solid state lighting, a $2 million increase.

Beyond electricity there is money in this bill for a variety of green-related businesses:carbon capture, geothermal development, even money for the autmotive X-prize. Here’s an early blog on the X-prize auto competition.

This money is a small part of the total $33.5 billion fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill. The money is administered by several agencies: Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others.

According to NEMA President and CEO Evan R. Gaddis, the funding is in addition to the economic stimulus package. NEMA describes itself as “associaton of electrical and medical imaging manufacturers.” Members include ABB, Bosch, DuPont, Duracell, eight units of GE, Formica, Kodak Batteries, Mitsubishi, National Semiconductor, Panasonic, eight units of Phillips, three units of Siemens, Sumitomo, Toshiba. In addition dozens of cable, wire, insulator and electrical hardware folks are members. These are companies expecting to thrive with the greening of the American energy industry and smartening up the grid.

November 5th, 2009

HP: How about your own personal smart grid for your data center?

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 3:50 am

Categories: conservation, energy, engineering, green tech

Tags: Data Center, Hewlett-Packard Co., Grid, Data Centers, Storage, Hardware, Data Management, Heather Clancy

As part of its new HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture, Hewlett-Packard is touting a real-time energy-efficiency policy that it calls the HP Data Center Smart Grid.

Essentially, the philosophy combines the features of several different HP energy management products, including HP Environmental Edge, which I wrote about separately just yesterday, as well as HP Insight Control. Taken together, these and other products in the company’s data center portfolio will let you collect, monitor and communicate power and cooling metrics across your infrastructure in real time. The goal is to help businesses reduce operating costs, help data center operators optimize facilities layouts and investments, and improve reliability. The technology has the added benefit of allowing you to create all sorts of reports that you can serve up to the boardroom types who are concerned about Green IT or sustainability measures.

There are a couple of new features associated with the individual tools. For example, Environmental Edge has been updated to allow you to track thermal activity over time, so you can do better trending. HP Insight Control, meanwhile, has been updated to include a feature called Data Center Power Control. This is actually IS like something you’d find in the electricity grid: basically, it helps make sure that power allocation stays steady during peak energy usage or in periods of electricity brown-outs. Basically, you can prioritize consumption levels based on policies or on the priority of particular server workloads.

Here’s the site where you can learn more about the individual components of the HP Smart Grid approach.

And, oh my goodness, they’ve actually included some pricing details. HP Environmental Edge starts at about $10 per square foot of data center space or $350 per rack. HP Insight Control Data Center Power Control starts at $549.

November 5th, 2009

Another advance in energy-efficient monitors from NEC

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 3:25 am

Categories: conservation, energy, engineering, green tech

Tags: Monitor, NEC Corp., ECO Mode, List Price, Monitors & Displays, Hardware, Components, Heather Clancy

NEC Display Solutions of America (hmmm, when did a monitor become a “solution”?) has added the Windows 7-ready, 17-inch MultiSync LCD175M to its line-up of monitors that feature ECO Mode.

ECO Mode allows you keep track of how certain power and usage setting will affect the carbon emissions that are being diverted by using the monitor. It also lets you toggle between two different energy saving modes. The company figures that this latest model uses up to 42 percent less electricity than others that came before it. It also contains less mercury.

The product complies with Energy Star 5.0, EPEAT Gold and the TCO 5.0 certifications.

Because I know you’re not going to buy this thing “just because,” a couple of important feature notes for the LCD175M include a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time, 1280×1024 high-definition resolution and height-adjust and tilt capabilities. Here’s the full press release in case I missed some of the details. The list price is $179.