August 31st, 2009

Carbon calculator as value-added service: Consider the case of Sabre

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 12:49 pm

Categories: air pollution, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, global warming, green tech

Tags: Sabre Holdings, Carbon, Product Marketing, Marketing Research, Marketing, Heather Clancy

Many businesses are using carbon footprint calculators to track the environmental impact of some or all of their operations, notably travel. But what exactly can a company do with this sort of data?

Travel management and services company Sabre, which is using sophisticated calculators developed using datawarehousing technology from Teradata offers an example of how this sort of technology could increasingly become the basis of budget trending information as well as value-added services that could conceivably generate new revenue streams.

There are currently four different kind of carbon dioxide reports that Sabre can create, including those tracking the impact of travel, car travel and hotel stays. The information is provided in terms of total volume of carbon emissions attributable to the activity. Here’s a really detailed story from a green travel information site that provides additional commentary about the foundation of Sabre’s calculator technology, which is considered to be fairly advanced.

Derek Parks, product marketing manager for Sabre’s carbon calculator product, says his company opted to use international standards information to create its own calculation engine in-house instead of using others it could have licensed, because it had the data available in its Teradata software to create what the company considered to be a strong offering.

Since its creation about 18 months ago, the reporting application has been rolled into the company’s Traveler Security and Data suite offering. Today, Parks says it allows travel agencies to pull information about the carbon impact of travel for clients and businesses that might want to consider this data as an element of a travel decision. Indeed, he says some businesses are studying whether to make carbon impact a routine part of the travel approval process. In theory, it could be possible to compare the carbon impact of different flight routes, or even different airlines, depending on the sort of equipment they use. This is MY theorizing, not Parks, but can’t you just hear the gears grinding?

The calculator information can be queried using a Cognos business intelligence application. Aside from pulling very tactical information, Parks says the software can roll up trending information so that businesses can evaluate the long-time impact of their travel from the past as well as evaluate the impact of certain policy changes.

August 31st, 2009

LEED, Energy Star and rah, rah, rah...

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 10:51 am

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

Tags: Tax Credit, Pollution, Energy, Personal Finance, Taxes, Free Trade, Financial Planning, Finance, Harry Fuller

Here’s a look at the confusing, perhaps almost meaningless, array of labels and tax credit inducement that now go into American buildings. Now somebody has the effrontery to suggest that actual energy use be monitored? And the water use? You can conserve water and not energy or vice verse. Didn’t we already know that? Now we’re going to use facts not faith in the architect to measure a building’s greenness?

August 31st, 2009

denial:global warming=creation:evolution?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 9:57 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, global warming, law & politics, research, weather

Tags: Trial, Healthcare, Harry Fuller

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to re-enact the famous Scopes Monkey Trial when the forces of faith and creationism tried to bar the teaching of Darwinian evolution to impressionable school children. Only this time it would global warming theory on trial.
Is this just another round in the culture wars of America? Science vs. religion, yet again?
If there were to be a “trial,” the Chamber of Commerce would like to see it take the form of an adjudicated public hearing on the EPA’s finding that climate change is a danger to public health.
Why does the Chmaber care? Because climate change may lead to federal and state laws that would alter how the Chamber’s member corporations do business and make profits. Anything the Chamber can do to slow down potential legislation or even strangle it in a Congressional committee would be a big victory for some big businesses. Likewise a victory of denial in some public forum would be the death knell to many greentech start-ups that are a century or more behind fossil fuel industries in building up cash reserves, political clout and public awareness.

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August 30th, 2009

Search engine lets you earn 'swag' on behalf of reforestation program

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 5:15 pm

Categories: climate change, conservation, energy, environmental health, global warming, green tech

Tags: Search Engine, Recycling, Redemption, Swagbucks.com, Games, Personal Technology, Heather Clancy

I am sure you have heard about or maybe even used some of the Web search engine sites that will donate something somewhere if you use their lesser-known technology instead of uber-search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. One example is GoodSearch, which will give money to your specified registered charity.

Swagbucks.com works according to a similar principle, only in this case the charity is you. Every time you use it, you have the potential to earn so-called Swag Bucks (think frequent flyer miles). This digital currency can be used to redeem for certain awards.

So what’s the green angle? Well, the company has just introduced a program called Seed the Future that lets you use your Swag Bucks to benefit reforestation projects in 17 countries over four continents. It takes 15 Swag Bucks to plant one tree.

Eron Zehavi, cofounder of Swagbucks.com, says since the Seed the Future redemption offer was offered starting three weeks ago (it’s called “Plant a Tree” on the redemption page), there have been about 20 to 25 redemptions per day toward the reforestation programs. That translates into 8,000 to 10,000 trees per year. Here’s a link to details about the effort.

You can also earn Swag Bucks for a couple of technology recycling programs that Swagbucks.com offers that reward you for turning in old cell phones, MP3 players, game consoles and video games. Here’s that link, as well. And, because you can never be too careful about screening the companies that are recycling or refurbishing your old tech gadgets, here’s a link to Swagbucks.com’s partner in the trade-in effort, Flipswap.

Incidentally, just because you read this blog all the way to the end, Swagbucks.com is offering a special Swag Code for GreenTech Pastures readers who are new registrants on its site. If you sign up before 11:59 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, Sept. 15, with the code “GreenTech” (case-sensitive), you’ll get 2 extra Swag Bucks. (You already get three for signing up.) Here is the registration link.

Incidentally, you also can earn Swag Bucks for referrals that you make, but I felt it was appropriate to opt out of that option.

August 28th, 2009

University to publish energy metrics via social networking

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 4:56 pm

Categories: conservation, energy, green tech

Tags: Network, University Corp., SmartSynch Inc., Social Networking, RSS, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Internet, Heather Clancy

This one is sort of in-your-face: the University of Mississippi (aka Ole Miss) is working with smart grid technology company SmartSynch to create real time updates of its energy consumption reduction process for Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds.

You can be sure that students, at least, will be well abreast of whether or not Ole Miss is making its goals. The idea is that the more they are aware of what’s going on, the more likely that these goals will be met.

The alerts will be a component of the online dashboard for SmartSynch SmartMeters that have been installed across the university’s campus in Jackson, Miss. Currently, there are 16 meters installed that are keeping tabs on the schools main buildings, including its oldest one, the Lyceum. Other meters are being installed, and each building will have a unique profile in several social networks.

Here’s a screenshot of what the updates would look like on Facebook.

Although this isn’t exactly related, it’s worth including a link here about SmartSynch’s SmartKids program, which focuses on teaching children about energy usage and how to help conserve.

August 28th, 2009

AMD recaps 2008 green and sustainability initiatives

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 7:55 am

Categories: climate change, conservation, energy, global warming, green tech

Tags: Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Business Ethics, Leadership, Management, Heather Clancy

For those of you who are beginning to account for sustainability strategy in your IT purchasing habits, Advanced Micro Devices has just published its two annual proclamations about its green and corporate responsibility efforts. Among the programs/milestones you can read about:

• The AMD Changing the Game initiative, which is focused on encouraging the development of video games that impart social issues and values, and promote math, science and technology skills.
• The LEED Gold certified Lone Star campus, powered by 100 percent renewable energy, which I wrote about in this blog post.
• AMD’s involvement in the Green Power Group California Affiliates. This is a group of 15 companies that have operations in California and that meet to share best practices for acquiring and supporting the use of renewable energy at the corporate level. Here’s a quick Environmental Leader article about that group, as well as a link for more information.
• AMD says it has reduced its normalized emissions by 20 percent since its baseline measure in 2006. The company is shooting for a reduction of 33 percent by the end of 2010. Hmm. The math doesn’t sound so encouraging on that one. Hope I’m wrong on that.
• Of course, you can also read about how AMD has applied some of its own technology to reduce energy consumption.

This is where you can find AMD’s full Global Climate Protection Plan (its ninth edition of said plan).

And, this link leads to its 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report.

August 27th, 2009

Honda, slow out of the electric starting gate

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:08 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, cars & traffic, engineering, green tech, renewable energy

Tags: Honda Motor Co., Harry Fuller

Honda will have an electric car in the American market…in 2015. That’s about five years after GM launches its Volt next year. The prototype of the Honda electric plug-in will be seen for the first time at the Tokyo auto show in October.
Honda will be way behind Nissan, Ford, Fisker, Tesla and probably some German car-makers by the tiethey electrified.

August 27th, 2009

Plastic floats forever? Maybe not

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 2:43 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Beverage, Food & Beverage, Manufacturing, Harry Fuller

There’s some new research into the man-made continent of floating trash, plastic and styrofoam, that swirls in the North Pacific. Seems some of it breaks down pretty quickly. Sounds good, right? Biodegradable. But it degrades into chemicals like biphenol-A which is toxic. Oops.
You may recognize biphenol from recent concern over triangle-7 plastics once prevalent among high-end sports drink containers, until the toxic uproar caused most bottle makers to shy away from biphenol-leaching products.
Here’re some of the chemical stew the scientists found in the ocean, thanks to manmade trash: biphenol-A; PS oligomer and other derivatives of polystyrene (PS monomer, dimer and trimer) which is used in disposable tableware, Styrofoam, and DVD cases. Much of the plastic particles are tiny and thus invisible but the chemicals from the plastic form at normal seawater temperatures. The research showed that some plastics begin to break down within a year after reaching the ocean.
So now we see the plastic problem is not just unsuspecting animals ingesting plastic bags or bits of styrofoam though that is toxic enough. The entire ocean is becoming a styrene bath for plants and animals alike.
SEEING THE TRASH
There are two ocean voyages from California to the Pacific trash patch. First is an exploratory venture that left San Francisco Bay earlier this month. Here’s the website for this Project Kaisei. They have an expedition tracker using Google Earth. The ship is now headed back into port and here’s the blog on the trash they collected in the North Pacific Gyre.
Then there is “Plastiki” which is being built of plastic bottles and is meant to publicize the durability of plastic trash st sea. I hope the captain’s been reading the research on how fast that plastic degrades. Originally to have launched this summer, “Plastiki” now awaits autumn.

August 27th, 2009

Getting smarter about the smart grid. Standards group to tackle interoperability.

Posted by Heather Clancy @ 12:46 pm

Categories: energy, green tech

Tags: The Group Inc., Interoperability, Grid, OASIS, Standards, NIST, Heather Clancy

OASIS (aka the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is forming a new committee that will focus on creating Web services models for things such as exchanging dynamic pricing, reliability and emergency signal alerts across the smart grid.

The group is called the OASIS Energy Interoperation Technical Committee. The group will build on the Open Automated Demand Response Communications Standards (OpenADR), which were donated by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Demand Response Center. Co-chairs are William Cox of Cox Software Architects, and David Holmberg of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Refreshingly, the formation of this group has drawn a show of support from Microsoft, which was previously at odds with OASIS on this issue. (The person who is in charge of the Microsoft Hohm project will be involved.) Other early supporters include TIBCO, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CPower, EnerNOC and Grid Net.

This link will lead you to more details about the new committee.

August 27th, 2009

Heartland to become Hotland?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 12:20 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, climate change, conservation, environmental health, global warming, research, water

Tags: Grass, Harry Fuller

Nature Conservancy says Kansas and their neighboring states will bear the brunt of global warming. Here’s Nature Conservancy’s release on their study and projections if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Here’s the Climate Wizard that allows you “map” the climate of any area of the U.S. If Nature Conservancy is right, they’ll be using srtifical grass on atheltic fields and golf courses in the Heartland because they won’t have enough water to keep real grass alive if temps climb as much as ten degrees.
STANDARD BOILER PLATE
This verbiage will now be attached to any blog I do about global warming. It’s amazing to me that somebody who can apparently read and then post comments still wonders in public why global warming matters on a technology web site. But I am naive, always assuming everybody’s paying attention.
It’s because of money. If global warming has enough acceptance among corporations, the public and even pols, there will be more money spent on green tech, wisely or unwisely. If oil prices stay low and most people don’t care a fig about global warming, green tech will have a difficult time succeeding, regardless of its merits. Not every good idea succeeds. VCs usually invest where they think there’s best chance for a good return. In greentech as in any tech the winners will often be determined by luck, brilliance, timing, happenstance and even marketing. Behind it all will be the money and behind that: whether the evidence for global warming and curtailing pollution drive action or is written off as claptrap.