Tag: Green

Cleantech links for 5-6-2009

  • Thinking of going solar? First start with an energy self audit. Here’s how (Scientific American)
  • Ford is spending $550 million to retool one of its plants into a green car factory (CNET Planetary Gear)
  • Is the EPA finally standing up to the corn ethanol lobby? The industry is having a conniption over new biofuel emission rules. (Earth2Tech)
  • What do think of Volkswagen’s new eco-friendly (or not?) print ad? Greenwash Index wants to know.
  • The first LEED Platinum, true Zero Net Energy home in Vermont. (Jetson Green)
  • We know the clean energy industry is engineering bacteria to produce better biofuels. But bacteria for better solar panels too?

Idea for solving an eco-calamity: garbage in, electricity out

The word’s largest garbage dump is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a toxic swarm of plastic trash twice the size of Texas that’s wreaking havoc on sea birds and marine life. It’s an obscene environmental problem for which we’re all responsible, but no one has a solution nor wants to deal with it. So yesterday, a group of scientists and conservationists set out to map the calamity and try to figure out a plan.

The US has nearly 90 waste-to-energy plants that turn garbage into electricity and hot water. They burn nearly as clean as natural gas plants, displace 7.8 million tons of coal-produced energy, and every ton of garbage consumed by the plants eliminates one ton LESS of CO2 emissions due to landfills and fossil fuel generation.

I’m just saying….

Green business may need a little white-collar entrepreneurship

Do you ever have a flash of inspiration, then shrug it off thinking it probably couldn’t pan out?

Shai Agassi never does. His back-of-the-napkin conversation with an engineer has quickly become perhaps the most viable plan for making all-electric cars feasible (hybrids still depend on fossil fuel). Agassi has a clever solution to “range anxiety,” the pervasive consumer worry that electric cars are prone to stranding their owners on deserted roads. His solution? If you run low on juice, don’t plug in for half a day; just switch the battery out. In the time it takes to pump a tank of gas, a robot would whiz out to your car, reach underneath, pluck out the battery and pop in a new one. If anyone can make that fanciful notion real, suggests the New York Times Magazine, it’s Agassi.

The 41-year-old Israeli-American has already created a software company, sold it for $400 million, started a SAP division that went from zero to $2 billion annually, and turned down the SAP CEO job. He has Israeli President Shimon Peres and Renault-Nissan behind his new venture, Better Place, and $400 million in investor backing. He is described as fearless, brilliant and charismatic, and a rhetorical steamroller in the face of objections.

Agassi is an exemplar of innovation (versus mere inspiration), a distinction about which we blogged a few weeks ago. He demonstrates the underappreciated need for clean, green and sustainable businesses to be as fiercely entrepreneurial as any other.

Unfortunately, the world often sees green concerns as starkly at odds with those of business, and every SUV or Superfund site in America reinforces the canard. Agassi, however, makes an eloquent case that classic entrepreneurship will be essential to green business success. He also trusts in the free market to drive demand for electric cars. In fact, he says, cheap electricity will subsidize those cars the same way that cheap minutes let carriers subsidize wireless handsets. (Agassi is, however, counting on government subsidies – to automakers, consumers and infrastructure builders – to kick start the market.)

Keep your eye on Better Place. This one promises to be a wild ride. If Agassi has his way, it won’t burn a drop of petroleum.

6 simple ways to help Mother Earth @ the office

In trolling the Web for simple ways to give back to Mother Earth on Earth Day, I came across an interesting article on ITWorld focusing on how tech companies are recognizing the day. The article describes Earth Day activities ranging from carbon offsets to planting trees to even giving away free products. There’s even an invite to share what your company is doing.

Being a Facebook user, one of my favorite programs from this article is GenGreen LLC’s Every Day is Earth Day application. The application provides daily green tips and the company will offset 5lbs of carbon emissions for every Facebook user that installs this application.

Wondering what you can do? Here are some simple ideas:

  • Got a fancy screen saver? Don’t use it. Use the power-saver mode to turn off the screen instead.
  • Want to burn some calories? Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
  • Done toasting your bagel? Unplug office kitchen appliances not in use.
  • File cabinets overflowing? Think twice before printing that e-mail or document.
  • Heading to a meeting or lunch? Turn office lights off.
  • Your iPhone or BlackBerry all charged up? Unplug the charger or turn off the power strip.

These may not be super original, but they are something everyone can do. And while alone they won’t solve the climate crisis, every little bit helps and Earth Day is a great day to take action for our planet.

A plug for plugging in

About eight years ago, one of my best friends scoffed at my newly purchased electric lawnmower and even louder at the reason I bought it. I had decided against a new gas-powered mower because I had read how much junk their two-stroke engines release into the atmosphere. My friend said that my electric lawnmower was no more environmentally friendly than his two-stroke mower because they both burned fuel, just in different places. His lawnmower did it in his own yard, while mine did it at coal-fired power plants here on the New Hampshire Seacoast, the source of my mower’s electricity.

Full disclosure: My buddy is not exactly objective when it comes to green issues. He’s about as environmental as a barrel of dioxin. He sells building materials and one of his favorite jokes is “I love spotted owls. They’re all we ate on the baby seal hunt.” You get the idea. So maybe he was dissing my lawnmower to get even with me for the year I gave his daughter a copy of “The Lorax” for Christmas, but he had a point. It’s a point society has to address as products like plug-in hybrid cars hit the market making claims at green cred. For example, General Motors is staking a lot on its soon-to-be released Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid. If, however, buyers don’t see economic and environmental upside in the Volt and its ilk, these products are going nowhere. It’s a given that plug-in hybrids burn less gasoline than their internal combustion-only cousins, but they don’t necessarily consume less energy.So they can’t be much better for the environment, right?

There is an answer to that knock against plug-ins, but government has to supply a critical missing piece before the answer stands up to scrutiny. The answer is based on the difference between point and non-point sources of pollutants. Power plants are “point” sources of air pollutants. Cars, lawnmowers etc. are “non-point” sources. It’s a distinction lost on most people, including my owl-munching friend. (I’m pretty sure he was just kidding about the owls, but I couldn’t swear to it.) This distinction gives plug-in hybrids the potential to change our transportation energy consumption habits for the better.

Point-source pollution is easier to manage than non-point source pollution because it’s easier to equip one power plant with effective pollution control technology than to equip 100,000 cars. Today’s emission control technology can remove up to 80 percent of the toxins, greenhouse gases and particles from smokestack exhaust. That could make plug-in hybrids an environmental improvement over conventional cars and their tailpipe emissions. “Could” is the key word, however. Most American power plants aren’t equipped with advanced environmental controls, especially carbon dioxide capture technology. Coal-fired power plant owners have consistently resisted retrofitting their plants with the highest levels of pollution control technology because they say it would drive up the cost of power. In some cases, the government has backed them up. The Department of Energy reported in 2008 that existing carbon dioxide capture technology isn’t cost effective on large power plants. Not surprisingly, there have been no government mandates for cleaner coal-fired power.

Can plug-in hybrids or my electric lawnmower make sense while coal generates 49 percent of America’s electricity? Yes, there are two reasons why plug-in hybrids are still a good idea. The first is that emissions control technology will get cheaper and more efficient if the federal government mandates it, which is the only way to create a market for it. The second is that plug-ins change how we think about our cars, and for the better. With wind, solar and biomass power gaining momentum, the grid will get greener. As it does, plugging in will make more and more sense than filling up. It will probably take a long time before conservation and renewable energy take a significant bite out of coal’s generating capacity, but it’s going to happen.

In the meantime, I think I’ll just let my grass grow longer and avoid the mower question altogether.

If you’re green, prove it

Green is wonderful, especially if you’re savoring it in the forest on a pillow of sun-drenched moss.

As a marketing term, though, green is getting old. Overuse and spin have dulled the verdant halo. Increasingly “green” label may be warning wary consumers they might be getting jerked around. Same with sustainable, fresh, local, organic, natural, recyclable and energy-efficient.

Consumers do want to buy green, and despite the recession, four out of five consumers claim they do (survey results). Unfortunately, one in three doesn’t know how to verify green claims. Translation: when consumers buy green, often they don’t really know what they’re buying.

Since buyers need information and sellers need credibility, the next wave of green marketing will rely heavily on proof – documentation and certification – just as cars rely on JD Power, and as buildings rely on LEED certification.

Says the Federal Trade Commission: “Claims that a product or service is ‘environmentally friendly,’ ‘environmentally safe,’ ‘environmentally preferable,’ or ‘eco-safe’ or labels that contain environmental seals – say, a picture of the globe with the words ‘Earth Smart’ around it – are unhelpful for two reasons: First, all products, packaging and services have some environmental impact, although some may have less than others. Second, these phrases alone do not provide the specific information you need to compare products, packaging, or services on their environmental merits. Look for claims that give some substance to the claim – the additional information that explains why the product is environmentally friendly or has earned a special seal.”

So what’s the seal of approval for green claims? There are options for niche segments of the industry, but no universal seal.

A hundred years after introducing its venerable seal of approval, Good Housekeeping wants a similar role in green affairs, at least when it comes to consumer goods for the household, like appliances, toys, cosmetics, food, beverages. The magazine is launching a green seal in the April issue.

The nonprofit Green Seal,  unrelated to Good Housekeeping, also covers consumer goods, but skews toward the institutional and B2B market with categories in construction, food service, office products, transportation and utilities. It has been certifying products since 1992. Green Seal’s bona fides are here Certified Green Seal products and services are here.

The Federal Trade Commission doesn’t have a seal, but offers guidelines for avoiding false or misleading green claims, over which it has some enforcement power. Here are its suggestions for businesses trying to comply with its “Green Guides” against deceptive green marketing. It defines terms like biodegradable, compostable, recyclable, recycled content and ozone- friendly.

The data center community is pushing for special LEED standards specifically for power-hungry facilities packed with servers. The criteria would be entirely different from green homes or office buildings.   GreenerChoices.org, launched by the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports in 2005, provides information on appliances, cars, electronics, food and home/garden products. It gives ratings and provides calculators.

Two generally respected labels are USDA Organic for food and ENERGY STAR  from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. The Today Show suggests greenercars.org, responsiblepurchasing.org and www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.

The Boston Globe recently explored this miasma of green confusion around the carbon footprint issue. The article surprisingly revealed that microwaving food (they don’t call it nuking for nothing) is greener than baking it and that bottled water from Fiji or France is probably greener (again, from a carbon standpoint) than Poland Springs. The reason? Bottling plants in France typically use nuclear power-generated electricity, and Pacific Islands plants typically use geothermal-powered electricity. It’s fossil fuels in the United States. Bottom line: tap water is your best bet.

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. of Concord, Mass., (disclosure: a client), is developing software that fosters intelligent green decisions long before products hit the market – in the design phase. DS SolidWorks makes widely used 3D computer-aided design software, and the new product, code-named “Sage,” will detail in real time the environmental impact of parts, assemblies and design decisions that go into new products.

The software will feature a dashboard that not only provides information on carbon footprint but also on air impact, water impact and energy consumed in manufacturing. The high-end version will roll up the impact of a product across its environmental life cycle and also include information on energy consumption throughout a product’s usage phase.

So those are all the yardsticks. Are you unconfused yet?

Even if we could objectively measure, certify and label products from a perfect set of all-encompassing green standards, we’d still have problems like this: Which is better, buying a new eco friendly hybrid or driving your oil-burning microbus into the ground?

In the meantime, if you’re marketing a green product that’s really green, go to one of the authorities, document your environmental impact, and get certified.

eBay might be kinda sorta green

eBay is going public about going green (surprise), announcing a Green Team “committed to doing even more to help the world buy, sell and think green every day.” But will the green tint stick?

Well, they’ve got a huge solar power installation. Their business happens to promote reuse, which is better than recycling. They pay for cradle-to-cradle packaging and carbon credits. And who’s to say their heart isn’t in the right place? But beyond that…?

Well, there are plenty of newly manufactured consumer items for sale on their site. A lot of small parcels zooming all around the world 24 x 7 (some $2,000 in goods per second, in fact) doesn’t do much in the way of reducing fossil fuel consumption. And, as the New York Times points out, the ad campaign will be on virgin paper. Ouch! The article proves yet again that even modest pretensions to green goodness are subject to scrutiny.

Credit eBay for doing some good work. But from a marketing perspective, it’s hard to own the green leadership mantle when, by all appearances, your carbon footprint is about the same as everyone else’s.

An unlikely love story: Alaska and renewable energy

Agree with it or not, Sarah Palin’s hymn to the oil industry, “drill baby drill” was one of the 2009 election’s catchiest mantras. Surprising to find, then, that Palin is a fan of renewable energy, according to a recent New York Times report. Furthermore, Alaska, the second-largest oil producing state after Texas, is fertile ground for renewable energy. Fuel prices there are high. Strong winds support a growing wind power industry. Palin wants 50 percent of the state’s electricity to come from hydro power by 2025.

This doesn’t actually jibe with Alaska’s image as the oil and gas industry’s treasured love child, but there’s more to this story than irony. It speaks to why renewable energy’s time might actually have arrived. For real, this time, and not like the giant renewable energy head fake of the 1970s.

That was the era when the Gulf oil states started flicking the spigot on and off according to how many tricked out 747s the Saudi royal family needed, or how mad they were at Washington over U.S. Middle East policy. Gas efficient cars went mainstream. The first roof-mounted solar arrays appeared. Utilities invested in fuel cell development. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House roof. Schools and other public buildings were designed using passive solar heating and cooling techniques. Then the price of sweet crude dropped into the cellar, Ronald Reagan ripped out the White House solar panels, and the renewable energy industry turned back into a hippie pipe dream.

So renewable energy is hot again, but why won’t it suffer the same fate it did when bell bottoms were in style? After all, we live in a market economy. No matter how good an idea renewable energy is, the market still favors fossil fuels. When the price of oil falls, the power that renewable energy sources produce is too expensive to compete.

The difference between now and the ‘70s is that the oil’s cost dynamics are changing permanently. China, India, and a host of developing economies are competing with the U.S. in international oil markets. Barring a complete collapse of those countries’ industrialization programs, that competition will keep oil prices at steadily higher levels. Also, the era of cheaply extracted oil is waning. An increasingly large percentage of oil reserves are hard to get out of the ground, and the prices will reflect the greater effort and new technology to bring it to market.

Rural Alaska is a laboratory for this dynamic. Market forces, acting through the price of shipping and the per-gallon price of the fuel, conspire to make fuel-generated electricity outrageously expensive in rural Alaska – five to ten times higher than in the lower 48. If the price of oil were lower, the market might be able to absorb the high delivery costs. But the price isn’t low enough, and here’s betting that it never will be. That means the local market conditions in rural Alaska will permanently favor renewables. “Despite high installation costs and the need for cold-weather engineering,” the Times reported, “wind turbines can often produce power at a lower cost than diesel generators by eliminating the need for fuel.”

How long before the base price of oil rises enough to make wind and solar the economic choice in rural Wyoming, the Dakotas, Texas, California, etc.? A long time off, maybe. But the fact that it is already happening in Alaska is not an isolated fluke. It’s the first sign that the economic case for renewable energy is growing strong enough to endure the next temporary decline in oil prices.

Green economy will bring new measures of success to replace growth

Venture capitalist Paul Maeder backed some of the biggest winners of the tech boom – Chipcom, Avid Technologies, Sybase, SQA. Now Maeder, a co-founder of Highland Capital Partners, is turning his attention to companies developing the technology to support an environmentally sustainable economy. Maeder shared his views on progress toward a sustainable economy with the Brodeur Clean Technology Practice.

https://youtu.be/mvN0Jpyzz7I

 

 

Big green claims invite scrutiny

The morning paper provides an object lesson in green PR: be careful what you claim.

The Wall Street Journal deconstructs and essentially debunks Dell’s claim of carbon neutrality, saying Dell failed to include in its carbon footprint things like “the oil used by Dell’s suppliers to make its computer parts, the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them.”

In fairness, the carbon footprint is an elusive and arbitrary concept. If I ride my bike to work, I’m saving gas and sparing the atmosphere of exhaust. Then again, my bike parts come all the way from Japan. Then again, an American car has a ton of manufactured parts compared to just 25 pounds of bike. Then again, riding makes me hungry, increasing demand for food that has left a carbon footprint as it’s cultivated, processed, packaged and shipped. Ad infinitum.

The Journal further complicates the carbon neutrality question by delving into Dell’s purchased environmental “credits.” Nonetheless, the paper is even-handed, quoting Bill Burtis, spokesman for Clean Air-Cool Planet, saying Dell is “going farther than most corporations” in trying to minimize its environmental impact. The story does not directly challenge the truth of any specific claim in Dell’s August 2008 press release, of which there are many laudable ones. Still, this was not the story Dell wanted to see.

How green is your Prius?

The Toyota Prius presents another example of a green-positioned product that could be a lot greener. The Journal spotlights a pair of mechanics transforming Toyota Priuses into plug-in electric vehicles, doubling the fuel efficiency of the world’s most popular hybrid. The souped-up (down?) machines still use gasoline, just half as much as the off-the-rack Prius, which gets 50 mpg.

If  you prefer biodiesel to electricity, check out this Motor Trend story on a Beverly Hills doctor purportedly using fat from liposuction surgery to power his SUV and his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator. This Wired story casts some doubt on the doctor’s assertion. Another green claim, albeit a dubious one to begin with, comes under scrutiny and bites the dust.

Greenest of them all

Wired brings all this abstraction and ambiguity down to earth in its list of Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008. Number one? A humble cement plant. Really. And unlike the other cases, the environmental benefit seems concrete unassailable.

While traditional cement making requires a lot of heat (and thus, fossil fuel), “Calera’s technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting,” says Wired. “By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.” More here.

Bottom line? To be effective, green claims must be sincere, true, defensible, quantifiable and ready for close examination. Dell, it appears, may have pushed the sincerity envelope by declaring it had achieved carbon neutrality. Although the company is neutral by the marketing department’s yardstick, it’s not by the Journal’s. And who’s yardstick ultimately matters most?