Once wireless foes ZigBee and Wi-Fi make up and agree to play nice for smart grid deployments (GreenTechMedia)
[sigh] Nissan Leaf electric car to cost $45K (Earth2Tech)
Frog foam can help make better bio-fuels and carbon capture (GreenBang)
Solar Ivy to grow on your house like, well, ivy? (Jetson Green)
Energy Secretary Steven Chu begins big energy efficiency push (Treehugger)
This morning Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu – joined by Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar – announced $100+ million in DOE funding and IRS green manufacturing tax credits for our client SAGE Electrochromics.
These funds will help SAGE establish a new 250,000 sq. ft. facility in Faribault, Minnesota used to manufacture energy-saving, electronically tintable dynamic glass that makes buildings more energy efficient and creates hundreds of new, skilled, green manufacturing jobs.
While hundreds of buildings have already installed SageGlass windows, this new government funding will enable the company to mass produce its glass and bring this energy saving technology to the world.
Secretary Chu has repeatedly said the biggest gains in decreasing this country’s energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide and our dependency on foreign oil will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. SageGlass is a leading example of an energy efficiency technology.
SageGlass products transform windows from an energy liability to an energy source. The potential for energy savings is significant because energy loss through windows accounts for about 30% of heating and cooling energy. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), electrochromic windows like those produced by SAGE can save one-eighth of all the energy used by U.S. buildings each year. This is equivalent to about 5% of the nation’s energy budget. This translates into savings of approximately $300 billion over the next 20 years.
That’s not chump change.
SAGE focused on something each of us experiences every day – glass – and re-imagined it, transforming glass into something innovative that helps make the world a better place and America more competitive.
This is a great example of how something seemingly mundane like a window can become highly transformational.
Branding is tricky business.
It’s not enough to crisply differentiate a product, provide stellar service and reinforce your customers’ delusions of grandeur. The whims of the market might still bring you down.
That’s what’s happened with the Hummer. Say what you want about the make, now being euthanized by GM, but you can’t deny the brand’s potency. Huge. Tough. Dangerous. Cavalier. I am a force. Reckon with my a**.
The problem was, the brand couldn’t contain its own machismo. Like a downhill ski racer hurtling off the course, the machine’s daring was its downfall. Utterly and unapologetically ginormous, it came to stand for everything that’s wrong with our auto-addicted, fossil-fueling, high-beaming selves. As we used to chant on the playground, Hey! Hey! Get outta my way! I just got back from the USA!
Which reminds me, a buddy of mine rolled up on a sexy new BMC racing bicycle the other day. Beefy, squared-off tubes. Not to be messed with.
“Dude,” I said, “that baby is the Hummer of bikes.”
Like a good liberal, he blanched.
Oops, sorry, meant that as a compliment. He likes the bike because it’s Swiss.
Anyway, a pending deal to sell Hummer to a Chinese concern fell through this week, prompting GM to say it will begin the “orderly wind-down of the Hummer operations.” As with the other brand GM recently tried to retire, Saab, there’s a glimmer of hope. That would be of interest to the 3,000 people who make and sell Hummers in the US, including 950 who work at an already shrinking GM plant in Shreveport, La.
If the brand does collapse, you can’t blame it on the brand per se. Gas prices, recessionary times, heightened eco-consciousness and a more touchy-feely zeitgeist also played roles. But wait, that’s getting back to the brand, isn’t it?
After all, the Hummer isn’t the only vehicle that gets paltry mileage. In fact, the Hummer H3T at 16 mpg was green enough to get on the cash-for-clunkers trade-up list – not as a clunker but as an approved replacement. There’s a fair number of Audis and Beemers in that mileage range, and no one’s calling for their demise.
So maybe the Hummer got a bad rap. Or maybe it didn’t. Either way, the Hummer is gone (nearly). In the elegiac words of the Bard of Big, Hummerpedia.org:
This is the end, my only Hummer friend, the end. Bad news for those who love the H make. Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.
It was a beast of a brand.
Marketers for smart grid products have had it rough because it’s like trying to sell a movie without a story line. Few people outside the energy industry have a clue as to how the smart grid will work. Unresolved standards keep us from knowing what it will be made out of. And the smart grid’s promise of energy efficiency and cleaner air have been unsubstantiated guesses at best.
But on this last point, smart grid marketers now have a reason to smile. The U.S. Department of Energy has done the math and has finally wrapped some great numbers around smart grid efficiencies, providing much-needed fuel for the marketing machine.
According to a new DOE report, the smart grid will enable us to cut energy consumption by 12% by 2030, and cut carbon emissions from power plants by the same amount.
Smart grid marketers can now crisply message around how they’re going to reduce your electric bill while also greening the planet.
But for the message to stick, they also have to tackle the other fore mentioned obstacles by scrubbing the unnecessary technobabble from smart grid conversations. Today, smart grid marketers trumpet things like Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), peak-load demand response and home area networks (HANs). These terms are fine for B2B sales and marketing within the energy industry. But to create the consumer pull-demand that could accelerate smart grid deployments, marketers will need to create a new consumer-friendly lexicon.
Of the latest developments in the Toyota saga, the most potentially harmful to the company’s brand equity lacks the flash of its brethren, but packs a stronger long-term wallop. The most interesting new development in Toyota’s woes is the growing chorus of mumbles about the Prius, the world’s marquee hybrid vehicle and an icon in the green community.
Powering that story line is Steve Wozniak’s speculation that a software-related problem made his Prius accelerate on its own, and growing concerns that the Prius’ brakes are as problematic as the accelerators in its other models. Coming in a close second to the Prius is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s offhand statement (since retracted) advising owners not to drive their recalled vehicles until a new safety device is installed. Although LaHood said he misspoke, the damage was already done.
However, the most worrisome news for Toyota is the DOT’s apparent willingness to fine the company for failing to respond quickly enough to reports that its gas pedals were sticking. That cuts right to the heart of Toyota’s competence and regard for consumers. If the feds fine the company, it will legitimize accusations that the company didn’t move quickly enough to correct a potentially dangerous problem. Again, it gets back to consumers willing to forgive mistakes, but not inattention. It will be interesting to see whether Toyota greets the growing chorus of criticisms with the transparency we advocated in a recent blog.
One PR case study after the next has shown that as bad as things can get because of the facts, evasiveness makes it worse. Maybe the best thing the company could do is hire an outside investigator with sterling credentials to trace the problems from beginning to end, and cop out to whatever he/she dishes out. Sounds like a job for Madeleine Albright, George Mitchell or Sandra Day O’Connor.
In an interview this week with NPR at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, GM Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz was bemoaning how the company lost its way from the days when GM made its greatest cars in 50s and 60s. Later that day, my iPod Shuffle dished up Neil Young’s “Johnny Magic,” whose video takes place inside Young’s electrified ’59 Lincoln, the LincVolt. And that’s when it struck me … with so much of GM’s future riding on plug-in hybrids, why not be like Neil?
UPDATE: Yes, I realize that Ford built the Lincoln, not GM. I’m just saying…
What comes to mind when you think of Motor City? America’s proudest industry crushed? Twenty-seven percent unemployment? An exodus of more than half the populace?
How about a wasteland where you can buy a house for $15,000, if you dare live in it?
John Hantz sees all that but also envisions Detroit as the nation’s first urban farm. Acre after acre of sustainable agriculture could create jobs, attract tourists, yield the local produce consumers crave, and create scarcity of real estate to revive a moribund market.
“We need scarcity,” the wealthy stockbroker tells Fortune. “We can’t create opportunities, but we can create scarcity.”
An estimated 40 square miles of land lies abandoned in the 138-square-mile metropolis. The concept of farming it is drawing positive if cautious responses from various quarters. Says the American Institute of Architects, “Detroit is particularly well-suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.” Fortune includes favorable quotes from a Harvard urban planning professor and a former HUD official as well.
Hantz Farms envisions tomatoes and greens germinating in the spring and shoppers harvesting ripe produce for the table in the summer and fall. The investor is offering $30 million for a pilot and is asking for free tax-delinquent land and zoning changes that would lower taxes.
Hantz has his critics and skeletons, but the idea is wildly fresh. And given the city’s legacy – creating an industry that helps warm the planet then protecting that industry at all costs – what could be more carbon negative?
The scribes at here at CleanSpeak central have written about everything from wind, to solar, to endangered natural landscapes, to endangered McMansions, to Christmas trees, to hybrid vehicles this year. We decided to take a look back and nominate our own slate of candidates for the Top 5 Environmental Stories of 2009.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It included $80 billion for green/sustainable initiatives like a smart power grid, renewable energy technology, home heating efficiency and green job training programs. If the American economy is going to be more sustainable, it’s going to take this kind of government leadership.There were, of course, innumerable other environmentally tinged stories this year. Any thoughts on what should have made the list? Let us know!
Unlike the new NIMBYs, selectmen in the town encompassing Massachusetts’ Cuttyhunk Island say they will support a wind farm off their shores, a position directly at odds with many of their neighbors to the immediate east on Martha’s Vineyard.
Residents seem to back the decision:
“I don’t think you can just say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ and expect that will be OK,’’ said resident Nina Brodeur. “If I had my preference, I’d choose not to see them. But I understand the needs of the state, and if it’s not in my backyard, it would have to be in somebody else’s. We can’t close our eyes and think we’re more special than anyone else.’’
At issue is Cape Wind, the embattled wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. Opponents say the landmark project will be a blight on the horizon and ruin a historic Native American site. The project also help Cuttyhunk residents, as part of Massachusetts’ poorest community, pay their utilities:
“I think the wind farm is a great idea,’’ said George Isabel, 59, who has lived on Cuttyhunk since 1968 and serves as police chief and harbor master. “People here can’t afford to turn on their air conditioners or electric heat. Something has to give, because it’s hard to survive. There could be big benefits for us.’’ (Source: Boston Globe)
Maine may be next for offshore wind. The state just announced three offshore wind test sites.
A couple other developments in the wind arena:
Endangered bat concerns stall another wind farm
A West Virginia judge just halted progress of an Appalachian ridgeline wind farm because the developer failed to account for endangered Indiana bats on the property. Developers don’t have to prove that no bats will die in the project, just that the damage – presumably from construction, displacement and/or turbine blades – is minimized. That means potentially years of surveying, planning and permits. Plaintiffs in the case said the project would kill 6,746 bats of all kinds annually. Source: New York Times.
Report: Turbines are annoying, perhaps, but not sickening
An expert panel issued a report this month questioning the validity of wind-turbine syndrome, the constellation of symptoms – including sleep problems, headaches, dizziness, anxiety, ringing in the ears – sometimes associated with turbine noise.
“There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects,” says the report, prepared by a multidisciplinary panel of medical doctors, audiologists, and acoustical professionals for the American and Canadian wind energy industry associations. The 85-page document does admit that turbine noise can be annoying.
“An annoyance factor to wind turbine sounds undoubtedly exists, to which there is a great deal of individual variability. Stress has multiple causes and is additive. Associated stress from annoyance, exacerbated by the rhetoric, fears, and negative publicity generated by the wind turbine controversy, may contribute to the reported symptoms described by some people living near rural wind turbines.”
Source: Wind Energy
With solar, wind, PHEVs, geothermal, biofuels and most other green technologies still out of reach for most people, the U.S. Department of Energy wants to try crowdsourcing our way to affordable clean energy.
The DOE recently launched an open-source wiki called Open Energy Information (OpenIE.org) as a community platform for collectively solving our energy challenges. What Wikipedia did for socializing world knowledge, OpenIE.org can do for clean technology innovation, the thinking goes.
“The true potential of this tool will grow with the public’s participation — as they add new data and share their expertise — to ensure that all communities have access to the information they need to broadly deploy the clean energy resources of the future,” said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in the Agency’s press release.
OpenIE.org bills itself as a linked open data platform, trying to create synapses between all the world’s energy information “to provide improved analyses, unique visualizations, and real-time access to data.” Anyone can post and edit information, upload additional data to the site and download information in easy-to-use formats.
The site currently houses more than 60 clean energy resources and data sets, including maps of worldwide solar and wind potential, information on climate zones, and best practices. To give it even more social cred, OpenIE.org links to the DOE’s Virtual Information Bridge to Energy (VIBE), a browseable collection of widgets that provide up-to-date industry information and unique visualizations of clean energy data.
It’s a compelling idea. Most cleantech science is forged within silos, isolated in commercial and academic research labs. A global hive mind of expertise could bring a Red Bull jolt of collective creativity to unstick long-stuck science problems.
But will the labs be willing to play ball on an open source field if meant opening up their IP to competitors?