Friday, April 10, 2009

xFruits - Green Future Now - Fresh Recycled News - 4 new items

Searching For A Pristine Forest? - Don't Hold Your Breath.  

2009-04-10 21:43

news

garden of eden image Garden of Eden. Image credit:UK HardLine, excerpted. Would you like to visit a pristine forest? A forest untouched by the hand of (wo)man? Well, you can't. Not because I won't let you, but because there isn't one. ...
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Uranium – "Yellow Monster" – Threatens Grand Canyon  

2009-04-10 21:17

news

canyon-mine-mouth-uranium-photo.jpg Canyon mine exploration. Image credit:Robert Tohe Stacey Hamburg remembers the day in the fall of 2007 when she was cruising up Arizona's Route 64 toward the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and saw a helicopter flying low and slow, back and forth just above the tops of pinon trees. "This helicopter was not out tracking antelope, but was scouting for uranium," she told me. Stacey is the conservation organizer for the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Protection Campaign. ...
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Moen Drips Green Following the Three Rs  

2009-04-10 21:16

Design & Architecture

moen low flow showerhead Moen's Envi Eco-Performance Showerhead uses about 30 percent less water than a normal-flow showerhead. Image supplied by Moen. I went to a press meeting with Moen this week and came away with a ton of green facts about the well-known company who produces bathroom fixtures. Was I taken in by the allure of a shiny presentation? Did the swag make me want to praise the company to anyone who will listen? Nope. I'm tough to please when it comes to eco-issues, and I'm not afraid to out greenwashing. But the science and math geek in me can't deny the...
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China's Renewable Energy Stimulus Sends Solar Stocks Skyrocketing  

2009-04-10 20:55

Business & Politics

china renewable energy stimulus photo Photo via the Guardian Say that three times fast. China just announced that it is drafting a stimulus plan to boost its renewable energy industries. Perhaps inspired by some other nation that recently decided to use government funding to bolster a fledgling renewable energy industry, China's plans immediately boosted the country's biggest solar and wind power companies' stocks. So what's China's big renewable energy plan?...
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Posted by Chad S at 3:57 PM 0 comments

Monday, March 30, 2009

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 2 new items

Restructuring Deadline Looms: What's Next for the Chevy Volt?  

2009-03-30 07:00

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

A critical week lies ahead for the U.S. auto industry and GM’s Chevy Volt: On Monday, President Barack Obama is scheduled to reveal the next chapter in the government’s bailout plan, announcing the first recommendations from his auto task force, which test drove GM’s plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt earlier this month as part of an onsite scrutiny meant to help determine whether or not to swoop in with another round of rescue funds.

Swoop or no swoop, General Motors is in for a serious shakeup: Late yesterday, the Obama administration asked GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner to step down as a condition of more bailout money. Wagoner agreed, and COO Frederick Henderson will take the reins, for now.

This week was also supposed to mark the final deadline for GM and Chrysler to submit restructuring plans, but by Friday afternoon the task force had all but settled on giving GM a 30-day extension because of an impasse in negotiations with bondholders. The automakers are now set to submit “assessments of where their restructuring efforts are heading” by Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

At previous bailout benchmarks — the hybrid parade to Capitol Hill in a bid for aid last December and the turnaround plan submitted last month – GM has trotted out the Volt as proof of its commitment to innovation and fuel efficiency. At this stage, GM is hoping to snag another $16.6 billion in bailout money to pay its bills and avoid bankruptcy. It has already received $13.4 billion.

While the Volt won’t be in the hot seat this time around (Obama’s auto task force will focus on GM’s efforts to shrink debt and cut costs amid slumping demand, Reuters reports), the company has made a point of trumpeting progress on the vehicle. Delays in finalizing its restructuring plan and the uncertainty surrounding its finances would seem to put big “ifs” in a plan to debut a product that won’t generate profit for some time. But last week, GM insisted it remains on track for the first fully integrated Volts to come off assembly lines by June 1 and models to hit showrooms in late 2010. So, what’s next for fans of the Chevy Volt? Hoping the rest of the company doesn’t crumble around it.

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Adaptive Meter: Playing the Energy Conservation Game  

2009-03-30 04:00

Jennifer Kho - Energy

Saving energy may not sound as fun as, say, stealing cars, shooting zombies or becoming a Guitar Hero. But Adaptive Meter, a startup that presented at our Green:Net conference last week, thinks it can make energy conservation an engaging game.

Courtesy of Adaptive Meter

Courtesy of Adaptive Meter

The company, which makes web applications such as Stickychicken and Twitterlike, is developing an interactive gaming platform in which players bet on others’ energy usage. The stock-market style game, called Lost Joules, will use smart-meter data from consenting players, and other participants — including those without smart meters — will be able to stake virtual cash on whether those players can reduce their energy use or not. Players will be able to trade virtual money for real rewards (and buy more virtual cash with real money), say co-founders Richard Dorsey and Danny Hu.

The idea is to encourage energy efficiency through fun, competition, and peer pressure among gamers. “Wouldn’t it be cool if every time we unplugged an appliance or flipped a switch, somebody noticed?” asked Dorsey, who wore a “Batman” T-shirt for his presentation last Tuesday. If you don’t have a smart meter, the game will allow you to use your virtual wealth to encourage better behavior in others. And if you do have a smart meter, the game will push you to save energy, Dorsey said. “If you reduce your energy use, people will flock to you,” he said, because investing in you will win them tokens and prizes.

The startup, which has been working on Lost Joules for a mere three months so far, has created a short comic to introduce its hero, also named Lost Joules. Adaptive Meter says it is working on designing and coding its pilot program.

The company is also working to select and sign up smart-meter data partners for the game, Dorsey said. He mentioned Google’s PowerMeter API — and even included a superhero wearing a “G” in its comic — as well as Fat Spaniel and SmartSynch as possible partners.

Lost Joules is the company’s first foray into the environmental arena. While the company is “open to funding,” it hasn’t yet come up with a ballpark figure of how much it wants to raise, and it plans to push on with the project regardless of whether or not it raises the cash, Dorsey said.

If it does decide to raise money, Lost Joules may need to refine its sales pitch a bit: “Why should anyone play? Because energy is absolutely boring,” Dorsey said during his three-minute presentation.

It also will have to tell investors how it plans to make money. The company wouldn’t detail its business strategy, but said that it would partly be based on virtual currency. Aside from people buying the tokens outright, the company has other methods of making real money in mind — “but we can’t talk about it at this point,” Dorsey said. Advertising and sponsorship might also be included, but also aren’t the main ways Adaptive Meter plan to monetize the site, he added.

The startup’s success will depend on whether it can get sufficient access to energy data, and whether it can make the game fun enough — in spite of the admittedly boring topic — to attract players. Luis Arbulu, part of Google.org’s investment team and a judge at the Green:Net startup contest, gave Lost Joules a 3 out of 10. “It seems like a cool feature or game rather than a sustainable product,” he said. “It probably would be really well on top of a Facebook application or something [like that] rather than as a [standalone game].”

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Posted by Chad S at 8:12 AM 0 comments

Sunday, March 29, 2009

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 1 new item

Green:Net Video: Microsoft's Rob Bernard  

2009-03-29 23:04

Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy

Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard, delivers his keynote address, “IT Solutions for a Low-Carbon Economy” at Green:Net 2009:

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Posted by Chad S at 6:54 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 28, 2009

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 1 new item

Green:Net Video: The Power Grid 2.0  

2009-03-28 18:41

Katie Fehrenbacher - Energy

An audience favorite at our Green:Net conference was the Power Grid 2.0 panel, where executives from utilities startups, and technology providers hashed out what the next generation of the electricity grid would need to look like. Panelists included: Andrew Tang, Sr Director, Smart Energy Web, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Sunil Sharan Director, Smart Grid Initiative, GE Energy T&D, Karl Lewis Chief Strategy Officer, GridPoint, Eric Dresselhuys VP and Co-Founder, Silver Spring Networks, Eric Miller Chief Solutions Officer, Trilliant. Check it out:

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Posted by Chad S at 5:46 PM 0 comments

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 2 new items

Opinion: Smart Meters Are Not the Answer to the U.S. Power Problem  

2009-03-27 23:00

Guest Column - Energy

Empowering consumers with actionable intelligence about their power will not be the outcome of the deployment of smart meters. Rather, it will be exactly what the utilities intend for it to be: a cost-effective way to implement real-time pricing, demand side management and distribution system monitoring.

Why? The buyer and seller of electricity have opposite power consumption interests. We (buyers) want to have control over the total power we consume and independent confirmation we are getting what we pay for. Electric utilities (sellers) seek to maximize the profits from a business model that requires them to generate, transport and deliver a consistent quality of power — regardless of demand — in exchange for a guaranteed rate of return.

Electricity generated on the power grid isn’t stored, so the grid is engineered and operated to meet peak levels of demand, which might only exist for a few hours per month. Without control over demand, responding to demand spikes will cause the quality of power supplied to fluctuate outside accepted norms, i.e., delivered voltage lags outside the 5 percent acceptable quality band, or frequency fluctuates outside its 2 percent quality band. That can only change if demand can be controlled, so utilities want three things from smart meters:

  1. To protect their return on investment (ROI) by not reducing the total amount of electricity sold.
  2. To free up supply reserved for unpredicted variations in peak demand with direct load control. (If the utility was granted direct control over devices with the highest amperage — the air conditioner (40 amps) and the hot water heater (30 amps) — it could shed 70 percent of the average consumer load, temporarily reducing consumption.)
  3. To reshape the demand curve, shifting demand from the peak busy hours to when demand can be met with baseload power (peak load shaving).

Metering has never been intended to reduce overall consumption.

A smart meter could report on whole house electricity usage, but it could not report on the demand from individual household devices. To make intelligent decisions about energy use, measurement should take place at the outlet, in the device or even on the power cable connecting the device to the outlet. This information can also track the quality of the power being delivered, which can affect the life of the device. Current, temperature and time data could be collected inexpensively, using existing technology, and transmitted over an Internet connection to one of the many service providers with a business intelligence platform. This data can be mined to reveal power quality issues that affect consumption. For example, a low voltage reading will tell you that the device will need to draw more current, increasing the total power cost for that device. Or if your dishwasher were drawing a current for longer than similar appliances, that could alert consumers that a maintenance check is in order.

While price signals, along with consumer education, might have an effect on total demand, they could also have an unintended consequence: If a drop in the price per kilowatt-hour becomes the key indicator of when to run the dishwasher, hot water heater and washing machine, then using it may actually increase total carbon emissions because the cheapest electricity today is mostly from coal. By using more electricity when it’s cheapest, we’ll burn more coal.

There is little doubt that smart metering will meet the utilities’ needs, and perhaps facilitate whole house measurement for the buyer. But direct device monitoring is a simple, inexpensive way to effect a shift from a grid blind to demand and engineered to meet peak demand to smart customers who can manage the way their power is delivered.

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Thanks to Our Earth2Tech Sponsors!  

2009-03-27 22:30

Katie Fehrenbacher - Uncategorized

Thanks to our Earth2Tech sponsors, Green IT Tools and Mozy.

Interested in sponsoring Earth2Tech? Contact Nick Basso and Paul Irving at sales@gigaom.com.

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Posted by Chad S at 10:10 AM 0 comments

Friday, March 27, 2009

xFruits - 21st Century Regenerative Technology - 3 new items

Daimler to Launch Car2Go Pilot in Austin: Hint, Hint Zipcar  

2009-03-27 21:00

Josie Garthwaite - Automotive

car2go-logoFor anyone who’s ever borrowed a car through Zipcar or San Francisco’s City CarShare program, and then grumbled over the fact that the meter runs until you return it to Point A, when you want to stay at Point B (been there, done that), prepare for a wave of envy (got that) over Daimler’s planned car-sharing program for Austin, Texas. The company announced yesterday that it will roll out its “mobility concept,” car2go, in the city this fall following the expansion of a pilot program in Germany.

Daimler will place 200 Smart Fortwo cars with micro-hybrid drive throughout the city. If you’re a registered member, you can pre-book the cars online or via mobile phone, or check out an available vehicle on the spot (once you register, you can swipe in using a card reader on the windshield, like ZipCar). When you’re done, you can return the car to any unoccupied parking space within a set operation area. And they charge by the minute, hour or day — so you don’t have to pay for more than you actually use. Brilliant!

OK, clearly some things could go wrong. What if there aren’t enough cars to go around? What if you get stranded and all the car2go vehicles are in use? And just how big is this operation area, anyway? It would have to be more than a few city blocks to solve my Point A-B problem. But this still sounds like an improvement that could help make a carshare/mass transit combo more practical, a step toward weaning more people from reliance on personal vehicles. Hey Daimler, how about launching a pilot in San Francisco?

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Michelin Sponsors 2009 ALMS Green Challenge  

2009-03-27 16:53

khallgeisler - Bikes & Cars

E85 Corvette in 2008 Le Mans

The American Le Mans Series will revive its Green X Challenge Award with Michelin tires as the sponsor for 2009. The prototype and GT cars that acheives the best performance and fuel efficiency with the fewest emissions will win the award.

Lest you doubters think Michelin is jumping on the green bandwagon, they’ve been rewarding eco-friendly innovations for a while now. Eleven years ago, they created the Challenge Bibendum for clean vehicles, then in 2006 sponsored the Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. In 2008, it extended the Energy Endurance Challenge to all European Le Mans-series races.

For its part, ALMS has been making the most inroads into green racing, with hybrid, biofuel, and clean diesels at the starting line. ALMS President and CEO Scott Atherton has applauded President Barack Obama’s green auto initiatives, and sees the track as a proving ground for new consumer technologies.

Racing will probably never be as clean a sport as, say, competitive tree planting, but initiatives like the Michelin’s Green X Challenge can help sate our need for speed and our preference for breathing cleaner air.

Photo of the E85-powered Corvette at the last ALMS race of 2008 courtesy of American Le Mans.

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Turn Off Your Lights Tomorrow—Saturday—For Earth Hour! What You...  

2009-03-27 16:16

susan - Sustainable Ideas

By Susan Seliger

Go dark! Tomorrow – Saturday, 3-28-09 – is Earth Hour when cities, and businesses and tens of millions of people like yourself all over the world will be turning off their lights for one hour – from 8:30 to 9:30 PM (your time) –  in honor of saving energy to save the entire planet.

Join in – flip those switches to OFF and feel the powerful energy of tens of millions of others, like yourself, sitting happily in the dark, saving energy. Do it with a friend — it’s more fun that way.

Anybody who is anybody will be tuning in and turning off, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which has organized this delightful plunge into the dark. Nearly 200 cities in the U.S. are officially committed; 2400 cities in 82 countries have officially signed on.

Broadway theater marquees and other world-renowned landmarks will be turning off their lights:

  • Empire State Building
  • Rockefeller Center
  • Chrysler Building
  • Golden Gate Bridge,
  • Space Needle
  • Sears Tower
  • Great Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt
  • Acropolis in Greece

For those of you with short attention spans who have difficulty reading past the first word " Earth" and are confused – this is not Earth Day – it's a little dress rehearsal. So if you are reading this after Saturday, and you didn't get to join in the dark-hour fun, you can still make up for it to the gods of green on April 22, 2009, for the big Earth Day.

Turning off is a big turn-on.

Watch this video of the lights going out: Earth Hour in Years Past

Even the Las Vegas strip is turning lights off. And like Vegas, what you do during Earth Hour, stays in Earth Hour.

LINKS:

Earth Hour 2009 video

30 Second PSA voiced by Cate Blanchett

Want a minute-by-minute account? Here's a new iPhone application "Earth Hour Trainer":


Photo credit: 2witches.com/blog/tag/earth/

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Posted by Chad S at 4:03 PM 0 comments
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