April 6th, 2008
Can Technology Meet the Challenge?
I remember when there were population explosion predictions more than forty years ago: famine and global doom were touted as likely outcomes. Then farmng practics and crop varieties changed and much of the expected disaster fizzled into the continuing run of regional famines that plague poorer parts of the world.
Now there’s a heated debate over whether technology can meet the challenges being predicted because of global warming. Some critics of the U.N.’s IPCC say the group did not look hard enough at its own predictions for technological advance, and the global warming problems may not all yield to tech advances. The IPCC, of course, begs to differ.
I’ve lived long enough to see that technology has not solved a number of very obvious, widespread problems. Drunk-driving. Whatever happned to those imagined perfect highways with magnetic stripes that keep all cars in line, literally? Humans’ procilivity for chemical addictions. We’ve developed some new chemicals to which we can become addicted, however. War. Some Darwinians may see war as a useful evolutionary tool, I suspect. Drought, famine, Hurricane Katrina, AIDS, tsunamis, batting slumps, incompetent bankers or politicians.
The pattern seems clear, where major problems intersect with the behavior of many humans, technology may not come up with a workable answer. And that assumes we are asking the right questions to begin with. Americans right now want cheaper fuel for their cars. Is that really the crucial issue?
April 5th, 2008
What do we Americans want? Individuals shopping for, longing for greener transport. Where the h— is it?
Americans are saying they want more economical and environmentally friendly fuel, and they’re backing that up with action. Two separate looks at American drivers found that many are saying and doing things that actually make sense, and that could be very good for green tech companies working on alternative energy or low emission autos.
A survey–what do Americans think is the most crucial place for investments in the next ten years? Not cancer, not cleaner water, not more space exploration, not better guns or butter, not even better tasting beer and pizza. #1 priority for 37% of those polled: more auto fuel efficiency and development of alternative fuels. Another 14% said envornmental protection was most important. Combined that’s just over half. #2 was medical research, including cancer, at 30% There’s fertile ground for anybody coming out with cheaper or more efficient energy sources. Cleaner running cars. Americans are ready to buy.
The attitude survey was commissioned by the Fairfax County (VA) Economic Development Authority, one of the leading economic development organizations in the US.
An analysis of American car buying in recent months shows we’re already tending toward cheaper, smaller, higher mileage vehicles. People with small cars are no longer trading up as the auto industry has long expected. They’re sticking with the little cars that burn less gas. Enough with the Hummers already? The death of the eight-cylinder engine?
This sure indicates it’s time for those electric cars to roll into showrooms and thence into carports or parking spaces across America. Where are they? Here’s a report saying the new electric car companies just can’t get it together, as in production and assembly. Delays and delays. After the delays, a few cars to sell.
So with no alternative fuel that’s clearly better than gasoline or oil-based diesel, and no supply of electric cars to buy, Americans are not going to get what they want and would apparently buy. Perhaps just one little reason why a recent poll showed 81% os us think this contry’s headed in the wrong direction. Duh.
April 5th, 2008
Cree’s LED lights for the rest of us
Most of the stuff I read about LED lighting is focused on products for commercial or retail settings or that are being installed out in municipal garages or street lights. They haven’t had much coverage as a residential option. But Cree, which is based in Durham, N.C., is trying to brighten the LED scene in homes with recessed downlights, like the kind that you might find in a hallway or in a kitchen.
Its latest offering is something with the memorable (not really) name: LR6. The bulb puts out 650 lumens and works with a 12-watt input. (That’s comparable to a 65-Watt BR30, 50-Watt PAR30 or a 100-W A-lamp.) Cree doesn’t have pricing on its Web site, but says consumers can expect to pay about they would pay for a comparable compact fluorescent downlight, lamp and trim. So, yes, there is a premium over incandescent.
The reason that I was reminded about Cree is because they’ve just released the LR6 for Europe and Asia. But the thing that makes Cree’s products really compelling though is the fact that they come in retrofit modules can be screwed into a “traditional Edison socket.” (As the company puts it.) That’s what it’ll take.
April 4th, 2008
Air wars and the future of green tech firms
Right now American regs for air pollution and greenhouse gases are in suspension. You could say they’re up in the air. At the center of this air war: the Environmental Protection
folks (EPA). The EPA got hit with one new lawsuit this week, and the threat of another. Of course, true to America’s schizo body politic, they come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The folks who care more about public health than corporate profits sued over the EPA’s reluctance to rule on whether greenhouse gases should be regulated. The folks who are most worried about corporate health are threatening their own lawsuit over what anti-pollution regs the EPA is threatening to enforce.
We lucky taxpayers are paying all sides. You see, it’s 18 states’ attorneys general who are suing the EPA, it’s another state attorney general threatening the anti-reg lawsuit…and, of course, it’s federal attorneys who are defending the EPA. So this air war is starting to look like some of the real wars in the Mideast–we Yanks buy oil from Saudi or heroin from Afghanistan, then that money ends up in the hands of the folks who are shooting and bombing American troops that we’re paying for. When do we stop hitting ourselves on the head with a hammer? Not too soon, I fear.
Here’s the background on the pro-air suit against EPA. That’s been brought on by the EPA dragging its feet after losing a Supreme Court ruling over a year ago. Here’s background on the new regs that have some corporate protectors upset. In the EPA’s own words.
So while our public attorneys are spending our money fighting each other over the air we need to breath, what’s happening on the tech front with air?
One neat idea: clean up the oil most of us use to keep our cars, our houses, our servers, our economy buzzing along at whatever speed we can attain. There’s an American green tech company that’s developed a patented high-tech method of cracking petroleum, so they can take “dirty” crude oil and make it much cleaner burning.
The company is SulphCo, Inc. Its revolutionary ultrasound technology is called Sonocracking ™ and they’re starting to sell the process around the globe. SulphCo. is based in Houston, right at the heart of the American oil industry.
April 4th, 2008
System builder Super Micro shows green stripes
I was wondering the other day how the system builder community is faring with the green tech conversation. After all, servers, desktops and notebooks from the so-called white box players account for somewhere around one-third of all systems shipped in a given quarter. At least that’s the case in the United States.
Lo and behold, I received a communication from Super Micro Computer of San Jose, Calif., touting a blade server that it calls “the industry’s most energy-efficient and earth-friendly family of servers.” (Ok, so Super Micro isn’t strictly a white box player, but it isn’t one of the big three guys.) Them’s fighting words, don’t you think?
The server series in question is the SuperBlade, which the company claims operates at 93 percent energy efficiency. It consists of two lines, the OfficeBlade, which also is touted as an ultra-quiet blade server option, and the DatacenterBlade, a high-density piece of equipment meant for high-performance computing. I’ll let the specs speak for themselves.
April 4th, 2008
Texas: more than just oil and politicians
Texas. Oil. Politicians. From LBJ to George W, Texas has brought us oil, war and big military budgets. Well, now there are some subversives sneaking yet another energy business onto the scene down Texas way. Wind!
Course, much of the ooomph is coming from those dread eco-socialists in Europe. Their press release says, “Fortis Merchant Banking today announced it successfully closed syndication of a $280 million senior secured financing for Sherbino I Wind Farm LLC, a joint venture owned by BP Alternative Energy North America Inc. and NRG Energy, Inc.”
What that means: they’ve raised the capital to finish building the windmill farm already under construction in Pecos County, Texas. For those following along on a map, it’s about forty miles east of Fort Stockton which, in turn, is a long way from anywhere. The wind farm’s a 150 megawatt project that consists of 50 Vestas V90s turbines.
Vestas is Danish. BP is British. Fortis is Dutch. Good thing those old-fashioned Euros are being spent in Texas now that our dollar is devalued. Not sure an American energy company could afford to but the Euro-tech needed for a modern wind farm. And I recently blogged about how European countries and companies are pushig ahead with use of wind energy for making electricity.
April 3rd, 2008
Forrester: IT planners to get a jolt of green this year
Forrester Research believes IT operations folk and facilities managers will be fielding more and more green tech questions as the year wears on. And, amazingly enough, if you think about the main impetus that most businesses have to do this — namely saving money — this is one prediction that isn’t likely to be whacked out by the “R” word.
So here are five things that Forrester thinks anyone with IT management responsibility should get a better handle on. Some are no-brainers. Others will take a bit more digging. It bases its observations on the results of a recent enterprise IT survey.
1. Understanding your data center efficiency. According to Forrester, somewhere around one-third of data center managers still are “not interested” in increasing energy efficiency. That’s because they haven’t figured out how to justify the upfront investment in, say, a more expensive power management system.
2. Green requirements for suppliers. Forrester said that about 38 percent of the survey respondents said their companies now include things like green manufacturing practices, operations or disposal methods in their check-list of selection criteria for IT purchases. This compares with just 25 percent six months ago.
3. Assessing and accelerating green IT projects. A whole slew of service providers is beginning to align itself around the green IT opportunity. Picking the right one will be critical.
4. Dealing with IT asset disposal. What, exactly, can you do with all your old hardware? Is recycling or refurbishment the answer?
5. Beyond the data center. Much of green tech coverage you read right now hinges on greener versions of products that are very familiar. But, green tech is about much more than that. IT managers will need to get a grip on technologies that aren’t necessarily green but that help their companies become greener. Such as software to help manage carbon footprints or teleconferencing gear that can cut down on travel.
If you’d like to poke at the Forrester report some more, you can find it here.
April 3rd, 2008
Hybrid cars becoming ever more political
It’s not just in California where hybrid and plug-in cars are a political issue. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is working to take the issue global. They have launched a campaign to get General Motors, still the latrgest car manufacturer based in America, to speed up its hybrid offerings.
Right now GM is promising its hybrid, plug-in Chevy Volt for sale by 2010, which means they will all be on pre-order next year.
Says UCS, “Hybrid technology has the potential to provide us with cleaner, more fuel-efficient options in every vehicle class, as exemplified by the Ford Escape Hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid, and Toyota Prius.”
Pluginamerica was founded specifically to lobby on behalf of the plug-in electric car. They have slogans to promote their cause, meant for bumper stickers, just like traditional issue politics. There are numerous tech companies on the plugin partner list: American Solar Electric, Blue Skies BioFuels, Gigawatt Solar, Liquid Sun,
New Belgium Brewing (I know, old tech, but tasty nonetheless), Oceanlink Energy Solutions, Phoenix Motorcars, Silicon Valley Biodiesel. Those are just a few, also many publicly-owned utilities are supporters along with local governments. Thus the plug-in and electric cars have long ago become a political issue. But not one major political candidates will discuss often because they run the risk of infuriating the entrneched interests in Detroit which could lose any national candidate the state of Michigan. Thus are environmental issues influenced by the nearly random effect of the electoral college. If all our cars were made in Mexico or Morocco, it might be a very different political scenario for hybrid and alternative fuel cars in gthe U.S. Dream on.
April 2nd, 2008
Green tech cars will not get any federal help until November
All those companies working on fuel cell cars, electric cars, plug-in cars and the long-awaited, not expected solar-powered cars…well, they’ll not get any federal encouragement until after the November election.
The latest chapter in the bizarre, Kafkaesque battle over national auto emission standards in the U.S. has just become more unreal. I recently blogged about the EPA’s decision to begin seeking public debate on the possible ill effects of greenhouse gases. That was a year after the EPA was ordered by the allegedly Supreme Court to come up with a ruling about those emissions. Now, many of the same folks who sued originally have gone back to court. Eighteen states have sued the EPA,again. Boy, that’ll really make them spring into action.
I think this is basically political showboating and more overtime for highly-paid lawyers. This version of the EPA will do nothing. Until a new President is elected the lawsuits will accomplish nothing. Meanwhile the smart alternative energy supporters are working on their products to ready for the time when the federal hammer may really fall on auto emissions and greenhouse gases.
April 2nd, 2008
Idea of the day: Warm up your pool with excess data center heat
Score three (this week!) for IBM’s green data center team. They have been cranking out the green data center “win” press releases in the past week, touting projects in Egypt, Austria and Switzerland.
I have to say BY FAR the coolest idea to come out of these projects comes from the Swiss one, which was built inside a former military bunker outside of Zurich. As part of the collaboration, which involves IBM and GIB-Services, the roughly 2,800 megawatts of wasted heat that the data center will produce each year will be exchanged with the local public swimming pool to keep the water toasty warm.
The companies estimate that the excess heat could supply up to 80 houses with heating and warm water. In the press release about the project, Steve Sams, vice president of IBM Global Site and Facilities Services, says that it’s theoretically possible to reuse about 90 percent of the electricity needed to run the data center by reclaiming the heat produced. Reusing the heat from this particular facility will result in a carbon dioxide emissions savings of roughly 130 tons, according to the press release.
The data center, located in Uitikon, Switzerland, completed in the first quarter; the project to heat the swimming pool will be completed in the next several months.
Finally, here’s the parent link to IBM’s Project Green Web site.
Recent Entries
- Can Technology Meet the Challenge?
- What do we Americans want? Individuals shopping for, longing for greener transport. Where the h— is it?
- Cree’s LED lights for the rest of us
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- System builder Super Micro shows green stripes
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