Craig Bender is a good friend of mine. He knows everything about Sun’s SunRay product line (which also happens to have great environmental characteristics compared to PCs.) He lives in Vegas. This is what he had to say about the city.
Monthly Archive for April, 2008
The post I wrote about energy demand management (EDM) last week certainly stimulated some discussion and got people thinking - always good.
It appears it was a timely post too as I came across two announcements which seem to indicate that the big utilities are looking very seriously at smart grids and EDM.
The first news came out of SAP’s recently formed AMI Lighthouse Council when they announced the integration of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) with Enterprise technology.
The AMI lighthouse consists of SAP, CenterPoint Energy, CLP Power Hong Kong Limited, Consumers Energy, Energy East, Florida Power & Light, Oklahoma Gas & Electric and Public Service Electric & Gas as well as several strategic vendors like eMeter, Itron and OSIsoft.
AMI short for Advanced Metering Infrastructure refers to systems that measure, collect and analyse energy usage, from smart electricity meters on request or on a pre-defined schedule.
From Wikipedia
This infrastructure includes hardware, software, communications, customer associated systems and meter data management software.
The network between the measurement devices and business systems allows collection and distribution of information to customers, suppliers, utility companies and service providers. This enables these businesses to either participate in, or provide, demand response solutions, products and services.
The idea is that the AMI Lighthouse Council are working towards the integration of SAP® solutions with AMI solutions for business processes, including customer relationship and billing and enterprise asset management. All vital to making EDM a reality.
The second announcement which caught my eye is that IBM is working with Country Energy (a utility co. which owns and operates Australia’s largest energy supply network) to develop a smart grid in Australia. From the announcement:
Country Energy is pursuing the Intelligent Network concept to improve reliability, support the growth of renewables like solar and wind, and make energy efficiency simpler for customers.
When you see tech companies like SAP, and IBM betting heavily on the smart grid concept and utilities like Country Energy, CenterPoint Energy and CLP Power Hong Kong Limited coming on board to make it happen you know that smart grids are coming.
This next generation of smart grids will be able to absorb far more energy from unpredictable (destabilising) renewable energy sources without compromising grid stability which is in all our best interests.
So it appears you can go green in Vegas, beyond all my cynicism and that of others. I just came across some really interesting news from McAfee about its approach to greener conferences in that benighted location.
“Greening Kickoff,” an innovative project to minimize, rigorously measure and offset the environmental impact of a large corporate event in Las Vegas. The project, which focused on McAfee’s annual Sales Kickoff meeting as a pilot effort, reduced non-air travel carbon emissions by 16% while offsetting the remaining 1,865 metric tons of carbon emissions through support of reforestation projects.
I am not a big fan of offsetting, but I am a fan of reforestation. What I particularly like about McAfee’s approach here is that its not about warm and fuzzies, but real measurement and monitoring. It brought in a third party, ICF International, to audit its activities. The results? McAfee claims to reduced the event’s carbon footprint by 16% of its total non-air travel emissions. What else?
- 25 metric tons saved by facilitating the sharing of rooms by participants
- 3.2 metric tons and 56,357 gallons of water saved through participation in the hotel’s towel and sheet reuse program
- 0.5 metric tons saved by providing a shuttle for airport and event transfers rather than travel by individual taxicabs
- 0.5 metric tons saved by eliminating bottled water and providing tap water only
- The carbon footprint of the overall event was approximately 1,856 metric tons of CO2, or 1.03 metric tons of CO2 per event attendee
- 90% of the event’s carbon footprint resulted from air travel to and from the event
- Excluding air travel, of the remaining 10% of the event’s carbon footprint, the breakdown was as follows: food (35%), hotel rooms (33%), amenities (19%), facility use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) (5%), solid waste (4%) and the event’s conference center (3%)
Well done McAfee- but I have to say I am really disappointed I didn’t come across this earlier. It would have been amazing to have someone come to talk to our free EnergyCamp unconference on Monday about the apppoach - particularly given the Vegas angle.
This might seem a little circular but i would just like to thank Dan from Greenbang for his kind words about our unconference on Monday.
It seems to Greenbang that holding an energy-saving conference in Las Vegas is quite a funny thing to do. But if you are going to hold a global conference, why not do it in front of some show girls. You just get much more out of your meetings than you would with video conferencing. Energy Camp is a meet-up dedicated to the reduction of information technology’s global carbon footprint.
Actually though Energy Camp is about reducing energy footprints across all of our activities, not just those that are IT-related. Keynote speaker Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s new sustainability czar takes a widescreen view- which is one reason I am so excited about the show. For him IT is only 3% of the problem…
Thanks to LaserGuided for the awesome picture of Vegas at night, under creativecommons Attribution 2.0 license.
One of Greenmonk’s core beliefs is that the private sector is making all the running when it comes to long term sustainability thinking, so I was very interested to hear about a conference last week in which water utilities were meeting other stakeholders to discuss climate change related issues. Cortland Coleman was there and very kindly offered to write up the event. If you’re on twitter he is definitely worth following if you’re interested in sustainability.
“A symposium was held last week at Rutgers University in New Jersey, U.S., exploring how global climate change will impact the world’s precious water resources. “The Climate Ahead” was attended by state and federal government officials, researchers, regulators, students and environmental advocates. The annual symposium draws a growing audience of people working on water management issues, climate change and related environmental issues. Over 200 people attended this year’s symposium. There is no doubt that water resources and infrastructure will be stressed by the impacts of climate change. Demand for water is increasing while the supply of safe, healthy water is declining. Global climate change threatens to increase the gap between water supply and demand due to potential changes in weather patterns, seasonal shifts and watershed production. This growing gap could lead to large populations being more vulnerable to water shortages, as unequal access to safe water grows. These same populations are at a greater risk to be victims of flood, drought or other environmental disaster brought on or made worse by the impacts of global climate change. Managing depleting water resources will be a critical skill as we deal with the effects of climate change. Utilities are weighing the anticipated costs of climate change on their drinking water systems. Unfortunately, computer models cannot accurately factor in all variables and therefore, come up short when attempting to clarify and define risk mitigation, cost of not taking action, etc. What is clear is that water usage, conservation, filtration and distribution must all be closely and carefully examined as we work to finds new ways to meet the growing demands for water across the globe. Presentations from the seminar are now available for download from: http://climatechange.rutgers.edu/2008_symposium_presentations.php”
photo courtesy of ishrona under CreativeCommons Attribution 2.0 license. 
Greenmonk partners with Akvo, the Open Source for Water.
Do something. Anything. But ideally a push to our elected representatives. Its Earth Day today.
So far private companies have made all the running in retooling for sustainability. When you’re proud of Wal*Mart you know there is a disturbance in the force. So let’s try and get our governments and elected officials doing more than just blowing smoke. Its hard to see how all the hot air they are blowing will help in the fight against global warming.
Come on everybody make some noise!
Its a shame They Work For You and mysociety don’t appear to be doing something to support it yet.
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