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Doug Neal on Moving beyond the 2% solution

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Doug Neal is a Research Fellow at the Leading Edge Forum – Executive Programme and is responsible for research into Innovating through Technology.

While working with Yale Professor Dan Esty, author of Green to Gold, to develop a holistic view of the challenges and opportunities of this new Corporate Social Responsibility frontier, Doug and the LEF team realized that even if we could wave a magic wand and reduce computer power use to zero, we would have successfully dealt with only 2% of the CO2 problem.

In this presentation at the 2008 it@cork Green IT conference, Doug talked about how to use IT to help address the other 98%, suggested how firms should proceed in dealing with this global issue, and socialising carbon data.

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GreenMonk talks batteries and sustainability with Dr Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Boston Power

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I talked with Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Boston Power the other day about their new lithium-ion batteries.

Boston Power are a startup battery business but Dr Lampe-Onnerud is no stranger to lithium ion technology, holding as she does, close to 20 patents for Li-ion technologies.

Boston Power have launched a new series of Li-ion batteries which sound really intriguing. They charge faster than traditional batteries, they hold their charge longer, and while typical Li-ion batteries start to wear after 150 power cycles, the Boston Power ones only start to wear after 1500! This means a far longer lifetime for the batteries, reducing the need to keep buying replacement batteries as charged times decrease.

We also discussed on the call the increasing requirement for batteries for plug-in hybrids and in the near to mid future, the new market for home batteries to take in power when electricity is cheap and potentially sell it back or come off grid when electricity is expensive.

However, from a purely selfish perspective, the thing I want to know most is when will there be a version of this battery available for my MacBook Pro!!!

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Doug Neal on reducing the 98%

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it@cork are holding their annual conference this year on the theme “Green IT: Reduce CO2, Raise profits”

We here in GreenMonk are sponsoring the event and as part of the sponsorship we are interviewing many of the speakers in the run-up to the conference.

In this interview, I chatted with Doug Neal, research Fellow at The Leading Edge Forum about his presentation.

We talk about how although IT is only responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, it can act as a huge lever on reducing the other 98%.

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GreenMonk interviews Stefan Engelhardt about SAP’s vision for Smart Grids

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One of the more interesting keynote talks at the recent SAP for Utilities conference in San Antonio TX was the one given by Stefan Engelhardt, SAP’s Head of Industry Business Unit Utilities.

In his keynote he discussed decarbonisation and SAP’s vision around Smart Grids and Smart Meters. I asked him if he’d be willing to come on camera to talk about some of these topics and he very graciously agreed.

With the vast majority of the world’s utilities using SAP’s software, they have their fingers firmly on the pulse of this sector. What was pleasantly surprising to me was the amount of interest SAP is seeing from their utility client companies in Smart Grids. As Stefan himself said in the interview:

For the next couple of years we see a clear trend towards the deployment of Smart Metering technology in the Utilities industry… and that means we have to adapt the existing business processes to this new technology

It was also fascinating to hear Stefan’s predictions around how Smart Grids will be rolled out gradually by utilities. Polling of smart meters by utilities will be ramped up bit-by-bit from maybe once a day to once every 10-15 minutes and this will have huge implications for the amount of data utilities will have to manage. Previously they may have collected 1 terabyte every 10 years. With smart meters reporting energy usage every 10-15 minutes they could be collecting 1 terabyte every month, or less!

With the roll-out of Smart Grids, utility companies will be able to publish energy prices in realtime based on supply and demand. This is important because electricity is more plentiful when renewables are contributing to the mix, so cheaper electricity should also track closely with Greener electricity!.

Utilities will now be able to offer new products like critical peak pricing for peak shaving in times of electricity shortage and even demand stimulation, to encourage people to consume electricity when supply is exceeding demand. This will encourage people to shift some of their loads to times when renewables are contributing more, thereby reducing the CO2 emissions associated with that load.

[Disclosure – SAP covered my expenses to attend this conference]

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Generation We video

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Generation WE: The Movement Begins… from Generation We on Vimeo.

I came across this video via Dominic Campbell on Twitter.

Despite the US bias there are a couple of interesting points in the video, the one that caught me was that the current generation is expected to have a shorter life expectancy than the generation which came before.

Here is a link to a full copy of the book mentioned in the video for download.

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Electricity 2.0: Using the Lessons of the Web to Improve Our Energy Networks – the video!

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Many people have been asking me if there is a video of the presentation I gave at this year’s O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo available anywhere.

I asked the organisers but they said they hadn’t recorded it.

Then my good friend Andrea Vascellari came to the rescue. I knew he had attended the presentation but I was unaware that he recorded it.

He published the video above this afternoon so for all those who were interested, here you go…

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GreenMonk Interview with Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist

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I talked to Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard the other day. We discussed how large organisations can reduce their environmental footprint, using Microsoft’s own example; we discussed how Microsoft software is helping other companies reduce their carbon footprint and we discussed how Microsoft people and products are helping research into Climate Change.

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Carbonetworks on Carbon platforms and Carbon strategies

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I talked with Carbonetworks’ President and CEO, Michael Meehan, the other day. We discussed Carbonetworks’ Carbon platform, and how their application helps companies participate in global carbon markets.

Carbonetworks software helps companies understand whether their carbon is going to be an asset or liability to them today and in the future as and works with companies to roll out their carbon strategies.

The television image in the video is from videocrab

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Monitors on the TransEurasia Express!

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Video thumbnail. Click to play
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers announced recently that it was shipping 10,000 monitors and bare bones system chassis from China to Germany by train!

I thought this was simply a pr stunt to get some headlines until I read that transporting the goods by train is one-third faster than ocean freight, costs only one-quarter as much as air freight and yet produces less than 5% of the CO2 emissions of air freight!

Intrigued I invited Fujitsu Siemens senior director of global logistics, Hans Erbe to come on GreenMonk TV to discuss the shipment and to give us some hard numbers around money and CO2 saved!

You can foillow the progress of the shipment on the train’s blog at http://www.transeurasiablog.com/

I should also apologise for the quality of the audio in the podcast. We were connected via Skype and despite connecting several times, this was the best audio we could get 🙁

The television image in the video is from videocrab