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May 25th GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show

Above is the video from today’s GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show and below is the chat-stream from the show:

04:31 Tom Raftery: Can you see/hear me?
04:32 Jason Roe: yea
04:32 abby: both audible and visible, tom!
04:33 TolkienLibrary: back – o started – nice
04:34 Tom Raftery: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html
04:36 Tom Raftery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M_XbeXDNnM
04:38 Tom Raftery: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE54O1I920090525?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
04:38 TolkienLibrary: well if you look who he works for… then i understand his point of view (the bastards)
04:39 Jason Roe: could be getting old too 😛 bit grumpy etc..
04:40 Tom Raftery: http://www.physorg.com/news162454033.html
04:41 mikethebee: This was discussed on RTE Pat Kenny today
04:41 TolkienLibrary: o nasty! guess US and Asia got some cleaning up to do
04:42 Tom Raftery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/24/steven-chu-environmentalist-anger
04:44 Tom Raftery: http://www.physorg.com/news162457392.html
04:46 Tom Raftery: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009905.html
04:46 TolkienLibrary: US voted for CHANGE now they got OBAMA LIGHT (typical American I guess)
04:48 Tom Raftery: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldWithoutOzone/page1.php
04:50 Tom Raftery: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE54O16R20090525?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews
04:53 Tom Raftery: http://www.mywindpowersystem.com/2009/05/the-most-amazing-wind-turbines-designs/
04:55 TolkienLibrary: yes saw that earlier today. Loved some of those ideas. The balloon idea would be nice // always people complaining about the sight
04:56 TolkienLibrary: sounds great…
04:56 Tom Raftery: http://blogs.zdnet.com/sustainability/?p=410
04:57 mikethebee: Do you know what types C&F in Irleand are intending to produce after recent annoucement?
04:59 Tom Raftery: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/us/en/halo/index.html
05:00 mikethebee: C&F (If I recall correctly) a wind turbine producer announced a major ramp up of production. Anyone know more?
05:03 TolkienLibrary: what do you think of solar panels in orbit announced by Solaren? http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solaren-corp-to-launch-solar-panels-into-orbit/
05:06 mikethebee: I hadn’t heard of them til then, I wil research it more thx
05:06 TolkienLibrary: thanks for your opinion… also think it very expensive and ‘un-green’ to shoot solar panels up // they should concentrate on solar panels down here first
05:07 Tom Raftery: Thanks everyone for joining in and your contributions
05:07 TolkienLibrary: thnxs once again Tom… great show!
05:07 mikethebee: Thx Tom, gr8 show and content.
05:08 mikethebee: I always lose the last few seconds of the show for some reason.

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Introducing our latest client… StreamServe

We are delighted to announce that the first customer for our GreenMonk Sustainable Print Services business is StreamServe – a company which specialises in “dynamic document composition, management and delivery solutions for customer communications”.

StreamServe manage documents (i.e. bills) for many industry verticals such as Telecoms, Utilities, Insurance etc. and help their customers reduce their paper footprint as well as helping incentivise their customers to move over to electronic billing. With a large telco, utility or insurance co. this could result in significantly reduced costs and environmental impact.

StreamServe recently announced the launch of their Sustainability Program for its customers. StreamServe’s Sustainability Program lowers costs and improves efficiencies (and thus profit); reduces carbon, toxins and fossil fuels needed for production; and raises public awareness of a businesses environmental activities.

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GreenMonk news roundup 05/25/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Rich Lechner’s May update

Rich Lechner is IBM’s Vice President of Energy and Environment. I met him at an IBM event and asked if he would agree to do a monthly video update on Energy and Environmental matters. He graciously agreed and this is the 3rd installment.

In this episode Rich discusses bringing all an organisation’s energy information together – and the implications for organisational structure that will ensue.

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GreenMonk news roundup 05/19/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Rethinking B2C: Business to (Carbon) Consumer

I was thinking about the term business to consumer (B2C) the other day. I am not a huge fan of the term “consumer” in the digital era– we’re all content creators after all. But I just realised that my notion that we are all producers is even more true in terms of carbon footprint. Whether individuals or businesses, free agents or organisations, we are all net producers of carbon dioxide.

Aha- I thought to myself, “neat insight”, and so to twitter, where I said:

“when it comes to carbon emissions none of us are consumers. we are all producers.”

Quick as a flash Digital Signals came back and said:

“The fern on our bathroom window sill would beg to differ!”

The real insight therefore is that Business To Consumer might have an entirely different meaning this century. Businesses need to create closed loops systems with plants, the only reliable carbon consumers. Of course such an idea might sound bonkers – but why shouldn’t a polluter directly pay to halt deforestation in, say, Brazil? Lets save the planet’s lungs while we still can, before the only carbon consumers we can use are ugly crop-based monocultures.

At the moment we’re trying to come up with sophisticated cap and trade schemes to work the climate change problems we face. As ever complexity rules. But if every company in the Fortune 500 rethought the notion of the consumer, and worked the problem accordingly, we could see some interesting new models emerge.

It has been said that offsetting is horse puckey, but that seems awfully shortsighted, particularly if the offsetting investment is in carbon consumers. An awful lot of research is going to be required to identify the best plant species for carbon consumption- but there has to be a successful business or five in there.

So what might your Sustainable Business To Consumer strategy be?

picture courtesy of dawnzy58 on flickr under creativecommons 2.0 attribution license.

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GreenMonk news roundup 05/11/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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GreenMonk news roundup 05/09/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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GreenMonk news roundup 05/08/2009

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.