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GreenMonk news roundup 03/05/2009

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

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Energy efficiency in the Enterprise – Chris O’Connor’s Pulse keynote

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Chris O’Connor is vice president of Strategy and Market Management for the Tivoli brand within IBM Software Group.

Chris gave a spectacular demo/presentation at Pulse 2009 on energy efficiency in the enterprise.

What set this presentation apart is that Chris gave some great stats (in 2007 data centers consumed 183bn kWh of energy, this cost $15.9bn, and 75% of enterprises have initiatives to reduce energy consumption).

Chris also demo’d some of the hugely effective ways that getting solid realtime metrics around energy utilisation in the enterprise helps reduce consumption, and finally at around 13:45 in the video, Chris tells a fascinating story about how their data center in Austin Texas was suffering from power spikes at 1am every morning, how they identified the cause and solved it.

IBM were good enough to give us a copy of his presentation for posting here.

[Disclosure – IBM paid my travel and expenses to attend Pulse]

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GreenMonk news roundup 03/04/2009

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

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Fujitsu Siemens and the Zero Watt PC!

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Fujitsu Siemens announced their 0 Watt (as in zero Watt) PC at CeBit this week.

I asked Fujitsu Siemens’ Green IT Coordinator and Spokesman, Dr Bernd Kosch to come on the show to talk to us about the thinking behind this announcement and he very generously agreed!

Of course the PC does consume more than 0 Watts when operational, however, the clever bit is that unlike standard PCs which consume anywhere from 1 Watt to 5 Watts and up when in standby, the new Fujitsu consumes 0 Watts in standby!

Combine this with one of Fujistu Siemens’ 0 Watt monitors (also 0 Watts in standby), roll out policies which put all PCs into standby after hours and you drastically reduce your energy footprint (many office computers are used no more than 8 hours a day and not at all at weekends)!

The bad news? The computers won’t be available to buy until this summer.

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GreenMonk news roundup 03/03/2009

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  • Desktops will move to the cloud, VMware exec says

    The desktop is one the areas ripe for moving into the cloud, and the driver will be lower operational costs for both large and small companies, a VMware executive said at the company’s VMworld conference in Cannes.

    tags: virtualization, desktop virtualization

  • Storing Solar Power in Salt – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com

    What if it were possible to have solar power even when the clouds close in, or in the middle of the night? What if it were so reliable, it could fill the gap when the wind dies down and turbines stop spinning?

    It’s all possible, said Terry Murphy, president of SolarReserve. The company’s design uses the sun’s heat to boil water and spin a turbine — not unlike other “solar thermal” concepts that are now common. But where a typical system uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and heat water; SolarReserve uses them to heat a salt, which melts into a liquid about twice as dense as water — and here’s the catch: stored in thermal silo, the melted salt is able to maintain vast amounts of heat, which can tapped later for use in power production.

    tags: baseload, solar thermal, molten salt, salt

  • SAP Increases Focus on Sustainable Business

    Company Announces Expanded Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Application; Aggressive Carbon Footprint Reduction Target; and New Sustainability Organization Led by Its First Chief Sustainability Officer

    tags: sap, cso, chief sustainability officer

  • BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Microgrids as peer-to-peer energy

    Small networks of power generators in “microgrids” could transform the electricity network in the way that the net changed distributed communication.

    That is one of the conclusions of a Southampton University project scoping out the feasibility of microgrids for power generation and distribution.

    tags: peer to peer, microgrids, chp

  • Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom | Video on TED.com

    Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.

    tags: TED, barry schwartz

  • Jaguar drives to be green – Times Online

    Jaguar is working hard to improve its green credentials – including an ambitious plan, dubbed “Limo Green”, that will produce a prototype luxury saloon capable of more than 57 miles per gallon – about the same as the best family cars today.

    tags: jaguar, limo green, ev, phev

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

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Jonathan Gay, CTO Greenbox, talks home energy management

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With Google’s announcement of their PowerMeter, home energy management solutions are really going mainstream.

With that in mind, I wanted to have a chat with Jonathan Gay, the founder and CTO of Greenbox (not CEO as I said in the intro – d’oh!). Greenbox have been one of the pioneering companies in this space and they sell their energy management solution to utilities for rollout to the utilities’ customers.

Smart home energy management solutions are going to pivotal to the rollout of successful demand response programs – if my home energy management solution can interface with my appliances and have them respond to dynamic energy pricing information according to rules I set, then demand response will play a significant part in reducing our energy footprint.

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/28/2009

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  • France’s Nuclear Failures | Greenpeace International

    Despite the French government’s global marketing of its flagship European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) as cheap and safe, nuclear energy is rapidly becoming the most expensive way to produce electricity, and its highly radioactive waste poses an ever-increasing problem.

    Greenpeace has recently uncovered evidence that nuclear waste from the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) – the flagship of the French nuclear industry – will be up to seven times more hazardous than waste produced by existing nuclear reactors, increasing costs and the danger to health and the environment.

    tags: france, nuclear, french, epr

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

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/27/2009

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

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/26/2009

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  • Costs and environmental impacts of electric cars

    a guest post by Joost van den Bulk in which the costs and benefits of electric cars available by 2010 are compared with internal combustion cars powered by gasoline for the Netherlands. It is a summary of his Master thesis in environmental science at Wageningen University in the Netherlands (PDF, 3 Mb, 72 pages).

    Developments in battery technology have made cars driven by electric propulsion cost competitive with internal combustion based cars. Based on a scenario in which a car owner drives 15,000 kilometers annually, the car is owned for a period of 6 years, and the oil price on average remains above 100 dollars per barrel in the next two decades, it was found that an electric car for the consumer is already cheaper than a gasoline powered vehicle in the Netherlands, and that this will only improve in the future. This is the case because higher initial investments in the purchase of an electric car are more than compensated by lower fuel costs, reduced maintenance and tax benefits. Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions of an electric car are at least half that of the gasoline powered car based on the current Dutch electricity mix.

    tags: ev, bev, phev, electric car

  • Drought Shrivels China’s Wheat Belt – NYTimes.com

    Northern China is dry in the best of times. But a long rainless stretch has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people — but gets only one-fifth as much rain as the rest of the country.
    Skip to next paragraph
    The New York Times

    Northern China grows three-fifths of the country’s crops.

    The current drought, considered the worst in Northern China in at least half a century, is crippling not only the country’s best wheat farmland, but also the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people.

    tags: china, drought, wheat, winter wheat, rain

  • Marc Gunther » The anatomy of a latte

    Have you ever wondered how much water it takes to make a Starbucks grande latte? I hadn’t until I met Jason Clay.

    tags: wwf, jason clay, starbucks

  • James Governor’s Monkchips » An Open Memo to Sam and Mark: Who is the real leader?

    One of the big battles of this depression is going to be HP versus IBM. But we live in a new business environment and you need to rethink strategy accordingly. The Street can’t promise you anything. Only the government can do that right now. So why not cut out the middleman? Forget namby pamby corporate social responsibility. Just contract with government on the basis you won’t cut jobs. Its not a bail-out: its an employment strategy. This is real sustainability.

    tags: ibm, hp, sustainability, employment, mark hurd, sam palmisano

  • IBM Press room – 2009-02-25 IBM Sheds New Light on the Smart Energy Consumer – United States

    Global Business Services today unveiled its new report, “Lighting the Way: Understanding the smart energy consumer,” that shows consumers around the globe are willing to become more involved with managing their energy use.

    The study shows while in the short term, changes in customer needs will occur based on personal initiative and income, in the long run, even more radical changes may yet emerge as the Millennial Generation continues to move into adulthood and the energy customer base.

    Those respondents age 18 to 34 were most eager for the types of “self-service” and automated energy management that ‘smart’ metering and smart grids will bring.

    tags: smart grid, smart meter, ibm

  • Four Dimensions of Sustainability – CSR Perspective

    Reducing impact on climate change is a challenge many corporations are trying to tackle. Many organizations are up for the challenge but many are unsure of where to begin among the myriad of activities on the table.

    Due to these challenges, I’ve developed a white paper which I hope will provide more insight on how to navigate these challenges. The Four Dimensions of Sustainability evolved from my trying to put BT’s and other company’s many sustainability activities into a logical set of categories for a presentation I had to give.

    tags: csr, sustainability, bt, white paper

  • Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels | Reuters

    The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

    tags: arctic, antarctic, sea level rise, climate change

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

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GreenMonk news roundup 02/25/2009

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