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GreenMonk news roundup 01/10/2009

January 10, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Sea Level Rise Of One Meter Within 100 Years

New research indicates that the ocean could rise in the next 100 years to a meter higher than the current sea level – which is three times higher than predictions from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.

tags: climate change, ipcc, sea level
Landmark national study reveals significance of green practices in attractions industry

The results of a national survey released by PGAV Destination Consulting, in collaboration with the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Garden, reveal an important understanding about consumer attitudes and perceptions regarding environmentally sustainable operations in attractions. The study, conducted by Jerry Henry & Associates and called “Survival of the Greenest,” shows that “green consumerism” is not a passing fad.

According to the study, the influence of Gen X and Y is significant and enduring. Nearly 75% of 18-34 year olds say they are more likely to visit an attraction that is pursuing environmentally friendly practices.

tags: gen x, gen y, green consumerism, green products, environmental sustainability
Floods to become commonplace by 2080

Flooding like that which devastated the North of England last year is set to become a common event across the UK in the next 75 years

tags: global warming, climate change, flood, flooding

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

Linking carbon charges to cleanup costs

January 9, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Photo credit helmet13

When deciding on the price of a new product, one of the main criteria for setting the price is the cost of production. After all, charge less than the cost of production, and that will soon put an end to the company’s profits and possibly even the company itself!

So, if legislators are considering charging companies for the CO2 they produce, shouldn’t they set the price based on the cost of cleanup? Or is that just a silly idea?

How much does it cost to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere? Obviously that depends on how one goes about the removal of the CO2 (whether by sequestration, growing 1 tonne worth of carbon or some other method) but surely the price companies have to pay for every tonne of CO2 they produce should be linked to the cost of cleanup. No?

Scratched DVDs soon to be a thing of the past?

January 9, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Photo credit Fred

I have two little boys. One is five, the other is two. DVDs have a short life in our house. It is almost impossible to keep them out of little hands. What happens to when the boys find them, esp. when the two year old handles them, is not pretty! So, if not entirely for Green reasons, I am really looking forward to the day that DVDs are no more!

DVDs are going away, you say? Indeed they are. Dematerialization ftw!

DVDs will soon go the way of the humble casette tape or even the CD – you remember CDs right? Not so long ago they were the default way to buy music, now it is online via iTunes, Amazon, etc.

Similarly, for all kinds of reasons of convenience, I see DVDs being obsolete in the not-to-distant future.

The way I see it, movies will be universally available for download. Once you purchase them online, you download/stream to watch and will get the option to store them remotely (in a virtual movie library) and/or store them locally (local backup). Should you lose your local backup, you simply re-download at no cost.

Green advantages are the obvious lack of pressing, packaging and shipping of DVDs. Non-Green advantages include not having to keep DVDs on the higher shelves away from little hands and/or wondering if that DVD you just rented from your local store will actually play when you get it home!

GreenMonk news roundup 01/09/2009

January 9, 2009 by Tom Raftery

ReGeneration – I’ll Take a Tankful of Green Crude

Some people think of it as going from the fish tank to the gas tank, while others simply call it the power of pond scum. What they are talking about is research to turn algae—the green slimy stuff you find in stagnant water—into a clean replacement for petroleum.

tags: algae, biofuel, green crude
The Raised Floor: The Battle for Data Center Efficiency – Who Owns it?

We are finally starting to see all IT vendors realize that they need to be part of the solution. Server vendors were the first to recognize this, since the increase in chip power consumption and heat dissipation was the first obvious problem. However, all elements in the data center need to contribute to improved power and cooling metrics.

tags: data center, datacenter, energy efficiency, power, cooling
Wireless Electricity Is Here (Seriously) | Fast Company

No more electrical cables?

After more than 100 years of dashed hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies that can safely transmit power through the air — a breakthrough that portends the literal and figurative untethering of our electronic age.

Wonder what the efficiencies of these systems are!

tags: witricity, wireless electricity
Met Office warns elderly may need summer aid to keep homes cool | UK news | The Guardian

UK government has been warned it may need to start thinking about introducing emergency hot weather payments to help poorer households keep cool

tags: climate change, hot weather payments, uk government, global warming

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

Will we ever see inkwells replace inkjet cartridges?

January 8, 2009 by Tom Raftery

HP inkjet printer cartridge return envelope

Photo credit scoobyfoo

HP’s Ed Gemmell contacted me the other day to let me know that

HP will celebrate first anniversary of ‘closed loop’ manufacturing for inket cartridges at end of Jan http://tinyurl.com/7pj6bc

I followed the link to see what HP were doing with their inkjet cartridges and, in fairness to them, they seem to be doing some good stuff!. From their release:

HP today announced it has developed an engineering breakthrough that enables the use of post-consumer recycled plastics in the production of new Original HP inkjet print cartridges.

More than 200 million cartridges have been manufactured using the process thus far. HP used more than 5 million pounds of recycled plastic in its inkjet cartridges last year, and the company is committed to using twice as much in 2008…. In addition to closing the design loop, using recycled content saves energy and keeps plastic out of landfills – since first piloting the process, HP has used enough recycled plastic to fill more than 200 tractor trailers….

“HP’s use of recycled plastic in an application as technically demanding as their inkjet cartridges represents an unprecedented engineering innovation,” said Larry Koester, vice president of Communications, Environmental Division, Society of Plastics Engineers. “This remarkable achievement comes after many years of perseverance and ingenuity by HP and their partners.”

So all very laudable, and recognised as such by the Society of Plastics Engineers, kudos to HP.

However, if HP wanted to be really Green about its inkjet printer cartridges it would make them completely re-usable. I should only have to buy one cartridge ever (or possible one per colour). I should then be able to buy ink refills in fully bio-degradeable packaging to re-fill my cartridge every time it runs out.

This would be a truly Green advancement in inkjet printing and to my knowledge, there is no technical barrier to this happening. Is it likely to happen any time soon? I guess that depends just how serious inkjet manufacturers are about being Green.

In fact, come to think of it, there should be no such thing as inkjet cartridges. If there is only to be one for the lifetime of the printer, it should be embedded, not removable. An inkwell, not a cartridge, into which I pour my refill.

More info please IBM…

January 8, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Speaking of data centers, I was delighted to read this morning of a partnership between IBM and Indian bank Kotak.

According to the release, IBM is helping the bank consolidate its server rooms into one data center and Kotak will save:

over US$1.2 million in operational efficiency and reduced energy costs over the next five years

I’d like to see some of the calcs behind those data – $1.2m over five years sounds low to me unless it is a modest data center.

Intriguingly, the release refers to:

a chilled water-based cooling and an automatic floor pressurization system

If that is water cooled servers (as opposed to water cooled air handling units) then this is nice. I’d love to know what an ” automatic floor pressurization system” system is. Anyone know? My guess is that it is something for maintaining underfloor airflow integrity but if it is that, then it sounds like traditional air cooled servers, not water cooled 🙁

Hello? Anyone from IBM have any more info on this?

GreenMonk news roundup 01/08/2009

January 8, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Green Car Congress: Kawasaki to Produce Gigacell Bipolar NiMH Batteries for Transportation Applications

Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. (KHI) will begin manufacturing versions of the Gigacell bipolar NiMH industrial battery—originally targeted for grid applications such as output smoothing for wind and solar—for transportation applications, beginning with systems for rail applications, according to a report in the Nikkei.

tags: batteries, Gigacell, nimh
Solar Power Game-Changer: Near Perfect Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles :: Singularity Hub

A huge leap has been made in the creation of high efficiency, cost effective solar power with the announcement of the world’s first material that absorbs the entire spectrum of sunlight (UV, visible, and infrared) from virtually any angle with near 100% efficiency.

tags: solar power, absorption, solar panels
Polarized light pollution leads animals astray

Human-made light sources can alter natural light cycles, causing animals that rely on light cues to make mistakes when moving through their environment

tags: light pollution
Polar Sea Ice Cap and Snow – Cryosphere Today

A webspace devoted to the current state of our arctic and antarctic sea ice including an archive of daily polar sea ice cap concentrations (1979 – present)

tags: arctic ice, arctic sea ice, antarctic, sea ice, thaw, global warming
- If you
  teach about weather, climate, or the Earth, this site has wonderful images to
  make the concepts real. See current and archived images of the polar ice in the
  northern hemisphere and follow the data tracking on the changes over many
  years. There are also graphs of the data and time-lapse video clips of the
  changes over six year periods. (See the small text links near the top—easy to
  miss).
  
  – post by bigfellow

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

James Farrar on SAP and Sustainability

January 7, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Photo credit photobunny

[audio: http://media.libsyn.com/media/redmonk/JamesFarrarSAPonSustainability.mp3]

My guests on this podcast are James Farrar and James Governor. James Farrar is Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at SAP while James Governor is the co-founder of RedMonk.

SAP recently published their Sustainability Report and both James Governor and I were keen to chat to SAP to learn more about how SAP views Sustainability.

We invited James onto the show and despite/because of some ribbing and rigorous questions what resulted was, I think a great conversation.

Listen in and let me know what you think…

Download the entire interview here
(25.7mb mp3)

How to build a Green data center – practical steps!

January 7, 2009 by Tom Raftery

Photo credit Jerry Sweeney

I received an email over the holidays from someone who was building a data center and who wanted some advice on how to make it Greener. I replied with a few suggestions from my experience building the hyper energy-efficient data center at CIX and then thought why not flesh out my response to a blog post for GreenMonk so here you go…

One of the low hanging fruit in our DC design was going for cold aisle containment. This simply involves sealing the cold aisle (roof, doors and blanking panels – see photo above) – this stops air mixing and avoids the warm air from the servers heating the cold air you have just spent a fortune cooling.

Utilise free cooling as much as possible. With cold aisle containment, if you have cool ambient temps (10.5C/50.9F yearly avg in Cork) your room, if it has lots of airspace and is uninsulated, will do a lot of your cooling for you.

Source chillers which can also take advantage of free cooling. Place chillers outside your building if you are in a cool climate with as much pipework as possible also outside so that your ambient temperature again cools your water as much as possible.

Many chillers now come with multiple compressors that come on one at a time and then, only when needed. Chiller compressors use a lot of energy so minimising their use saves on costs and CO2 emissions.

See if you can get a dynamic feedback mechanism from your air handling units to constantly maximise the temp of the water coming from your chillers. Maximising your chiller output temp, as well as reducing chiller energy usage, also reduces condensation in your data center. The problem with condensation is that it requires re-humidification of the air. Humidifying air requires boiling water to make steam, which needs energy for heat, which requires even more energy to cool! So maximising your chiller output temp is a nice win, win.

Source super efficient UPS’ – we used GE Super Eco UPS’ – these UPS’ operate at up to 98.4% efficiency. That is a massive improvement over traditional UPS’ which were typically only around 75% efficient.

Go 2n on your diesel generators so that when electricity is expensive, you can not only come off grid (and poss sell your lack of use to the utility) but also start your 2nd generator and thus sell electricity to the grid (at a time when it is expensive – win, win). If you can run your generators on bio-diesel, even better.

Try to use the heat generated by the servers to heat your offices, your water, etc. using heat exchangers. Think of it as using your office as part of your cooling system!

Have high unobstructed raised floors and high ceilings so your air handling units don’t have to work hard to move the air around.

And maximise the temperature in your data center! Typical data centers operate at 19-21C (66.2-69.8F) but in conversations I have had in recent months with HP, Sun, Dell and IBM all have said their equipment will operate no problem in data centers at temperatures of 25C (77F) – reducing your data center’s cooling requirement by a couple of degrees would yield enormous savings but bear in mind too that it does reduce your resolution window if there is a failure in your cooling system.

GreenMonk news roundup 01/06/2009

January 6, 2009 by Tom Raftery

UPDATE 1-Metals pollute waters near US coal ash spill:group | Markets | Reuters

Preliminary water tests from rivers near a huge coal ash spill in Tennessee show elevated levels of pollutants such as mercury and lead, a environmental group said on Friday.

tags: arsenic, mercury, lead, coal, fly ash, tva
The Energy Roadmap – US Fuel Cell Council proposes $1.2 billion to support Smart Grid & Electric Vehicles

The US Fuel Cell Council is now lobbying Congress for more than a billion dollar investment to accelerate America’s manufacturing position around this important piece of the future energy sector.

tags: fuel cell, energy storage, congress
Living on Earth: Melting at the Top of the World

Global warming is having a dramatic impact in the Himalayas, where the glaciers are melting at a rapid pace. One local mountain climber has started a campaign to educate villagers and trekkers alike about the effects of climate change on the mountains. Dawa Steven Sherpa tells host Steve Curwood about his hopes and fears for the Himalayas.

tags: global warming, himalayas, nepal, mount everest, mekong, ganges, yellow, yangtze
Next generation Smart LED lighting

As an alternative to the traditional incandescent light bulb, LED lights provide significant energy savings. They can be 2,000 percent more efficient than conventional light bulbs and 500 percent more efficient than compact fluorescent bulbs. Engineers and scientists predict that widespread use of LEDs over the course of 10 years would save more than $1 trillion in energy costs, eliminate the need for nearly a billion barrels of oil over 10 years, and lead to a substantial reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. “

tags: led, oled, led lighting, smart leds
California Mulls Crackdown on kW Hogging Flat Panel TVs – Green Daily

futuristic new sets are a huge power drain compared to their cathode ray predecessors. That’s why the California Energy Commission is considering a preemptive crackdown on flat screens.

tags: plasma screen, lcd, cathode ray tube, california

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

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