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GreenMonk news roundup 12/09/2008

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

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GreenMonk news roundup 12/06/2008

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

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Dirty Coal

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I came across this ad via Joseph Romm’s excellent post – as Joe said:

[the] ad violates a central rule of messaging, rhetoric, and psychology: Don’t keep repeating a strong word the other side is trying to push. That is not just a basic tenet of the 25-century old art of persuasion, but a well-demonstrated principle of modern psychology

Dirty coal is the only kind of coal there is, anything else is just unicorns.

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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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Oracle Utilities, Smart Grids and vehicle to grid

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I was talking to Guerry Waters, the VP Industry Strategy in the Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit the other day.

Guerry was telling me about Oracle Utilities’ background and how they came about as the result of Oracle’s acquisition of SPL back in Nov 2006 and Lodestar in 2007.

We got onto the subject of Demand Response (surprise, surprise!) and I raised my concerns about utilities being too command and control. When I said that for DR to really take off consumers need to be in control of their devices Guerry said:

The idea of automatic control of your Demand Response in the home is very intriguing but very much on the edge now, so what we are doing is we are working with a number of companies, like Tendril, that provides Home Area Networks (HANs) and control of devices in the home, where there can be parameters set from signals that are being passed to the HAN about price…. and bring that down to the HAN and let the HAN respond according to parameters that have been set by the consumer themselves…. and give the consumer opt-out capabilities from that.

Guerry went on to describe scenarios where your Home Area Network can contact you via SMS, for instance if you are away from home to alert you that your HAN is about to respond to a DR signal and do you want to overide or not!

Guerry did say that there are very few utilities thinking this far out but the fact that there are any is hugely heartening!

Our conversation went on to discussing vehicle to grid technologies and it was super to see that Oracle are thinking about the challenges to be overcome and ways to roll out the technologies required to make this a reality.

With both SAP and Oracle rolling out enabling technologies in this space, the Electricity 2.0 vision is quickly becoming a reality.

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GreenMonk news roundup 12/05/2008

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

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How to build a hyper Energy-efficient Data Center

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Building a Hyper Energy Efficient Data Center

View SlideShare presentation. (tags: cold aisle containment cix)

I am speaking next week at a virtual conference called “bMighty – A Deep Dive on IT Infrastructure for SMBs” – apologies in advance for the state of the website(!)

My talk is titled “How to build a hyper Energy-efficient Data Center” and is based on the CIX data center which I helped develop (and am still a director of).

This is the slide deck I will be presenting there.

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GreenMonk news roundup 12/04/2008

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  • Save Toms not Tonnes!

    The average European creates 10 tonnes of CO2 per annum.

    The average American, 20 tonnes.

    To avert the dangers of Climate Change, we need to drop our CO2 production to 1 tonne per person.

    Problem: What is 1 tonne of CO2? How do you visualise it?

    Answer: You don’t! You change the metric. 1 tonne = 1 person’s annual CO2 production.
    1 average person. 1 Tom.

    Because it’s not about saving tonnes, it’s about saving everyone.

    For example, a 15 minute shower is 0.1% of a Tom, driving 100 miles in a standard car is 4% of a Tom and producing 1 laptop computer is 45% of a Tom.

    How many Toms have you consumed? Don’t waste your Toms.

    Save Toms, not tonnes!

    tags: megatom, save toms not tonnes, climate change

  • Joel Makower: Two Steps Forward: Sustainable Business circa 2018: Will It Be Nasty or NICE?

    an intriguing new report from the U.K.-based Forum for the Future and the consultancy Capgemini. The free report, Acting Now for a Positive 2018, Preparing for Radical Change: The Next Decade of Business and Sustainability, examines four scenarios of what the world might look like from a sustainability perspective and offers advice on how to be ready for any of them.

    tags: Cap Gemini, forum for the future, sustainability

  • Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Venice flooding provides glimpse of what’s to come

    One of the highest tides in its history brought Venice to a virtual halt, rekindling a debate over a plan to build moveable flood barriers in an effort to save the lagoon city from high tides.

    City officials said the tide peaked at 61 inches (156 centimeters), well past the 40-inch (110-centimeter) flood mark, as strong winds pushed the sea into the city.

    tags: climate change, sea level rise, venice, global warming

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

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Spectacular HomeCamp feedback!

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Home Camp – What the community says from chris dalby on Vimeo.

HomeCamp was the first of what I hope will be a series of unconferences around Energy hacking or as they say on the website:

Home Camp is an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs

The first HomeCamp was in London this last Saturday November 29th and based on Andrew Whitehouse’s write-up and Chris Dalby’s live videos, the day was a phenomenal success.

The video above also gives some flavour of what delegates took away from the day.

I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it along but I do hope to make the next one which will be in March ’09.

[Disclosure: RedMonk were sponsors of HomeCamp]

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Save Toms not Tonnes!

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At the recent it@cork Green IT conference Gavin Starks of AMEE had an idea which he and Simon Wardley co-pitched to the audience, to change the carbon footprint metric from tonnes of CO2 to people!

The idea, as outlined in the video above was so well received that we decided to create a site to promote it and encourage anyone who also thinks it is a good idea to become involved. The site is at megatom.ning.com.

From the MegaTom about page:

The average European creates 10 tonnes of CO2 per annum.

The average American, 20 tonnes.

To avert the dangers of Climate Change, we need to drop our CO2 production to 1 tonne per person.

Problem: What is 1 tonne of CO2? How do you visualise it?

Answer: You don’t! You change the metric. 1 tonne = 1 person’s annual CO2 production.
1 average person. 1 Tom.

Because it’s not about saving tonnes, it’s about saving everyone.

For example, a 15 minute shower is 0.1% of a Tom, driving 100 miles in a standard car is 4% of a Tom and producing 1 laptop computer is 45% of a Tom.

How many Toms have you consumed? Don’t waste your Toms.

Save Toms, not tonnes!

If you agree that we should be saving Tom’s, not tonnes, why not go to the MegaTom, join and please leave any feedback/suggestions. Thanks.