GreenMonk: the blog

i just came across this website, via dominic campbell, and its pretty much a perfect exemplar of the GreenMonk mindset. Its upbeat, its community-oriented, and it clearly demonstrates that even small changes can make a difference.

How does it work?

The idea is to sign up to challenges, as simple as for instance making sure your car tyres are properly pumped up, and then see that others are doing the same thing, then aggregating the relevant data.

For example:

209 people have reduced CO2 emissions by 1.32 tons by completing this challenge so far. That’s equal to turning off the electricity of 1 home for about 1 month!

You can then hook up with others, create teams, or compete to be the most carbon-busting carbon buster. Very cool all around. Except its US only…. 🙁

Just when you think a battle is well and truly over, history has a habit of turning around to tweak your nose. One of the common big ideas of the moment in IT is that computing is becoming a utility. One of the key arguments underpinning this thinking comes from industrial history, calling out electricity as a model for IT provision. High profile exponents of the argument include Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Nicholas Carr, rhetorician, comedian, and sworn enemy of IT snake-oil.

From Jonathan’s Blog:

It took about a decade for those deploying electricity to settle on a few standards that ultimately accelerated consolidation. From voltage to cycle to plug configuration. (The processes used to get there, although they involved far more violence and loss of animal life, bear a remarkable resemblance to standard setting in the computing industry.) Spooling forward, once the standards existed, businesses could plug into a grid – labor markets went through a fairly sizable dislocation (all those engineers and “CEO’s” had to find other work), but electricity was firmly established as a ubiquitous service.

I started reading The Big Switch the other day, Nicholas Carr’s follow up to Does IT Matter? I am a sucker for arguments from history, and Nick is a good exponent of same. Back in 1892 corporations needed a chief electricity officer to ensure supplies of this most vital commodity. But just a few years later nobody did.

A hundred years ago, companies stopped generating their own power with steam engines and dynamos and plugged into the newly built electric grid. The cheap power pumped out by electric utilities didn’t just change how businesses operate. It set off a chain reaction of economic and social transformations that brought the modern world into existence. Today, a similar revolution is under way. Hooked up to the Internet’s global computing grid, massive information-processing plants have begun pumping data and software code into our homes and businesses. This time, it’s computing that’s turning into a utility.

The shift is already remaking the computer industry, bringing new competitors like Google and Salesforce.com to the fore and threatening stalwarts like Microsoft and Dell. But the effects will reach much further. Cheap, utility-supplied computing will ultimately change society as profoundly as cheap electricity did.

Whether or not Jonathan and Nick are right, it does seem ironic that just as, according to Nick, we no longer need the anachronistic CIO… the Chief Electricity Officer is seemingly about to make a comeback… A PR and communications company recently initiated a debate on the subject, based on primary research:

Seventy-seven percent of business decision makers believe there is a need to expand the C-Suite to include a Chief Energy Officer to manage, implement and measure a company’s return on investment in environmental technology, the so-called Return on Environment, according to a new global survey (PDF) released by Hill & Knowlton.

Beyond the possibility of such a role, we can see hints it is emerging. News is coming fast from Google, for example, on the energy front. First it announces its going to invest in wind, now comes the news the Google brains are going to be applied to replacing coal. From TechWorld:

Google co-founder Larry Page said:

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient datacentres. We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.

Building data centers is obviously not the same as solving the world’s energy needs, but I can’t deny Google’s potential to make an impact in a space that needs more investment and attention. If I ran GE I would be be keeping a very close eye on Google. Its true though- analysts don’t get it.

Its not just Google getting in on the act of electricity generation- BT recently announced plans to invest heavily in wind power. Now I learn from ComputerworldUK that HP is initiating a major solar power program to lessen it reliance on outside sources. “The company has signed a contract with SunPower to install 5,000 solar-power panels in its San Diego facility. The installations will cover 10% of the energy used by the facility and save HP £375,000 in power costs over 15 years.”

The chief energy/electricity officer- is it really so far fetched corporations would create the role when energy supplies aren’t guaranteed. its fine to rely on market solutions, but when the market isn’t perfect (and markets rarely are, especially with geo-politics involved) supply is far from certain. Russia is in a positionto turn Europe’s gas off. We’ve arguably already hit Peak Oil, the point at which we stop finding new economic deposits.

When technology companies start their own electricity generation efforts you know the wind is changing. The lights are going on because we’re getting worried about the lights going out.

 

 

picture credit: NY Times story Google’s Next Frontier: Renewable Energy

Technorati Tags: Sun – GE – Google – energy – greening – PeakOil – HP – solar – wind

Dell is now rolling out a new waste disposal services for SMBs, including free curbside pickup.

I have a feeling the service is only available in the US for now, which is a shame. But well done Dell.

Programmable Web writes up the open source, open data AMEE carbon calculator.

I recently covered freecycle… a service to help people offload useful stuff to each other when they don’t want it anymore. Now comes news that Islington Council is recycling the freecycle approach, with its own SwapXhange, which appears to be going really well.

So far over 17,000 people have visited the Islington Swapxchange website and you have swapped over 16 tonnes of items . This is the equivalent of 354 fridge freezers, 785 televisions, 1040 lawnmowers or 114 pianos!

Well done posh Islingtonites! 😉

photocredit – EVERYDAYLIFEMODERN

In other good local news, a case-study driven report from the Society of IT Management (Socitm) urges local authority IT departments to take action to make their operations more environmentally friendly. See the Computerworld story here.

Another cool Computerworld story is this story on employee-owned retailer John Lewis, a cool interview with Gary Hird, technical infrastructure manager. Two points to note.

One: employee ownership means that “gimmicks” to make people, say, turn off the lights, are more effective. Signs don’t say “turn off the lights, its green”…. they say “Switch off – it’s eating my bonus”.

Two: maybe mainframes aren’t so bad after all. I loved this throwaway line:

An audit of server usage revealed a low 8% utilisation. “Our mainframe has nearly 100% utilisation,” points outs Hird. “Clearly, the Intel servers could do better.”

The solution- implement VMware.

Or just blog more about it? I have to admit I was really surprised by the findings from this research from Umbria, a blog strip-mining service. Given its now commonly accepted the blogosphere is pretty well split between the sexes, I couldn’t work out why “Almost six in 10 mentions were from males, indexing far higher than the generic blogosphere composition.”

Could it be that green is just another fact-based way for us to geek out? Its like green fact porn or something? New green products etc. At Greenmonk I try and get in touch with my “feminine side” – no amount of facts its going to move the debate forward. What matters now is feelings. There – I said it. I am going to have to think some more about what Umbria’s findings though, and hopefully they will be carrying out the survey again.

When I first heard about BadBuster a lightbulb went off (energy-saving of course). Sustainability rating in real time, something like the way FT.com now turns every company name into an AJAX-based live share price widget… but in this case with an ethical dimension.

The idea behind BadBuster is that when you come across a brand or company name on the web the BadBuster widget aggegates data from a number of other systems, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, Calvert Online and ClimateCounts. BadBuster condenses the numbers from those sources into a single score for each company. The tragic thing about BadBuster is that’s its IE only, as Read/Write Web points out in its review. Hopefully that will change in the short term. I might well start using it then, but for now its just something interesting. Better informed web surfers has to be a good thing. It looks like this:

Its Friday afternoon, so a bit of fun is always good. I was taken with this photo story.

The Met Office is taking part in a global programme to monitor the world’s oceans to improve understanding of how they influence climate change.

The Argo programme uses thousands of floating devices like the one pictured, which provide continuous data from even the remotest parts of the world’s oceans.

They look like bouys, as above, and there are a lot of them out there. Its amazing how much coverage you get out of 3000 devices, given the scale of the world’s oceans.

I do hope the machines don’t end up like their namesake’s though- the original Argo collapsed, killing its famous skipper, Jason. The lesson – don’t mess with Hera….

bonus pic for the dorks amongst you.

..

 

I saw a tweet from @derekabdinor the other day that intrigued me, so I went to check out the Jungle Rating site. The consultancy has just published ratings which aim for a view of how firms included on the DJSI STOXX Dow Jones sustainability index perform in online sustainability reporting. The idea is to create a benchmark consisting of 125 research criteria.

The outright winner was BASF.

BASF publishes topical information (news and case study updates) and offers complete GRI-based performance information, very useful for the professional user groups (socially responsible investors and analysts).

The website also contains several unique features, such as case study videos, flash animations, downloadable Excel sheets and interactive graphs.”

interactivity, programmability, and more open data. Makes sense.

The next companies on the list were BHP Billiton, Centrica, Novo Nordisk & BP.

Gas and utility companies-the usual regulated industry suspects for CSR PR. I need to spend some time checking out the DJSI SToXX index. I must admit I was pretty surprised not to see BT on list, given that its a European company I rate highly on sustainability action and reporting.

Meanwhile seeing BP on the list also made me think-not because of its sustainability reporting capabilities, but simply because I think BP talks the talk, but doesn’t walk it. The Lord Brown era was an era of deceit: all mouth and very short trousers from a sustainability perspective. Beyond Petroleum- yeah, right. Tell it to Alaska or Texas.  Lauding BP for its online carbon calculator seems a bit pointless. After all-there are already a surfeit of such calculators out there. Carbon calculators are table stakes not differentiators.

I spent yesterday in Berlin with Transparency International, which got me thinking about the difference between PR and a real commitment to sustainability.

The ticklist means nothing. Videos and “web 2.0′ features can obscure, rather than enable, transparency. Peter Wilkinson, a consultant working with TI, told me a brilliant story over dinner about a famous London lawyer who, having been refused permissionto build a garage extension to his house, spent time poring over the relevant statutes, and then went ahead with his new garage anyway. It turned out that as long as the structure had doors on all four sides planning permission was not actually required. Of course if you opened any of the doors on three sides of the building all you found behind them were brick walls. If that isn’t a brilliant metaphor for tick-list corporate social responsibility (CSR) I don’t know what is. All the reports and funky web sites in the world won’t create a real commitment to sustainability.

Or will they? Its kind of hard not to “inhale” when you’re smoking CSR dope. Much as with open source there is a disruption associated with adopting new approaches.

I would like to see an index correlating true CSR responsibility with best in class reporting. Perhaps a future version of XBRL can help with that…True benchmarking. But in the shorter term it seems Jungle has a point. The transition from CSR brochureware to interactive read/write CSR platforms mirrors the transition we’ve seen on the web. With full awareness of the potential danger of using the term I am tempted to tag the new approach CSR 2.0.

I am not the only one thinking this way.

The web offers a chance to put the social in corporate social responsibility. 

Geert Jan Grimberg, internet consultant at Jungle Rating, says:

“the best performers provide complete and topical information, but also make use of the unique possibilities the web offers in terms of multimedia (e.g. video, rich internet) and personalisation (e.g. interactive graphs, downloadable Excel sheets)”. Very few companies use their corporate website to facilitate a stakeholder dialogue, by means of a weblog or periodical chat sessions.”

Dialogue, markets as conversations. Jungle makes some forecasts based on its research:

1. Disclosing topicalities, statements and opinions: Companies use their corporate website more and more to inform stakeholders on topical matters both within their company and in the broader environment (industry / politics).
2. Creation of an online stakeholder experience: The last years, wave riders have started to experiment with the use of multimedia (images, video and rich internet) on their corporate website and within the sustainability section.
3. Taking into account individual stakeholder preferences: many techniques are available to personalise information for specific needs, some front runners for example offer alert functionalities, interactive charts and/or podcasts (downloadable audio files) within their online sustainability section.
4. Establishing an online stakeholder dialogue: Although by far omnipresent yet, some companies start to make use of the various possibilities the internet offers to get a discussion with stakeholders going (e.g. chat, weblog, polls).

All good motherhood and apple crumble. For me its all about point 4, the conversations between corporations and multiple stakeholders. The fact only 17 out of the 53 firms studied were willing to discuss their efforts with Jungle indicates we have a long way to go. Real leaders are building structures with doors and windows, that allow stakeholders through the corporate membrane.

 

Thanks to SideLong for the use of the photo above.

 

Technorati Tags: CSR – CSR 2.0 – tags – JungleRating – BASF – BP – Alaska – oil – BT –

greenbang is one of my favourite ecoblogs. I was particularly taken with its recent Q&A series with Simon Mills – the sustainable development coordinator for the City of London Corporation, which manages affairs in the Square Mile. His answers are a model of clarity- evidently Simon is not a politician. I like the way his answers include links to information resources, and are so well-informed across a range of subject areas. Some of the answers are quite surprising and definitely worth reading. The series works as a great example of transparency, a core Greenmonk value.

The City of London has a policy for “green roofs”. Here’s why:

Firstly we have identified green roofs as a valuable resource for biodiversity in our Biodiversity Action Plan, and have produced guidance notes for developers on both Green Roofs and Vertical Habitats.

Secondly we have identified how important green roofs are to combat the impacts of climate change– basically they act a giant sponges, soaking up excess rainfall and releasing it slowly, so as not to overwhelm the sewers.

Who knew? The format greenbang used is interesting – giving each answer its own blog entry, rather than compiling them into one uber-interview – works really well. So here are the questions:

What is the plan for making buildings zero carbon at the 2012 Olympics?

As the owner of three of London’s most vital wholesale markets, serving the fresh produce needs of London’s businesses, what is City of London doing to get more local, organic and Fairtrade produce sold through these markets?

What is the City of London doing to change the mindset of its resident corporations to make the same everyday steps to be greener that individual consumers are?

What is the City of London doing to encourage a ‘buy recycled’ policy?

With a huge unmet demand for food growing space from the population in the area, are the City of London looking into alternative growing space such as Green Roofs?

Why is the City so bad for cycle parking? – it’s a close-run competition with Westminster on who offers the fewest proper parking stations.

While I realise the City Of London is a particular approach to city and financial district governance, with a long and distinguished history, I would love to see greenbang, which has some global coverage ambitions, run a series of interviews with officials in cities such as New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Frankfurt.

photo courtesy of Cimm.

Very interesting idea here from Sky TV in the UK. They are getting customers to vote for which charities they should support. The charities have created videos about their efforts, which you can then vote for. This is the second cool green thing I have seen Sky involved in in as many weeks. Sky is the UK’s name for FOX, in case you didn’t know. I have a favourite charity choice already – Global Action Plan, which I wrote about here. Disclosure: I am going to be doing some pro-bono work with Global Action Plan on community engagement work.

But please watch the videos and make up your own minds.

Well you didn’t think I meant me, did you? I must admit I couldn’t resist the headline Governors links with Google energy savings initiative from Computerworld today:

The governors of Kansas and Minnesota said that they are willing to spend the required additional $30 per computer when the states buy their more than 4,000 PCs each year. That is about how much more a computer with special energy saving components costs. The governors said they expect to pay off that additional investment quickly and possibly save even more through reduced energy costs.

“As with many energy efficient pieces of equipment, there is a slightly increased out-front capital cost but over the life of the computer you actually recoup those savings so we think it is a win-win situation,” said Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

Ah Sibelius… another last name of note. Go Kansas and Minnesota! And does anyone know of similar initiatives in the UK, people getting involved with the climatesaverssmartcomputing? It looks like the guy I need to hook up with is Bill Weihl. What a great Greenmonk interview he would make.

“They will begin to drive down the cost of the PCs, said Bill Weihl, vice president and board member of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative as well as the clean energy director for Google. “When these efficient systems are sold in high volumes, the price premium will become small if not zero,” he said.

I also note that these initiatives are at the State, rather than the Federal level. As with plastic bags, local governments appear more concerned to get on with fixes than central government.

Technorati Tags: climatesavers – google – kansas – minnesota – PCs – greening