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Green Shoots at Microsoft: Public Sector Engagement: EU, UK

As I have written previously, Microsoft is finally beginning to pull together a coherent green story under new sustainability supremo Rob Bernard. The company is also missing a bunch of tricks, but more on that later. But back to the good. Yesterday came news that Microsoft is signing a non-exclusive five year deal with the European Environmental Agency (EAA) with a goal to “make environmental information more accessible to citizens in Europe”. A laudable goal. As I have written before We Are The Watchdogs. But in order to be watchdogs we need open data, transparently collected and shared. Its somewhat ironic that Microsoft is providing its services and software for free; given the EU sometimes has an issue with freebies. It will be interesting to see whether the EEA’s new web presence still uses Google custom search like the current one. The first step is to build a Web 1.0-style publishing portal, which will be based on the usual Microsoft middleware, and some Microsoft Live services, such as Virtual Earth. The EAA has wider ambitions that just publishing data however. According to the press release Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the EEA said:

“This collaboration is a first of its kind to establish a two-way communication on the environment. Until now, authorities, including the EEA, have communicated their data to the public. But local observers, who are often the first to notice real change in their environment, had difficulties sharing their observations with others. This partnership will provide them a platform to do exactly that”.

Likesay, this is pretty much a canonical Greenmonk story. We are all watchdogs, we are all observers. Science progresses most effectively when research and data are widely distributed. Over 500 million people-that’s a lot of eyeballs. Interestingly enough the EAA is including Turkey in the scheme – so its taking the long, wide view. The EAA has a 13 year history of Open Data, such as making greenhouse gas information available to all, but normally focuses on EU policymakers, rather than citizens. Its great to see them turning the funnel the other way…

In other Microsoft related eco news, brought to my attention by Dominic Campbell, the first social media manager at a UK local authority, Wakefield Council saves over £4m while cutting carbon emissions.A skeptic might say this story was just greenwashing, but at Greenmonk we tend to focus on outcomes, rather than looking for hyprocrisy. As Jamie Hailstone writes: “the council will save more than £4m and cut carbon emissions by 35 tons.” There is a virtuous circle created by marketing efficiency as green. Green is Lean. Microsoft’s virtualisation team could learn a lot from the case study – there is nothing wrong with quick wins. Final bonus link: check out this sexy story about Virtual Earth running on Wind powered-servers.

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Data Center Energy Efficiency: money in the bank

Barclays Bank and technology provider HP have just signed a deal to roll out new cooling technology at Barclays’ new Gloucester data center. According to the press release

HP’s Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) solution contributes significantly to a package of energy saving measures which will allow Barclays to save up to 13.4% of total energy used for its data centre. These energy saving measures will significantly reduce its carbon footprint by approx 7470 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Barclays joined the CBI climate change task force last November. Its climate change targets for 2006-2010 include:

• Reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 (using 2000 as the baseline year)
• Reduce carbon intensity from 16.8 tonnes to 12.9 tonnes CO2 per £m of UK income(using 2005 baseline.) Carbon intensity is a measure of emissions relative to business growth and it allows comparisons to be made between companies.
• Reduce energy consumption in offices and branches by 20 per cent per employee (FTE) (using 2005 as the baseline)

The data center is as good a place as any to start, but it would be interesting to hear more about Barclays energy efficiency plans for its large real estate portfolio.  I also think its a shame that Barclays isn’t putting a pounds sterling figure on potential savings. To be a beacon for others it needs to translate the technical gubbins and low carbon talk into simple bottom line improvements. Shouldn’t be that hard for a bank. On the other hand of course, your carbon mileage may vary (that is, energy prices will certainly change).

According to Greenbang the big Wall Street investment banks, in conjunction with a number of energy companies, have also made some useful progress in establishing best practices for energy investment with a Carbon Principles scheme.

This effort is the first time a group of banks has come together and consulted with power companies and environmental groups to develop a process for understanding carbon risk around power sector investments needed to meet future economic growth and the needs of consumers for reliable and affordable energy.

JPMorgan, one of the banks involved, this week made its own bold gamble in carbon trading, acquiring ClimateCare, a British company that pioneered carbon offsetting. According to the Guardian ClimateCare “makes reductions of greenhouse gases such as C02 on behalf of individuals and companies around the world, and invests in wind power, hydro power, biomass, human energy and cooking-stove projects in developing countries.”

Like many others I am very skeptical of current approaches to offsetting. The idea that I can fly as much as I want as long as I later pay my absolution: “It’s not just about confession and saying my Hail Marys.” That said, its clear that the mechanism businesses find most compelling, to the point of fetish, is that of the market. Markets are a religion for some people, and they are the people with money to invest. Carbon trading could end up defining business in the 21st Century in much the same way that oil consumption defined the 20th.  I am not alone – according to S2 Intelligence businesses will spend $595 billion by 2010 on systems to support green accounting (yet again thanks Greenbang). Or as Computerworld puts it Green IT spend to outstrip Y2K within two years.

Finally I would just like to say JPMorgan’s research arm should be strongly applauded for making some of its climate-related research publicly available, for example this study into Europe, airlines and climate change targets.As I have argued before wider access to solid information is key to better outcomes. Well done old blue blood Wall Street bank.

Regarding the photo above I had not heard of carbon neutral bank cards before- this one from Barclaycard. Thanks very much sh1mmer for allowing me to use the photo with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

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Green is a form of Lean

Many of us are thinking through the implications of greener supply chains.

Al has been giving it some lately, for example, with his thoughts on the Carbon Added Tax. Over at SAP Research Andreas Vogel is leading the charge. IBM is doing some solid work here, as is BT. But we’re beginning to see a potential backlash, based on the Greens are Dreamers frame. The argument is that green thinking and approaches will be jettisoned as economic conditions toughen. But is that necessarily the case? Jason Busch from SpendMatters nails it in a post entitled How Will Green / Sustainable Procurement Play in a Recession?

While it would be easy to dismiss green and sustainable procurement practices as a luxury for companies to invest in when times are good, I actually believe that they could help organizations to buoy their top lines and pull up from a spiraling downturn or period of contraction. Whether it’s better marketing the benefits of green supplier practices to customers to spur pent-up demand or making investments in supplier development initiatives which reduce unnecessary packaging, supplier-focused sustainability initiatives have the potential to drive sales and reduce cost.”

I hold a similar line: it seems daft to argue, as the Bush Administration repeatedly has, that efficiency efforts harm economies. Efficiency can help you cut cost, even if (especially if?) its energy costs we’re talking about. Jason gets some great comments on his post. For actionable advice why not try Paul Gooch’s suggestion:

A former employer of mine ran an internal initiative called WRAP…waste reduction always pays. This applies as much to purchasing as any functional activity. The benefits go straight to the bottom line, and in the process you reduce your energy usage, carbon footprint, etc

But Lisa Reisman really distills the arguments to 100% proof: “green is a form of lean”. Thinking about carbon consumption is not just protectionist sabre-rattling: its an efficiency argument. It strikes me at the moment many economists and business commentators just aren’t thinking through their positions. We’re seeing rhetoric as the primary argument. Greens are luddites. Localisation means a return to the stone age. And so on. Green is a form of lean.

The implications for software and services companies are clear – keep investing in Green, recession or not. You can always change your marketing to read “cost-cutting”. If however you’re relying on a return to abundance as a primary planning assumption you could be in major trouble. Spend matters green or not.

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Shai Agassi To Forge Israeli Electric Car Network

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So ex-SAP executive Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place has managed to pull it off. Former product chief Shai catapulted coolly into DLD in Munich yesterday straight from Jerusalem, where he had launched one of the most curious deals the auto industry has ever seen. He drove out that afternoon. To Davos.

Alongside Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Renault / Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn, Agassi announced, a spectacular and audacious agreement on Monday to deploy a new kind of electric power network and set of cars to run on them that will get Israel’s car drivers off oil as quickly as possible. It’s consistent delivery on his October deal, when he raised $200 million from Israeli Corp and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

Shai and I spent thirty minutes talking yesterday in Munich and what I heard proved to be true. On stage, Agassi is a brilliant presenter, dashing, focused, witty and strident. He’s up there with Al Gore in getting you by the throat and implying “talking about this isn’t enough!” and stood shoulders above the impressive line up the crushed and seat-deprived attendees of Burda Media’s DLD event had seen.

Project Better Place will integrate and deploy a new product, sales and support channel (read ‘charging’ stations) that will allow Israeli consumers to drive their own pure electric (not hybrid) car that has a 200km or so range. It will feature a new design of battery that can be swapped in and out in about the time it takes right now to fill up a car with gasoline. People will be able to do so at a country-wide network of swapping stations, or charge cars via power points. The cars will be designed and built by Renault / Nissan. Agassi says it will reduce oil use in Israel drastically – we’re talking figures like 50 per cent here.

The capital to get this going has come from a group of investors that includes Israeli Corporation (which right now supplies Israel with oil – proving, as with Abu Dhabi’s latest moves – that oil money can sometimes turn green) and also features VantagePoint Venture Partners, blessed right now with this shining star to distract everyone from the mess at Tesla. Agassi claims the system will launch within four years.

One of the big features of the system is that electric power will be sold as packages akin to the way that mobile phones are sold today – there will be multiple plans you can buy, including one that says if you buy about six years of power, they’ll throw in the car for free.

Shai Agassi

Photo credit jdlasica

But can he really pull it off? Agassi has got to this situation incredibly quickly. When I ask how in a year he has managed to leave his old job and do one of the most audacious deals imaginable he says “Nine months! It’s been nine months!”

In truth, for any entrepreneurs out there who may suddenly feel deeply inadequate, Agassi has had this process in train for three years. The journey started when he listened to a challenge by a speaker at Davos to do something to make the world a better place. Agassi admits that during those first few years “I walked every single wrong path first. I was sure for months hydrogen, then I was sure it would be ethanol.”

This characteristic of Agassi’s seems crucial to understand. You feel he’s churned the options over in his head constantly and worked out the answer. Now he’s settled on it, his purpose is to set that vision out to the world, do the necessary business deals to make it happen and then…”. Actually, “and then?” is a fairly good question and there isn’t right now a lot of substance to see, beyond the deal itself. Be in no doubt that Project Better Place now needs to ‘execute’, as IT guys would say. They’ll need some very talented people, they’ll need to ensure that Renault / Nissan and other partners such as battery provider NEC deliver technologies, and integrate those technologies together, on time. They will also need to work out the details of the service model and sales and marketing, factors that could make or break the project. And of course if oil prices fall dramatically (admittedly unlikely) the economics become a problem.

So is the man up for it? The company website is today a lonely place, with a link to ‘leadership’ that leads to… just Agassi. There are two people photos. Him and, curiously, his young son, who is part of the Davos pitch. Yet while Agassi himself quipped on stage to the (German) DLD audience that he “used to be the next CEO of SAP”, he never was SAP’s CEO and opinions gathered from my Twittering IT analyst friends vary on just how successful his time at that firm was.

First, here’s Dennis Howlett, veteran technology and financial software analyst:

“Shai created a roadmap and at one stage was delivering a ton of product [at SAP]. “But it became indigestible for many SAPpers.”

Then over to Greenmonk’s own James Governor:

“The Agassi legacy at SAP?…. a job unfinished. He built an architecture, but it was not as widely adopted as he, or the board, wanted.” James’s other comment is curious. “Shai evidently doesn’t have a great deal of patience and is inclined to hector communities (for example, customers) that don’t do what he wants.”

What next? Well Project Better Place has a hell of a lot to do and, once Davos is over, Agassi better get together a brilliant team and start executing. Right now, you hear nothing except him. While the project talks about partnership and being open, it would seem that the big deal has for now taken priority over engaging the talent base required. The firm will need a lot of great people, and those partnerships will take a lot of managing.

What’s sure is that the world is a better place for this development. Amongst the visionaries and future talk underway at DLD, Agassi stood out as a doer.

But don’t for a minute think this is the only future for cars. Agassi’s vision has unlocked anything up to a billion dollars but there is surely more to come and many things are happening right now. Agassi is a visionary but his vision is pretty narrow.

Shai’s in Davos now, wooing the great and mighty with that vision and his audacity. For the next three years he’ll definitely be judged on that ability to ‘execute’. We wish him well.

Read on at Re*Move, where we ask Is Project Better Place the big answer?
Mark Charmer is a contributor to Greenmonk Associates. He is CEO of The Movement Design Bureau, a think tank.

Photo credits: Project Better Place.

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On CES, Greening, and Gizmodo as Eco-Pranksters

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Its a laudable goal CeBIT would begin the long road to greening by fully supporting the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. But I should point out the power used at trade shows is just absurd – all those banks of screens talking to nobody in particular.

Should we should reconsider the Gizmodo guys as eco-pranksters (have you seen the video, where all the huge screens start turning off, one after another? Maybe they should join the Green Forge.) I still don’t really understand why so much anger was directed at Gizmodo, people talking about lawsuits and so on. Annoying yes. Business threatening- come on people, get some perspective.

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On Small Changes, Small Cars, Tax and Pollution

It’s fair to say that encouraging people to change their behaviour in small ways can have a big impact – cumulatively – on reducing carbon footprints and environmental impact in the long-term.

But how Governments and authorities manage and cajole the public to change personal behaviour can be a problematic process – and something that’s difficult to get right. One obvious avenue available is to incentivise change by introducing tax-breaks on ‘environmentally friendly’ products and services, and hiking tax on high-polluters. That seems to be the idea behind planned changes to the Congestion charge policy in London, which – rightly or wrongly – from next year, is being turned into an environmental charge based on carbon dioxide emissions from cars.

You can read more about it in detail here, but in short, the plan is that whereas currently nearly everyone pays £8 per day, by 2009, cars which emit more than 225 g/km of CO2 will be charged £25 ($50) a day to drive into central London. Ouch. But the flip side – the ‘tax-break’ – is that if you drive a car that emits less than 120g/km of CO2, then access is free. The idea is to move people from gas-guzzlers to eco-friendly fuel-sippers, and thus see CO2 levels in the city fall. Nothing wrong with that you might think, but there’s a potential flaw…

Sales of these small, ‘sub-120g/km’ cars are soaring across the south-east of England. A new report by CEBR (report not available openly) suggests that this ‘environmentally-driven’ policy could actually end up causing CO2 levels to rise. That’s because it’s predicted the changed system will have a net result of up to 10,000 extra cars a day entering central London. And that can only lead to an increase in congestion, and a slow down in traffic speeds. As anyone who understands the internal combustion process will tell you, the problem with (even highly efficient, and small) engines, is that they’re at their least efficient when the car is sat stationary or moving at low speeds. So despite the fact that most of these additional cars will be classified as ‘environmentally friendly’ and driving around congestion charge-free, the extra traffic and congestion they create could mean CO2 levels actually rise.

Kit like this will unsurprisingly fall into the £25-a-day bracket come next year

You will, doubtless, be surprised to hear that kit like this will cost £25-a-day to drive in central London come next year…

Whether the report’s predictions prove true, only time will tell. One potential caveat to consider is that it was commissioned by Land Rover – who aren’t exactly known for their small cars (in fact, every vehicle they currently sell falls into the £25-a-day category). In the auto-industry, nothing is ever quite as black and white as it first seems… but there’s plenty of support for it’s predictions in the form of academics for instance, who have no reason for bias.

The big questions it begs, is how governments, authorities and legislators drive a process of adoption for new, more environmentally friendly products and technologies, without having the entire process back-fire on them at ground level? The message they’re putting out to people here is ‘do this, and because you’re helping save the planet, we’ll reward you’ – but in fact, that ‘reward’ might end up having quite the opposite effect on the planet’s health. Don’t ‘reward’ people’s for changing their behaviour, and they’ve no reason to change. So the carrot-stick approach is difficult. I suspect this policy might go down in history as being one of those top-down processes, that on paper looked great – but which back-fired terribly on the ground by having precisely the opposite impact to what was originally intended. Another case which will show the need for grass-roots level innovation and adoption, rather than top-down? I think so.

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The end of America’s CO2 affair?

Getting any kind of G8 deal on climate change has been quite an achievement, based on conversations with people on the ground in Germany. And having the United States make the right noises is a true development. Fiona Harvey, in her new FT blog that will examine energy and environmental issues, sensed a shift yesterday.

“We have to wait and see what happens in Bali in December before we can make a final judgement. But progress it certainly is. George W Bush has repeatedly scorned the UN and its climate change talks in the past. This time, he says he wants the US to be “actively involved, if not taking the lead, in a post-Kyoto framework, post-Kyoto agreement”.

Of course, that could also mean the US wants to participate in order to stall agreement on a binding commitment to cut emissions, as some green groups suspect.

But even if that is the case, it still means the talks can start this year. In 2009, there will be a different president who may take the US participation in a different direction. At least the process will have begun, rather than having to be started from scratch by a new president in 2009.”

We spend a lot of time trying to sense whether America really is changing its attitudes towards climate change and the ways action can be taken. And while Bush’s policy making is one thing, it’s what the doers on the ground are up to that counts for the long term.

Dante’s Peak: Would Pierce have got everyone out in a Prius?
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America’s renewed lust for the environment goes much wider than the Silicon Valley clean boom. For example, an amazing number of people you talk to in the US are now very interested in finding ways to reduce their dependency on oil, for starters. And they won’t sacrifice mobility to do it. I call the latter the ‘Dante’s Peak’ trait – a hard-wired desire to have the immediate ability at any time to put your entire family into a truck that can speed you away from exploding volcanos, or whatever else might come along. Such traits just aren’t part of the European psyche, and this difference needs to be understood. Conversely, European angst over aviation emissions, a constant and major factor here, is just not on the US radar. Americans in the street can’t believe Europeans worry about aircraft emissions being a bad thing. In a vast country with completely different patterns of population density and transport infrastructure to Europe it seems hard to imagine Americans starting to wonder whether they ought to fly. Hell, they didn’t transform the world with 707s and DC-8s, only to give up the mass-scale, iconic marvel and convenience of jet travel.

The contradiction is that while we are all shocked that Bush is now facing into the environmental wind – and that the detail on what this means for citizens is bound to differ between continents – today in the United States there are examples of extraordinary state or city-level leadership on the environment, with things moving very fast. City mayors and governors far away from the Arnie-induced Californian green-boom are developing exciting policies. Take Austin in, of all places Texas. It’s becoming one of the US’s top hotspots for environmental startups. Americans understand that new markets create new energy, if you excuse the irony – energetic campuses, energetic startup firms, flows of venture funds and more.

Read more at Re*Move

Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau, a global think tank.