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Green Bits for Nov 18th 2010

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Green bits

A few bits of Green News crossed my Inbox in the last couple of days so I thought I’d compile them into a short post –

  1. The Vodafone Americas Foundation and mHealth Alliance announced the last call for entries for the annual competition to identify and support promising wireless-related technologies to address critical social issues around the globe. Applications for the 2010 Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project? and mHealth Alliance Award will be accepted through December 15, 2010, with the winners announced at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, CA in April 2011.?Previous winners have produced extraordinary innovations that utilized the vast potential of mobile technology to help solve problems and enhance people?s lives,? said June Sugiyama, Director of Vodafone Americas Foundation, ?We look forward to this year?s applicants and their ground-breaking projects.?The Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project? will award $300,000, $200,000 and $100,000, to the first, second and third-place winners, respectively.

    Information about eligibility and an application can be found at http://www.project.vodafone-us.com

  2. Trilliant has been has been selected by British Gas to provide the communications equipment for their Smart Meter deployment. The initial roll out to over 1,000,000 of British Gas? nearly 16 million customer accounts will be completed in 2012. Full story here
  3. SAP is selected as one of four companies to win German Magazine Computerwoche‘s “Green IT Best Practice Award 2010”. The company won for its comprehensive drive to reduce its CO2 emissions – if I understood Google Translate’s translation of the original article!
  4. IBM have teamed up with two Indian technology institutes to develop open system designs to make electricity grids smarter! The technologies will use predictive analytics to make power grids more efficient and therefore more resilient
  5. AMEE’s AMEE Explorersite was one of only six winners of the 2010 Best of What’s New award from the Popular Science magazine’s Green Tech section.

Photo credit aussiegall

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Friday Green Numbers round-up 04/30/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

And here is this week’s Green numbers:

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

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Cloud Energy Consumption: Google, Twitter and the Systems Vendors

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Yesterday Tom posed a question: just how green is cloud computing? We have been frankly disappointed by Cloud computing providers reticence to start publishing numbers on energy consumption. We know for sure that energy is a big deal when it comes to the huge data centers the likes of Facebook are building- these firms are siting data centers next to rivers to take advantage of hydro-electric power, and in Google’s case are even looking at building their own wind turbine farms.

Some of you may remember the huge fuss when Alex Wissner Gross, a researcher from Harvard University estimated how much energy the net consumed, which became a Sunday Times story about Google Searches in terms of kettles boiled. The story claimed:

performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle” or about 7g of CO2 per search

Perhaps surprisingly, Google responded, to debunk the news story:

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.

The story petered out- which is somewhat of a shame. A real, open debate, with shared figures, bringing in all of the main players, would clearly benefit us all. With that in mind I was pleased to see that one of Raffi Krikorian, tech lead of the Twitter API team, chose to talk about power/tweet at the company’s Chirp developer conference last week:

In summary, Raffi estimated that energy consumed is around 100 Joules per tweet.

Before jumping to a conclusion that Twitter is more efficient than Google its important to note that Raffi’s estimates, unlike Google’s, don’t include the power of the PC in the equation. You should also watch the video of his presentation – for the simple reason that Raffi seems to channel Jay-Z in his presenting: the guy’s body language is straight out of a hip hop video.

I discussed Twitter’s “disclosure” with my colleague Tom this morning. He questioned its value because its an estimate, rather than a measurement. He has a point. It may be however that Raffi is just the man to take this debate to the next level. He is clearly deeply technical, can think at the level of the isolated API – and is finally a Sustainability advocate of note- I first heard of him through his seminal How Valentine’s Day Causes Global Warming riff.

We need to encourage competition on the basis of power efficiency.

I’d like to close with a call to action. Surely its time for the major web players to get together with Dell, HP and IBM in order to agree standards so we can move from estimates to measurements of Cloud energy consumption, perhaps using AMEE ($client) as a back end for standard benchmarks. You can’t have sustainability through obscurity. Open data is key to working through the toughest environmental challenges.

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This is a very opportune time to be investing in sustainability management software!

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Greenhouse gas emissions

Photo credit James Jordan

I wrote about SAP’s launch of their Sustainability Performance Management software recently. This is a space which is of massively growing importance given the increasing regulations around greenhouse gas emissions, for example.

I was heartened then to hear in a recent discussion with SAS that their Sustainability Management software was launched in April 2008!

For background, SAS are a business analytics software company with with an enviable record of 34 years growth and profitability reporting global revenues of US$2.31 billion in 2009 up 2.2% over 2008. SAS invested 22% of 2008 in R&D (an unusually high figure in the industry) have over 11,000 employees, and 45,000 customer sites in 100 countries. This is a significant company with a serious track record in research and development.

No surprise then that their solution, like the SAP one, is also very comprehensive, encompassing industry templates (GRI, CDP, IPIECA, etc.), customisable pre-built KPI dashboards, reporting, forecasting, scenario modeling (using the AMEE universe of data for scenario analysis – [disclosure – AMEE are a GreenMonk client]).

And, according to Alyssa Farrell, Marketing Manager for SAS Sustainability Solutions, the software is extremely inter-operable:

SAS also recognises that organisations may have other technologies in-house, so our software can be adapted to whatever environment they may already have. SAS has read/write access to any ERP system, we work within the Microsoft Office environment, so you can even use Excel to pull down SAS Analytics. SAS recognises that there is not one solution for everybody and so all the different solutions from SAS recognise that we need to work within this very complex technology application environment.

SAS have had some big customer wins with their Sustainability software:

With Microsoft and CA also entering this space, I think it is fair to say, Sustainability software is here to stay. In fact, Groom Energy Research reported that climate venture capital investment in Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) firms topped $46m last year, the number of companies offering carbon software solutions grew from 40 to 60 over the course of the year and they predicted that the emerging US market for carbon reporting software is set to grow seven fold over the next two years.

Obviously aware of these trends when we asked Alyssa about pricing, she responded:

The way that our solution is priced is scaled to the size of the organisation [or a division of an organisation] and recognising that it is an early market and we need to get out there and seed our customers, this is the time to buy SAS for Sustainability!

Now, it would seem, would be a very opportune time to be investing in sustainability management software!

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RealtimeCarbon.org gives realtime CO2 intensity of electricity generation in the UK

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RealtimeCarbon

If you actively select for cheaper electricity, you are de facto selecting for greener electricity because cheaper electricity has a higher % of renewable energy in the mix.

I wrote previously that it would be great if utility companies were mandated to publish realtime generation mix (% from coal, % for nuclear, % from wind, etc.).

Then if you had a truly open market for electricity, it should be possible to dynamically switch suppliers on the fly, based on the price and the realtime generation mix. If people were actively selecting for greener electricity (and given that cheaper electricity typically has a higher % of green, why wouldn’t they?), imagine the demand signal that would send to the suppliers! There would be an enormous rush to build more renewables and Kingsnorth would be shelved quicker than you can say “dirty coal”.

That idea is a step closer to reality today with the launch in the UK of RealtimeCarbon.org. This is a site which gives a realtime feed of just how “carbon intense” UK electricity is at any given moment. The data behind the real time feed comes directly from the computer systems that manage the UK’s electricity trading market. This data tells RealtimeCarbon.org how much electricity each type of power generator (e.g. coal power stations or wind farms) are currently producing during any particular 5-minute interval.

One of the beauties of this site is that they provide an xml feed of the realtime carbon intensity data (see the pdf on how to access the feed for more info). The xml feed will allow organisations to programatically monitor the CO2 emissions associated with electricity generation in the UK. Thus it will be possible to have devices programmed to automatically respond to realtime CO2 intensity signals coming from RealtimeCarbon.org i.e. shutting down when highly carbon intensive and starting up when carbon-light. This will be a big help in reducing the organisation’s carbon footprint.

RealtimeCarbon.org also has a forum where people can get involved suggesting methodology improvements, ways to improve the numbers (calculation or display) and how to use the data.

Now they just need to build this out for every other country on the planet!

[Disclosure – one of the companies involved in this project (AMEE) is a GreenMonk client]

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I wish I were a software developer!

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I was peripherally aware of Augmented Reality before attending the Mobile 2.0 conference in Barcelona a few weeks back but hadn’t really thought through its consequences/possibilities until I saw the video above by Dutch startup company Layar.

I realised that Layar’s offering was geographically limited but its potential (esp in the Green space) was enormous – how to tap it?

I mentioned Layar during a briefing with Krishna Kumar of SpaceTimeInsight a couple of weeks back in San Francisco and he immediately ‘got it’ and was very excited with the possibilities.

Then yesterday Layar co-founder Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald pinged me via Twitter to let me know that Layar has opened up its Augmented Reality platform and is giving out (a, for now, limited number of) API keys.

This means that any database with location data and a Layar api key now has the ability to create an Augmented Reality Layar! just stop and think about that for a sec.

This opens up enormous possibilities for Augmented Reality applications in the Green space. Imagine walking down the street and seeing emissions data for the companies/businesses simply by pointing your phone at them. Or pointing at machinery and seeing schematics, lifecycle emissions data, or…

A mashup of AMEE, the neutral aggregation platform which measures “the carbon footprint of everything on Earth”, with Layar would be an absolutely awesome. Or a wiki with a Green Layar UI. Or….

The possibilities are limitless!

I really wish I were a software developer right now – the applications of this technology are seriously awe inspiring!

[Disclosure] – AMEE are a GreenMonk client co.

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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.

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Build carbon software efficiently (practice what you preach!)

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motion gears -team force
Photo Credit ralphbijker

I have been having some very interesting conversations with people in the carbon software sector these last couple of weeks.

The first was with Michael Meehan of Carbonetworks (which I blogged about here) and we discussed their offering which is a “carbon strategy platform”. From my blog post about Carbonetworks:

The app at its most basic helps companies understand what their carbon footprint is, and then helps the companies translate that into a financial bottom line. The app helps companies see what options they have to reduce their carbon footprint and helps them create a carbon strategy from a managerial perspective on how to proceed in the carbon market.

Then I talked to Stefan Guertzgen, Marketing Director for Chemicals and Franz Hero, vp, chemical industry business unit both at SAP. They were talking about the SAP Environmental Compliance application which, in their words:

enables companies to gather information on the use of energy, in all its forms, throughout the enterprise, identify areas for energy reduction, monitor the implementation of energy excellence projects, and make the results available throughout the enterprise

Earlier this week I was talking to Kevin Leahy, who is a director in IBM’s IT Optimization Business Unit about IBM’s House of Carbon for which they have also developed carbon reporting software for their client base.

Finally, yesterday I was speaking to Gavin Starks, founder and CEO of AMEE. We have talked about AMEE several times before on this blog. AMEE is an open-source, neutral, platform for

measuring the Energy Consumption of everything… aggregates “official” energy metrics, conversion factors and CO2 data from over 150 countries… is a common platform for profiling and transactions (there’s a transaction engine at the core of AMEE)

Noticing a common thread here? Guys, stop re-inventing the wheel.

IBM and SAP (and anyone else thinking of embarking on carbon software) STOP NOW! It has already been done and done well by companies with open api’s (and open data in AMEE’s case).

Get on the phone to Carbonetworks and AMEE, and instead of building another carbon app, use their already comprehensive infrastructures and api’s to get a jump-start and bring best-of-breed carbon software to market efficiently!

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Carbon accounting software starting to take off?

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Carbonetworks Carbon Balance Sheet Screenshot credit Carbonetworks

We in GreenMonk have written previously about carbon accounting software and the huge opportunities which are about to open up in this space.

Carbon footprint reporting is increasingly becoming part of the purchasing process with purchasers seeking carbon footprint data from their vendors. It will in time be mandatory and when that happens, every company will have a requirement for this kind of software. Companies establishing a name for themselves at this early stage will be well placed when that requirement comes to pass.

No surprise then to see the announcement on Cnet today that software company Carbonetworks received $5 in series A funding for its online carbon calculator from clean-tech venture firm NGEN Partners.


Climate Earth is another player in this space, to my knowledge hasn’t announced any funding yet and their website could stand some work but their Team is impressive.

These companies should be working with AMEE so that everyone can benefit from the data.

Watch this space, more companies and more offerings are likely to spring up and don’t be surprised if some of these early players become attractive acquisition targets for more established software houses.

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Carbon accounting meet lifestreaming II

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Dopplr calculates my travel Carbon footprint

In my last post I postulated that social software could be used to capture people’s lifestream information and that this could be used by companies to help calculate their carbon footprint.

The case I put forward was more suited for the increasing numbers of people working from home. However, I neglected to point out another painfully obvious example – Dopplr.

Dopplr markets itself as the travel serendipity engine –

Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues. The service then highlights coincidence, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Paris when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer and mobile phone. It links with online calendars and social networks.

However, potentially far more useful is how Dopplr have teamed up with AMEE (the world’s energy meter) to produce a chart of your travel-related carbon footprint (see the chart above of my travel footprint).

This ties in completely with my earlier post about the potential synergies attainable from combining lifestreaming software and the requirements of carbon accounting.

Can you think of any other use cases for the intersection of lifestreaming and carbon accounting?