post

Green bits and bytes for Feb 10th 2011

Green bits & bytes

.

Some of the Green announcements which passed by my desk this week:

  1. Digital Lumens announced that its Intelligent Light Engines have received NOM (Normas Oficiales Mexicanas) and UL (Underwriters Laboratories Canada) marks, which are respectively Mexican and Canadian certification equivalents of UL Listing in the United States and allow the products to be sold in Mexico and Canada.
  2. CA Technologies and Capgemini announced a partnership to establish a global Energy, Carbon and Sustainability Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service. The idea of the partnership, is to help customers better manage complex sustainability data collection and increasingly challenging reporting demands, enabling them to focus on sustainability strategy and carbon reduction activities.
  3. Sandbag.org.uk has reported that the EU Commission has voted to ban industrial gas offset credits from HFC and N20 destruction projects from the next phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, beginning in 2013. This, they say, is important because it shows a willingness to fix the problem on the part of the politicians and because it shows that campaigning works!
  4. CA Technologies have announced that Cynthia Curtis has been promoted to vice president and chief sustainability officer
  5. Career Intelligence (i.e. recruitment) site Vault.com has launched a new section of their site dedicated entirely to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The new CSR area of the site helps jobseekers discover the types of careers in this burgeoning field, and commentary on how CSR is changing traditional career fields.
  6. Boston-Power, maker of high-end lithium-ion batteries, recently announced the installation of Keith Schmid as CEO. Schmid takes over from company founder Christina Lampe-?nnerud will become executive chairman. Schmid joins Boston-Power from Power Distribution, Inc., a provider of power distribution equipment and services, where he served as president and chief executive.

You should follow me on Twitter here

Photo credit Nick Harris1

post

GreenMonk talks batteries and sustainability with Dr Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Boston Power

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!!!