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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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Paper reduction – Green and Sexy!

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Deforestation

Photo credit crustmania

Paper reduction is just not a sexy topic. Virtualising your servers, making your building more energy efficient, or using TelePresence to reduce your carbon footprint – these are big, exciting, engineering projects. How can you compete with that?

Well consider three little known facts:

  1. The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in OECD countries and is the third greatest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, after the chemical and steel industries (OECD Environmental Outlook, p. 218)
  2. Most of the world’s paper supply, about 71 percent, is not made from timber harvested at tree farms but from forest-harvested timber, from regions with ecologically valuable, biologically diverse habitat. (Toward a Sustainable Paper Cycle: An Independent Study on the Sustainability of the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1996) and
  3. Tree plantations host about 90 percent fewer species than the forests that preceded them. (Allen Hershkowitz, Bronx Ecology, p. 75, 2002)

Paper production is an enormous consumer of water, massive producer of greenhouse gases and it contributes significantly to loss of biodiversity?

Now paper reduction initiatives should start looking attractive!

What kind of paper reduction initiatives are out there?
There are lots of them and they start with simple initiatives like configuring printers to do double-sided printing by default and also to require people who send print jobs to networked printers to be physically at the printer (using a pin code or swipe code to verify) before it prints to avoid documents being printed and forgotten about. Adobe’s Randy Knox informed me when he gave me a tour of their San Jose HQ that Adobe managed to reduce their paper consumption by 40% simply by defaulting their printers to double-sided printing.

The move to digital printing is also proving hugely beneficial for paper reduction. HP have several offerings in this space. HP’s Forms and Document Automation product [PDF], by enabling on-demand printing, dynamic form creation and electronic distribution, drastically reduces paper use and does away with the costs and environmental impacts associated with warehousing and logistics. While HP’s Output Manager’s ability to manage, distribute and share information can cut down on the need for printed pages by as much as 70%. HP are obviously not the only ones in this space but I am acutely aware of their solutions as they are a GreenMonk client. Also, HP have had a long and successful track record in printing and imaging solutions.

When you think about paper reduction, though you also have to consider the heavy use accountancy systems make of paper. This is a problem companies the likes of billFLO are trying to address. billFLO creates a machine readable invoice which can be emailed alongside a pdf (human-readable) invoice. When the buyer receives the billFLO Invoice they import it into their accounting system with a click and archive the pdf invoice for future reference. This reduces paper use and the likelihood of data entry errors.

When it comes to paper reduction though, few companies have the focus, capabilities or paper reduction potential that GreenMonk’s latest client, StreamServe has. StreamServe’s customers are the telco’s, utilities, insurance companies, etc. – companies who can be easily creating 100m invoices per year and up. One StreamServe customer, Emdeon, was printing and distributing as many as 800,000 paper reports a day. By moving to StreamServe and SAP’s Business Objects, Emdeon has now automated that process and makes the reports available online.

StreamServe also works with their customers to reduce paper output by moving marketing messages from separate inserts accompanying bills to onserts printed directly on invoices reducing the number of pages sent. StreamServe also highlights the benefits of e-invoices to end customers. This typically increases the uptake of e-invoices, reducing the telco/utility’s paper footprint. And when you are talking of companies who print hundreds of thousands of invoices per day, moving customers to e-invoices can have a significant environmental benefit.

What other paper reduction initiatives can you think of? E-books e-paper and audio books are another superb way of reducing paper but I want to leave discussing them for a separate post.

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April 20th GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show

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Check out the video above of today’s GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show along with chat stream below:

04:30 TomRaftery : Hi all – kicking off the show in a min
04:30 mikeTheBee : Hello Tom.
04:30 ustreamer-40756 : Hiya
04:31 mikeTheBee : Could ustreamers note their names if poss.
04:31 TomRaftery : Audio & video ok?
04:31 mikeTheBee : Not yet for me
04:32 mikeTheBee : Okay
04:32 mikeTheBee : 6 viewers
04:32 Suki_Fuller : Hello all.
04:33 TomRaftery : http://blog.beliefnet.com/choprafamily/2009/04/1500-farmers-in-india-commit-m.html
04:34 mikeTheBee : 7 viewers
04:35 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/14/global-warming-target-2c
04:35 mikeTheBee : 9 viewers
04:35 mikeTheBee : 11 viewers
04:36 ustreamer-19973 : how do we set out names?
04:36 mikeTheBee : Just a comment will work, or login for name
04:36 ustreamer-19973 : THanks i get it
04:36 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution
04:37 monkchips : does the debate now move from Sustainability to Survivability?
04:37 ustreamer-19973 : 19973: Chris Phillips (Will create an account later(
04:37 monkchips : massive implications for which species we protect and so on
04:37 TolkienLibrary-2627 : you can type /nick and a nickname
04:37 monkchips : what the shit? whoa….
04:39 TomRaftery : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090413102225.htm
04:39 mikeTheBee : 10 viewers
04:39 monkchips : tom- what are the sustainability implications of Oracle acquiring Sun – or is that just too much of a stretch
04:40 monkchips : sun v positive on green.
04:40 monkchips : has done a lot of good work
04:40 monkchips : some nice low power techniques
04:41 TomRaftery : http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/19/rising-sea-levels-in-pacific-create-wave-of-migran/
04:41 TomRaftery : http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/index.htm
04:42 mikeTheBee : 13 viewers
04:43 TomRaftery : http://gas2.org/2009/04/19/car-companies-agree-on-plug-standard-for-electric-vehicles/
04:43 ustreamer-549 : ?
04:43 Suki_Fuller : Internationally also?
04:44 cminion-7005 : We they should have learnt that from history, if you look at how hte national grid came about
04:44 mikthebee-nametest : .
04:44 Suki_Fuller : Awesome.
04:45 TomRaftery : http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090414/wl_asia_afp/chinaenvironmentgovernment
04:45 mikeTheBee : Good tip re /nick TolkienLibrary, thx
04:45 monkchips : a lot of the good environmental news comes from China. that top down thing can be bloody useful in sustainability
04:45 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/19/china-environment-kyoto
04:46 mikeTheBee : Ought to work for the EU too!
04:47 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/20/police-intelligence-e-on-berr
04:48 monkchips : those fucking fucks. that is corporatism at best, fascism at worst
04:48 Suki_Fuller : That makes people in my profession look bad.
04:49 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/18/coal-carbon-capture-storage
04:49 Suki_Fuller : *Shame*
04:49 monkchips : UK police share info with the “department for business, enterprise and regulatory reform”#
04:49 monkchips : which then shares it with a French company, with a huge French government shareholding
04:50 monkchips : to establish coherent PR story etc
04:51 Suki_Fuller : @monkchip – Exactly – bite the nose to spite the face
04:51 ustreamer-73483 : hi folks
04:51 TomRaftery : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards
04:52 mikeTheBee : 14 Viewers
04:53 ustreamer-73483 : the irish sea?
04:53 ustreamer-73483 : jesus
04:53 monkchips : its easier to catch the fish when they glow in the dark…
04:53 ustreamer-73483 : justin
04:53 Suki_Fuller : lol
04:53 Suki_Fuller : not right James not right
04:53 ustreamer-73483 : what fish?
04:53 TomRaftery : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/world/asia/15coral.html?_r=2
04:53 mikeTheBee : Sellafield processing rather storage surely.
04:55 JustinParks : long term investment?
04:55 monkchips : i think its goodness
04:55 TomRaftery : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090419212516.htm
04:55 monkchips : research has shown
04:56 monkchips : that small areas, kept clear, can significantly increase biodiversity
04:56 cminion-7005 : less food transported, less petrol required to drive people around???
04:56 monkchips : @tomraftery – its just the Ryanair model for the globe. pay at the point of excretion
04:56 mikeTheBee : Ah Ryan Air per Kg charing
04:57 JustinParks : Im not going to mention the Cow emissions in congunction with fat folk
04:57 Suki_Fuller : The only people that get upset are fat
04:57 monkchips : more likely to drive? nah – the morbidly obese have those nice
04:57 monkchips : little electric cars….
04:57 JustinParks : better…
04:57 TomRaftery : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opinion/12friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
04:58 JustinParks : I saw a documentry on this
04:58 JustinParks : paid to farm nothing
04:59 TolkienLibrary-2627 : good concept
04:59 TolkienLibrary-2627 : viva Costa Rica…
04:59 Suki_Fuller : Coolio
04:59 TolkienLibrary-2627 : and Borneo
05:00 TomRaftery : http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/17/epa-obama-find-carbon-dioxide-is-a-danger-to-public-health-and-welfare-requiring-regulation/
05:00 JustinParks : Here Tom: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/4551977.stm
05:00 monkchips : gotta run! client call. thanks Tom. great show as ever
05:01 mikeTheBee : Did you hear? Siemans comment re Dublin’s Carbon Footprint being bigger than Londons, per capita.http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0420/mibusiness.html
05:01 JustinParks : did you check http://www.cooltribe.com/
05:02 TolkienLibrary-2627 : now following you at twitter… this was great! thnxs
05:02 JustinParks : yeah goodo so very environmental orientated site
05:03 JustinParks : that could be fun
05:03 mikeTheBee : Thx all
05:03 Suki_Fuller : Wow. Great articles today & as always awesome show
05:03 JustinParks : spammers contribution to climate change
05:03 TomRaftery : Thanks everyone for a great show
05:03 mikeTheBee : Thx Tom
05:03 JustinParks : thnaks Tom
05:03 JustinParks : lluegoi
05:03 Suki_Fuller : Thanks Tom
05:03 TomRaftery : Justin – you are right – forgot to mention the spam carbon footprint story – d’oh!
05:04 TolkienLibrary-1882 : thnxs Tom
05:04 TomRaftery : Thanks for the kind words Suki
05:04 JustinParks : lolo seriously?
05:05 TomRaftery : I’ll get link – one sec
05:05 JustinParks : I was “kindof” takin the mick… out of spammers
05:05 JustinParks : but I suppose its very true
05:05 cgarvey : sorry, missed it.. will catch the recording hopefully!
05:06 TolkienLibrary-1882 : don’t know who tweeted about this show, but came in by twitter…
05:06 TolkienLibrary-1882 : loved the articles…
05:06 TomRaftery : http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/report-shows-spam-s-massive-carbon-footprint–633
05:07 TomRaftery : TolkienLibrary – great, thanks for joining in
05:07 TomRaftery : This time every Monday
05:07 TomRaftery : cgarvey – I’ll have the recording up shortly on GreenMonk.net
05:07 TolkienLibrary-1882 : so spam not only bad for my productivity it seems!
05:07 JustinParks : thanks, pleasure Tom, gotta run
05:08 TomRaftery : TolkienLibrary, exactly
05:08 TolkienLibrary-1882 : what would be the impact of twitter on the environment?
05:09 TomRaftery : Significant too I suspect but it can be a force for good – I use it to disseminate stories
05:09 ustreamer-35467 : Tom sorry Joe and I missed you today, Cheers Mark (Charmer)…
05:09 TomRaftery : np Mark – will have recording on GreenMonk later today
05:11 TolkienLibrary-1882 : whenever you ask a question, the answer is already somewhere on the internet: http://earth2tech.com/2009/04/15/twitters-an-energy-guzzler-other-hard-truths-for-web-20-app-addicts/

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Beam me up Scotty!

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The WWF published a report, funded by HP and Microsoft, about the potential climactic benefits of a greater adoption of videoconferencing technologies. One of the items in the report which caught my eye was the stat that:

substituting 5-30% of current air travel by videoconferencing could avoid 5.59-33.53 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually

The report recommends what it calls ‘digital bridges’ to replace ‘air bridges’ which would otherwise be constructed.

An infrastructure which provided an open access site for every million inhabitants of the world’s urbanised areas would have an estimated $495 million capital cost, and $347 million of annual operating costs (total number of virtual meeting rooms 4620). Much, if not all of which, could be offset by income from those who fly, users of virtual meetings, and other sources. This compares to the estimated $22 billion capital cost of a third Heathrow runway, or the $320 million list price of a new Airbus A380 superjumbo.

Key targets to use the infrastructure would include larger companies with many field activities in different countries; small-medium sized businesses; international Governmental and Non-Governmental organisations; organisers of small-medium sized events; and some distance learning and telemedicine discussions. Countries such as China or India would be especially important, with the aim of many people developing familiarity with videoconferencing before becoming attached to air travel for meetings. ‘Digital bridges’ could therefore supplement, and partially replace, the ‘air bridges’ which would otherwise be constructed.

Personally I don’t think this goes nearly far enough!

I was at a HP briefing last October where HP presented some genuinely impressive internal figures for travel averted using HP’s TelePresence offering (called Halo). I argued at the time (and still believe) that for TelePresence to have a serious impact it needs to be far more ubiquitous – not just (as it currently) islands of hi-def connectivity. HP’s Halo needs to interconnect with Nortel and Cisco’s TelePresence offerrings and vice versa, for a start. I went a step further at the meeting and suggested that for real ubiquity, Halo should be able to interconnect with the likes of Skype video.

HP appear to have been having similar thoughts because they recently announced HP SkyRoom – which, while it doesn’t connect with Skype video afaik, it is a desktop version of TelePresence.

Details are sketchy on SkyRoom as yet, but if we can make hi-def video conferencing and desktop sharing as cheap and easy as making a Skype call, then many of the reasons for having to travel for meetings simply disappear!

Don’t underestimate the benefits of this, not just for companies carbon footprint’s, but also for productivity. I am going to a 3-day conference next month in Orlando, Florida. I am based in Seville, Spain. My travel to and from the conference will take roughly 36 hours – not to mention all the hassles of various airports’ security and then I have to do a week’s work on top of that! For a far more eloquent breakdown of the all of the benefits of TelePresence see Wilson Korol’s excellent post on the Nortel Grassroots blog.

I do believe that desktop hi-def video calls and desktop sharing will become ubiquitous whether enabled by HP or Skype or Apple’s iChat or combinations of clients able to inter-operate seamlessly – there are very few technical barriers to it happening. From there it is a short step to making it a 3-D experience and I will truly be able to say “Beam me up Scotty!” – if you doubt it can be a 3-D experience check out this impressive Cisco video of CEO John Chambers chatting to a full size 3-D Marthin De Beer while Marthin is 14,000 miles away.

[Disclosure: HP and Nortel are GreenMonk clients]

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Reducing printers’ energy/ carbon footprint – Tivoli’s David Bartlett & Ricoh’s Mark Minshull

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Tivoli and Ricoh had a stand at Pulse 2009 where they were showing how it is possible to reduce a company’s carbon footprint by actively measuring and managing printer usage across organisations, through software!

I asked the guys there to talk me through the process and to give a demo to camera.

Oh, and there was free beer at the conference, hence the bottle in my hand!!!

[Disclosure – IBM paid my travel and expenses to attend Pulse 2009]

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AMEE lands funding – Green is the new black!

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Where there's muck, there's brass

Photo credit nickwheeleroz

I just received news that AMEE has landed funding. We have mentioned AMEE already a ton of times on GreenMonk, but that is because they share our open-source philosophy and they are Green. In fact, AMEE CEO Gavin Starks is the one who came up with the MegaTom concept!

From the press release:

AMEE, the World’s Energy Meter, has secured substantial Series A financing from leading VC funds in the USA and UK.

AMEE is a web-based service (API) that combines measurement, calculation, profiling and transactional systems, representing emissions data from 150 countries and regions. As a neutral data aggregation platform, AMEE’s vision is to enable the measurement of the “Carbon Footprint” of everything on Earth. AMEE aims to assist with the development of energy and carbon as a global currency, assisting governments and companies that need to account for and trade internationally in CO2 emissions.

The collaboration between O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures (OATV), Union Square Ventures (USV) and The Accelerator Group (TAG) will enable AMEE to expand its reach by enhancing its data, and extend globally.

The AMEE platform is already used internationally by many organisations including; UK Government (Defra/DECC), Morgan Stanley, Google, Radiohead, Nesta, the Irish Government, the Welsh Assembly, the Energy Saving Trust, BRE, Sun Microsystems, plus numerous other IT, business services and software companies.

Gavin Starks, Founder and CEO of AMEE commented, “AMEE’s growth over the past 12 months has been quite remarkable. We are delighted to have the financial and strategic support of such experienced investors to take our business forward.

AMEE’s is driving change by increasing the accuracy and transparency of emissions and consumption in a manner that has not been achieved by any legislation, market or service to date. We have developed and demonstrated a forward-thinking and innovative business model. It is based around neutrality, scale and collaboration. This reflects the dramatic changes that will impact our societies, their financial and social systems in the years to come.

The execution of the Climate Change Act in the UK last week, combined with President Elect Obama’s forward-looking Federal Cap & Trade statements are indicators of the scale of change approaching us.”

Bryony Worthington, Head of International Policy at AMEE added, “As one of the authors of the UK Climate Change Act, I am delighted to be bringing dedicated solutions to industry and consumers. The time to act is now.”

Mark P. Jacobsen, Managing Director of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (“OATV”), commented: “AMEE’s vision to aggregate all of the energy data in the world fits OATV’s mission to invest in stuff that matters. With the recent sea change in America’s political climate, we look forward to AMEE bringing its platform-based data service to clients in the States.”

Ablert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures, commented, “We believe that emissions information is critical to better decision making by individuals and companies. We are excited that AMEE’s service helps to substantially improve the timeliness and accuracy of emissions measurement.”

Great news, congrats Gavin and team. With the slew of funding announcements in the Green space, despite the trying financial times (because of…), Green is quickly becoming the new black!

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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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The cheaper the electricity the lower its carbon footprint!

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Supply and demand

Photo Credit Milton CJ

I was speaking at the EventoBlog España conference on Saturday and I made the comment that electricity’s carbon footprint tends to increase as it becomes more expensive.

In follow-up questions, I failed to explain well what I meant so I will attempt to do so here.

Electricity pricing (on the wholesale market) is a function of supply and demand. When demand is high, electricity is expensive, when demand is low, electricity is typically cheap.

For weather based renewables (wind, solar, wave) – they produce power completely independently of the price of electricity, so they produce the same amount whether electricity is cheap or expensive.

Since weather based renewables are on average a constant percentage then they tend to have a higher slice of the market when electricity is in low demand/cheaper.

In other words, weather based renewables are independent of demand, therefore at times of low demand, they have a higher share of the market. This is even more so the case for wind which tends to blow more at night when demand is lower.

As there is a definite correlation between low demand and low price, it can be said by extension that the cheaper the electricity, the lower its carbon footprint!

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GreenMonk Interview with Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist

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I talked to Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard the other day. We discussed how large organisations can reduce their environmental footprint, using Microsoft’s own example; we discussed how Microsoft software is helping other companies reduce their carbon footprint and we discussed how Microsoft people and products are helping research into Climate Change.