Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP for Energy and Environment. He gave this presentation at the Pulse 2009 conference last week. I thought it was so good I asked him for a copy to put up on SlideShare – he very graciously agreed, so here it is.

There were some amazing statistics in the talk. Here are just a few of the highlights for me from the deck –

Slide 8:

In 2001, there were 60 million transistors for every human on the planet… by 2010 there will be 1 billion transistors per human. In 2005 there were 1.3 billion RFID tags in circulation…… by 2010 there will be 30 billion

Slide 10:

Our personal information footprints will grow 16 times between now and 2020

Slide 13:

an estimated 170 billion kilowatts are wasted by consumers each year due to insufficient power usage information

Slide 15:

Forty-five percent of traffic on the busiest New York City streets is circling the block looking for parking …congested roadways cost $78 billion annually in the form of 4.2 billion wasted hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted gas

Slide 17:

U.S. CPG companies and retailers lose $40 billion annually due to inefficient supply chains

and Slide 19:

In the U.S., a typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles, a potato 1,200 miles, a beef roast 600 miles …grocers and consumers throw away $48 billion worth of food every year

Slide 21:

Industry accounts for about 22% of freshwater usage today …the combined direct consumption of five food and beverage giants in 2007 was enough to serve the daily basic water needs of everyone on the planet

and Slide 42:

42% of IBM’s employees do not regularly come into an office saving $100M annually in real estate costs
Last year IBM saved $97M in travel costs by using online collaboration
Process improvements in the chip making process in Burlington, VT are saving 20M gallons of water, 15 thousand gallons of chemicals and over 1.5M kilowatts of electricity annually….achieving $3M in annual savings and increasing manufacturing production over 30%

What part of the presentation did you find most interesting?

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