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November chat with IBM’s Rich Lechner

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Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP of Energy and Environment.

He is a regular interviewee here where we discuss various matters related to energy and environment. This interview was recorded while I was at the SAP TechEd 2009 event in Vienna in a crowded interview room so I apologise in advance for the poorer than normal audio and video quality.

In this show we discussed IBM’s recently released Solution Architecture For Energy and Utilities Framework (SAFE) and we had a quick chat about the recently published Green IT for Dummies book.

[Disclosure] The Green IT for Dummies book was written with input from IBM and I served as technical editor for the book. Having said that, I hadn’t seen the completed book until Rich held it up during the video and the link to the book on Amazon above is not an affiliate link – I get no monies from its sales.

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Rich Lechner Sept ’09 on “Global Electric Utilities – the adaptation challenge” report

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Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP Energy and Environment and comes on GreenMonk TV every month.

This month we discussed a report IBM sponsored and which was written by Acclimatise called Global Electric Utilities – the adaptation challenge

Some points to note from the report:

  • 87% of businesses in the FTSE 350 acknowledge that their business is at risk from climate change
  • Less than 33% have any plans in place to address that risk
  • Over 90% of utilities acknowledge that their business will be impacted by climate change
  • Less than 30% of the utilities reported having documented plans to manage or avoid that risk
  • Only 6% identified opportunities associated with climate change
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Rich Lechner on Smart Transport June 09

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I talked to Rich Lechner, IBM’s VP of Energy and Environment, the other day about the global problem of getting transportation right. According to Rich, in the US alone, congested roadways cost about $78bn per year so this is very much an economic as well as a sustainability-related issue!

We had a wide-ranging conversation about all kinds of solutions, including using demand response to manage traffic flows!

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Rich Lechner’s May update

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Rich Lechner is IBM’s Vice President of Energy and Environment. I met him at an IBM event and asked if he would agree to do a monthly video update on Energy and Environmental matters. He graciously agreed and this is the 3rd installment.

In this episode Rich discusses bringing all an organisation’s energy information together – and the implications for organisational structure that will ensue.

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Get Rich Quick: a green roundup from IBM’s VP Energy and Utility – Show 1: Water

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Rich Lechner is IBM’s VP Energy and Environment.

I first met Rich at the Pulse 09 event in Las Vegas earlier this year where he gave a great talk on Sustainability & the role of IT.

Rich has agreed to come on the GreenMonk show monthly to give us a state of the ‘sustainosphere’ from an IBM perspective!

This is month one and we are talking Water – among the many interesting water-related items, watch out near the end for Rich’s alluding to using Demand Response for water flow management!

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Sustainability & the role of IT – Rich Lechner’s Energy & Efficiency Keynote at Pulse 2009

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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]

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IBM’s Rich Lechner on energy, sustainability and the Smart Planet

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One of the people I met at the IBM Pulse 09 event was Rich Lechner. Rich is IBM’s VP Energy & Environment. Rich gave a tremendous presentation on Sustainability and the role of IT – I posted many quotes from the presentation on Twitter and they received a lot of attention.

I asked Rich if he’d be willing to do a video with us about Energy, Sustainability and IBM’s Smart Planet vision and he very graciously agreed to.

I hope you enjoy it.