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1. Live From Green:Net
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2. An incentive to recycle that old printer -- money for a new one
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3. Green:Net MiniNote: Jonathan Koomey on Green Cloud Computing
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4. Green:Net Keynote: Bob Metcalfe's Search for the Enternet
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5. Green:Net Panel: In Order to Manage It, You Need to Measure It
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6. Green:Net MiniNote: Gavin Starks, CEO of AMEE
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7. Gavin Newsom to Green:Net: San Francisco Is Your Laboratory
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8. Katie Talks With SF Mayor Gavin Newsom at Green:Net
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9. Diesel Porsche Stays in Europe, Hybrid Comes to US
Live From Green:Net
Liz Gannes - Uncategorized
We’re here at the beautiful Golden Gate Club in San Francisco, where our first-ever Green:Net conference is going on all day. Check back for blog posts and photos from each session.
Live-blogging posts:
- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: San Francisco Is Your Laboratory
- Gavin Starks, CEO of AMEE
- In Order to Manage It, You Need to Measure It
- Jonathan Koomey on Green Cloud Computing
And don’t forget:
Twitter hashtag: #greennet Flickr tag: GreenNet
An incentive to recycle that old printer -- money for a new one
Shelby Wood, The Oregonian - Living Top Stories
Green:Net MiniNote: Jonathan Koomey on Green Cloud Computing
Stacey Higginbotham
Koomey’s big story isn’t about electricity use in the data center but how IT affects efficiency in the broader society. One effect is that we’re becoming smarter about how we use resources; the other is dematerialization. “Moving electrons is less environmentally damaging than moving atoms,” Koomey says. Essentially the idea is that it is more efficient to send a PDF rather than a piece of paper. As part of getting smarter, he calls for the electric grid to be modeled on the dynamic data center management software that can track and monitor electricity delivery in real time.
Green:Net Keynote: Bob Metcalfe's Search for the Enternet
Stacey Higginbotham - Big Green
Don’t let things harden into categories: In the early days of the Internet, the consumer devices (phones) and the network were controlled by the same company. There were divisions in regulatory environments with computers controlled by the Department of Justice and communications regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and divisions between video, voice and data that are now meaningless. So when it comes to energy we need to avoid the same hard categories, such as thinking our focus on corn-based ethanol won’t disrupt our food production.
We used the Internet to build the Internet, and we can use the Internet to build the Enernet: The web can reduce energy consumption in a variety of ways, partially by serving as a proxy for for travel, as well a backbone of the smart grid. Taking advantage of Silicon Valley for company creation is also important. “It’s easy to teach energy to the entrepreneurs than to teach entrepreneurship to the energy industry,” Metcalfe said.
It is not our goal to darken the Earth; it is our goal to lighten it. We now use more bandwidth than ever; we should turn the idea of conservation on its head and create “a squanderable abundance of cheap and clean energy.” Metcalfe proposes space travel, clean water and removing C02 from the atmosphere as some of the future drivers of energy consumption calling them the “YouTubes of the Enernet,” after the bandwidth sucking online video application that comprises a ton of web traffic today.
Learn from the mistakes that were made: The mistakes of the Internet were the lack of security, guaranteed quality of service and an economic model, which has meant that the web now runs on advertising. Metcalfe calls on the creators of the Enernet to make different mistakes.
There will be bubbles: The Internet bubble predicated the growth of the web and many services today. The global warming bubble that is inflating an energy bubble today should actually be separated from the energy crisis. Solving global warming will not change the need for clean and cheap energy in the future.
He ended by calling on Washington to fund research into clean energy while we create an Enernet that mimics the layered approach and distributed network of the Internet.
Green:Net Panel: In Order to Manage It, You Need to Measure It
Liz Gannes - Carbon Markets
A panel of energy measurement entrepreneurs speaking at Green:Net had surprisingly fuzzy thoughts towards terms like accuracy, precision, and standards. It wasn’t that they think perfect measurement is impossible, just that they have a very nuanced view of what’s currently possible.
Raffi Krikorian, co-founder of WattzOn, which measures personal energy use, added, “We need to be consistent in measuring our users so we can match them relatively.” Krikorian and Jaech agreed heartily that consistency is more important than true accuracy.
Krikorian spoke of his company’s ideas to standardize manufacturing chains labeling and reporting, create ways for users to give access to their data that require intricate permission models, and send power data along with contextual metadata to the cloud directly from outlets — but said these things are far from fruition. In the meantime, public and crowdsourced data and some personal data are a place to start.
Richard Barber, CTO of carbon credit automator Carbon Flow, said the offset business is actually fairly accurate as compared to personal and corporate measurement, and that it’s more constrained by audit processes. But in a market in which international carbon trading was worth $60 billion last year, “As long as you reduce something you’ve made a reduction,” Barber argued.
So what would help get good data out of people and systems? The panel seemed less concerned with standards than you would think. “Standardization is relatively simple in software,” assured Alex Wissner-Gross, co-founder and CTO of CO2Stats, which looks to things like the local energy sources for major geographical sources of traffic to certain web pages in order to measure their emissions.
Jonathan Gay, founder of Greenbox Technology and prior to that a co-creator of Flash, had some words of advice from his past life. He said the most effective standards start as things that work, rather than the formation of committees. Greenbox looks at smart power meters, utility rate plans, weather reports, and user-reported data to try to make homes more efficient via a web interface. So he wants to connect data to actions. “The big deal for us is attribution. Can you get credits for turning off lights?”
Green:Net MiniNote: Gavin Starks, CEO of AMEE
Stacey Higginbotham - Carbon Markets
Gavin Starks, CEO of AMEE, a web services platform that helps track and measure carbon consumption, scared the heck out of the audience this morning at the Green:Net conference here in San Francisco. He started off by pointing out that a 2.5-kilogram MacBook costs the equivalent of 460 kilograms of carbon dioxide, then painted a picture of drastic population decreases, the potential for war and refugees in a warming world and called for a carbon tax rather than a carbon cap.
The solution in Stark’s talk begins with the understanding of each person’s energy use, the creation of what he calls an “energy identity.” To create such an identity there are open standards that should be created (AMEE is trying) as well as privacy concerns that must be addressed, given the granularity of the information that will be shared. Such information could include your purchases, your energy consumption habits such as when you watch TV and what time you turn out the lights and go to bed. Securing such data will be key as well.
“Addressing some of the real privacy issues up front is absolutely critical,” Starks said, drawing a parallel to the issues surrounding the privacy issues with our digital selves on the web. The goal of such surveillance will be to then offset and reduce such energy use while getting people to change their lifestyle from a consumption-based one to a services oriented one that uses fewer resources.
Finally, we can’t just focus on carbon, Starks warned; we have to consider that we’ve hit the peak of much of our resource consumption.
So if this is indeed true, what do we need to do?
Move from a product society to a service society, Starks said — redefine our lives based on value.
Gavin Newsom to Green:Net: San Francisco Is Your Laboratory
Liz Gannes - Automotive
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom welcomed a full house of Green IT entrepreneurs at GigaOM’s first-ever Green:Net conference by proclaiming: “If you have an idea, let me know. We are a laboratory for innovation.”
Newsom offered an impassioned rundown of San Francisco environmental accomplishments and projects since he took office:
- Third-party review to independently analyze CO2 emissions.
- Reducing tailpipe emissions on the city vehicle fleet
- LEED certification for the new Academy of Sciences last Thursday
- Put together the first mapping system for solar installations — on a web page, you locate your roof, drill down to the square footage available for solar, and print out rebate applications on the same page
- Aggressive recycling initiatives — banning plastic bags (lots of attention), banning styrofoam (no attention), trying to ban bottled water (way too much attention!)
- Started real discussions with Shai Agassi and Better Place, and got 10 counties to agree on standardized electric car-charging stations
- Partnered with Cisco on reducing emissions coming from computers and telecommunication equipment — created cheap prototype bus that gives emissions data
- Plan to charge more for parking during peak times
- First commercial wave power project off the end of Ocean Beach started Feb. 27
- Right below the Golden Gate Bridge looking to implement an underwater wind farm — very dense, consistent energy as Bay flushes itself every day. “We’re very close to getting a small pilot there. We may have overpromised but hope not to underdeliver.”
Diesel Porsche Stays in Europe, Hybrid Comes to US
khallgeisler - Bikes & Cars
Porsche debuted a diesel version of its Cayenne SUV at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, but for now, at least, it won’t be in U.S. showrooms. Porsche says it’s saving the North American market for something even better: a hybrid version of the Cayenne in 2010.
The 3L, 240-hp engine in the diesel get 25 mpg combined, a significant increase over the current U.S. base model’s 17 mpg. In a press release, Porsche promises that the hybrid will deliver “V8 performance, the efficiency of a four-cylinder, and the ability to ‘coast’ at a maximum highway speed of 86 mph for up to 1.2 miles on electric power only.” I’m not sure how handy coasting on electric power for a mile or so will be in the real world, but that’s the statistic Porsche provided.
Image courtesy of Porsche.
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