Category Archives: Energy

Use Facebook, Eat Organic, Save the Planet

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Česky: Logo Facebooku English: Facebook logo E...

Forbes posted an article titled, “What is Good for Facebook is Good for America” last week. The headline grabbed my attention, a reference to political slogans regarding American auto manufacturers in the past. But what is really interesting is that the author argues that Americans moving their entertainment online is actually good for America.

I hesitate to wholeheartedly embrace that idea–my future children will definitely be spending more time playing in the backyard than playing Zynga games (or whatever is cool by then). And there are plenty of angry comments below the article that make for entertaining reading.

But I have to say he has a point.

Spending leisure time online is “greener” than the frivolities we manufactured and shipped to ourselves in the past. Not only do you not need to buy things–things that create waste when they are manufactured, shipped to you, and when you ultimately throw them out–but you don’t need to get in your car to go enjoy it. There may be some offsetting by the energy use of data centers and servers that power our online entertainment, but I have to imagine that those will only get more efficient over time.

Take a look at the article and let me know what you think. Is entertaining yourself online greener than the alternatives?

Green Reading This Week

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Some articles from around the web that I’m reading this week on sustainability, energy efficiency, and other green things.

Cracking the Smart Energy Market –via NYTimes
Google, Microsoft, Home Depot and Lowes all struggling to get the home energy monitoring market started.

The Future of Clean Tech? Try Hacking Code –via CNET
Colleagues from Tuck, EnerNOC and energysage all took part in this weekend event–would love to see more of this!

Three Areas Where Data Matters for Building Efficiency –via GreenTech Media
Great article on the power of software and data in energy efficiency.

What does the future of sustainability mean for small business? –via GreenBiz
An interesting podcast on Greenbiz regarding an important market.

Standing Out in a Green Crowd: Lessons from Method, Payback and More–via GreenBiz
This article is a few weeks old, but I just stumbled across it, and I love Method, so it caught my eye. Good read on marketing sustainable products.

Start-up Says Toshiba Will Help Propel New Lighting Approach–via WSJ
An article on Bridgelux, a start-up working on  fabricating LEDs on “the same sort of inexpensive silicon wafers used to make conventional chips.”

You are What you Eat (or Buy): Being an Informed Consumer Online

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Being sustainable or socially responsible is a hot topic these days. Companies publish glossy Sustainability Reports and consumers have started to look for labels that indicate whether something is fair trade, organic or natural. While these issues are important and deserve our attention, the lack of standards means it is difficult to sort through all the available information and make informed decisions. Sometimes it feels like in order to do no harm you can never leave your house.

In an effort to tackle one area at a time, I tend to focus on food. What can be more important than ensuring that what you put in your body is as natural and safe as nature intended it? Lifehacker has a great article called “The Common Sense Guide to Organic and Other Food Labels” that helps differentiate between the different categories and labels.

The Good Guide lets you research any product you are thinking about buying for how it performs on the issues important to you–whether it’s apparel, food, cars, or appliances. However, it often doesn’t occur to me to look something up at the time of purchase. That’s why my new favorite download for chrome (it also works for firefox) is their new Transparency Toolbar. When you are on a retail site, like Amazon, it just appears from the bottom of your screen with a personalized analysis based on the issues you’ve told it you care about most. Pretty neat–and it makes being green a whole lot easier.

The other great online tool I’ve recently discovered is from a company called energysage. I’ve actually been doing some consulting work for them recently, which is how I got to know them. They have a wizard that walks you through a much bigger purchase–whether or not buying a renewable energy system for your home makes sense. It’s still in beta, but it’s a space with a lot of promise due to a lack of information and transparency in the space. It’s definitely a company to watch.

Energy Efficiency Effectiveness at Home

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Greentech Media had an interesting article today highlighting a recent study on the results consumers see from home energy efficiency products. The results are mixed–with results ranging from no savings at all to 20% savings. Check out the greentechgrid article here and the original survey results here. I’m checking out a few products myself that I’ll write about in future posts.

The Dirtiest Green Business Around

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Recycling gets dropped off for sorting

For my Tools for Improving Operations class, one of the requirements was to go an an operational tour of a facility. Luckily for me, my classmate Pete–who is as excited about all things green as I am–organized a trip to a Zero Sort Recycling Facility, run by Casella Waste Systems.

The tour included about 12 Tuck students as well as Casella clients from our area. They run the tours as part of their education efforts for clients in order to improve the inputs into their systems. For Casella, Operations really start at your house, business or school, because the initial step in their process is taking out non-recyclables from what they receive.

While in my five years of working for UBS, I had never seen a factory floor, warehouse or any other type of manufacturing facility, but since I came to business school I have had the opportunity to see several. Through Tuck, I’ve seen Toyota car manufacturing plants and solar PV manufacturing facilities in China as well as distribution centers in New England through Tuck classes. During my summer internship at EnerNOC, I had the opportunity to go see client and prospective client operations including warehouses, plastic molding operations and even municipalities and school districts. While each type of operation was unique, there was one thing that united all the ones I saw before Casella: they were clean!

While it makes sense that Casella’s operation is covered in trash (it’s their business after all to turn trash into treasure), it was surprising to see how different this kind of operation is from many I’ve seen before.

The zero-sort recycling facility we visited collects recyclable trash directly from trucks and sort it into single material bundles that are sold to processors, mills or even some individual companies. They are self-described middle men and focused only on this one process: collecting trash and sorting it into like piles.

Operational Background Continue reading →

Video & Article on Green Design and Living

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Great article in Fast Company on a living, working, green concept building. Considering my interest in green energy and the possibility that I’ll be working from home next year, this caught my eye. Would love to see more development focused on concepts like this.

Live/Work

 

Weekly Clean Tech Reading List 10/23/11

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papers

What I’m reading this week in clean technology:

How smart meters help get more solar energy on the grid
eMeter Blog

On Climate, Ethics, Cow Burps and the Dalai Lama
Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth, New York Times

Toiling in the Dark: Africa’s Power Crisis
New York Times

On our Radar: Massachusetts leads Efficiency Rankings
Green Blog, New York Times

Jon Stewart Solyndra Segment
“That custom-tailored Obama scandal you ordered is finally here.”

What I’m Looking for at the Republican Economic Debate

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Photograph of the Tuck School of Business at t...

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The Republican Presidential candidates are coming to Dartmouth on Tuesday for the first economic debate of the primary season. I’m lucky enough to have been chosen to participate in a Watch Party with Bloomberg Television and the Tuck School of Business. During the debate, fifty of us students from the Tuck School will participate in polls and interviews about our views on the candidates and their economic positions.

To prepare for the event, I’m doing some research on both the candidates and the issues to get the most out of the debate.
Continue reading →

Weekly Clean Tech Reading List

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What I’m reading this week in clean technology:

A Closer Look at CO2′s Long Goodbye
Andy Revkin @ Dot Earth
Discussion on the latest challenges to global warming.

Got Storage? How Hard Can It Be?
Tom Murphy @ The Oil Drum
Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego and wrote this guest post about the energy storage challenge.

A Brief Economic Explanation of Peak Oil
Chris Skrebowski @ The Oil Drum
Chris Skrebowksi is the ex Editor of Petroleum Review and longtime ASPO and ODAC member. His post juxtaposes geologists’ views of the physical reality of peak oil production and economists views of price as a correcting factor that will push exploration of more expensive sources of oil.

Near Net Zero at Frito-Lay
Corporate Sustainability @ Greentech Enterprise
An article about Frito-Lay’s new off-the-grid factory in Arizona.

Consumers in Control in the Demand Economy

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Cloud computing icon

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Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai, has been speaking and writing recently about the emergence of the “Demand Economy“. I was lucky enough to see him speak about it in person yesterday. Here’s what I learned:

We are undergoing a 100 year revolution
Our generation is lucky enough to be around when massive changes are happening in the way we interact with our world and each other. This 100 year revolution is due to the internet–but not just the consumer-facing internet (because we’ve heard that before). Sagan argues that IT and networking changes every single industry.

The Demand Economy
The Demand Economy represents the shift in power from businesses to customers. It means that rather than the seller having all the power–information, pricing, location, etc… consumers now have all the power. Consumers have the information and the ability to demand 24/7 service from anywhere.

The Demand Economy means access to everything–more choice at faster speeds from any location on any device. For consumers, this means more options, better prices, better service and fewer geographic limitations. For enterprises, it means that customers and suppliers are less loyal, competition is continuous, markets become border-less and they need to perform with speed and flexibility.

In response to this Demand Economy, Sagan argues that there are three trends businesses need to master–regardless of their industry. B2B, B2C, industrial or consumer products.

Continue reading →