Green Tech

Google reached its goal of becoming carbon neutral for 2007 and is almost entirely neutral for 2008, Google's Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl announced on the official Google blog Wednesday evening.

In June 2007, Google had announced it was going to try to become carbon neutral by the end of that year by working to maximize its efficiency, investing in renewable energy resources, and as a last resort and interim solution buying carbon offsets.

In Wednesday evening's post announcing the company had finally achieved that goal, Weihl reiterated the company's 2007 promise of using carbon offsets was only a temporary fix and announced more initiatives towards long-term sustainability goals.

"While offsets with strong additionality can achieve real emissions reductions in unregulated sectors at a relatively low cost, we view them as a short-term solution for Google, not as a substitute for other action," said Weihl.

"In addition, we've set ourselves the ambitious goal of creating 50 megawatts of new renewable generation capacity--enough to power 50,000 typical U.S. homes--by 2012," he said.

Earlier this month, the company shared one of its quirkier Green alternative solutions: using goats to cuts the Mountain View, Calif., campus lawn.

As there is yet no legal standard on how a company must calculate its carbon footprint or an official U.S. carbon certifying agency, Google said in its June announcement that it would be hiring the Environmental Resources Trust to verify its yearly assessment . Google also stated that its global carbon footprint includes employee commuting and business travel, as well as Google company construction, server manufacturing, and electricity use.

So, how does this compare to others? Matching how Google stacks up against other big names in tech is difficult since everyone calculates things uniquely, as they do with recycling. Here's the available info on the carbon neutrality status of several big names in tech.

This past March, Microsoft announced on its sustainability blog that the company plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 30 percent compared with its 2007 levels, by 2012.

In August 2008, Dell announced that it was carbon neutral in terms of its global electricity use and in April 2008 announced that its U.S. headquarters, consisting of 2.1 million square feet and 10,000 employees, was powered by 100 percent green energy. It's striving to achieve carbon neutrality through a combination of efficiency practices and buying carbon offsets.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent from its 2005 levels before the end of 2010. About 99 percent of HP's greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity use, with only 1 percent coming from manufacturing and refrigeration equipment, according to HP. HP detailed that its official carbon footprint will include HP's owned and leased facilities' electricity use, natural gas use, manufacturing emissions, and refrigerant emissions. HP will not be including employee commuting, transport of its products, or the manufacturing of its suppliers in its carbon footprint, according to HP's "Global Citizenship Report 2008."

In May 2007, IBM held a press conference to announce that to help other companies become carbon neutral. Part of its promise is that it can help the average 25,000-square-foot data center cut its energy bills by 42 percent. Between 1990 and 2007, IBM reduced about 45 percent of the company's 1990 global CO2 emissions. It plans to reduce its energy use by 12 percent from its 2005 levels by 2012 through conservation, increased use of renewable energy, and buying Renewable Energy Certificates, according to the company materials on its environmental stance. It plans to reduce its total global GHG emissions by 7 percent from 2005 to 2012, according to a listing with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Comparing footprint size
You could keep sifting through all the corporate sustainability reports and get varying systems of carbon footprint measurements and statistics like those above for almost every tech company. There are some organizations that have tried to come up with a way to make it easier to compare.

The EPA lists companies that have joined its Climate Leaders initiative and their stated goals for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction, but many companies simply have "greenhouse gas reduction goal is under development" next to their listing. The list also fails to specify what each company includes in its carbon footprint.

But according to that EPA list, Intel will reduce its global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 percent per from 2004 to 2010; Cisco will reduce by 25 percent from 2007 to 2012; and Oracle plans to reduce "by 6 percent per square foot from 2003 to 2010 for all non-data center space and to purchase 5 percent green power for data centers." Sun Microsystems reduced U.S. GHG emissions by 23 percent from 2002 to 2007 and pledged to the EPA that it would reduced its global GHG emissions by 20 percent from 2007 to 2015.

In May 2008, Climate Counts, a nonprofit watch group funded by yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm that keeps scorecards on companies environmental records, released a list on tech and software companies' green achievements. Companies were rated by a points system and also placed into one of three (green, yellow or red) categories. IBM, Canon, Toshiba, Sony, HP, Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung, Siemens, and Google were put in the green category signaling companies with a good environmental record.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell, and Nokia were put in the yellow category signaling that they had made a start, but still had work to do in certain areas.

Amazon.com, Apple, and eBay were placed in the red category which, according to Climate Counts' chart, stands for "This company is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change."

Hewlett Packard on Monday said that its long-lasting Enviro laptop batteries from Boston Power are available with a three-year warranty.

The batteries costs $149.99 and fit 18 of HP's laptops. They can be purchased online now and will be available in stories later this month.

(Credit: Boston Power)

HP has branded Boston Power's Sonata batteries under the Enviro name to emphasize the environmental attributes. With a longer-lasting battery, consumers need to upgrade less often, which reduces the number of batteries that need to be recycled, HP said in a statement.

Last year, an HP representative estimated the Enviro line costs about $20 to $30 more than traditional batteries.

For start-up company Boston Power, the product release is a significant milestone.

Company founders started three years ago with a fresh design to improve the performance and environmental sustainability of laptop batteries.

While typical laptop batteries start to lose performance after 100 or 150 charges, Boston Power says that its batteries can be charged 1,000 times and get "like new" performance.

Boston Power also sought to use the environmentally conscious materials, eliminating the use PVC plastic andheavy metals cadmium, arsenic, or mercury in the manufacturing process.

In January, Boston Power raised a series D round of $55 million in capital in a difficult financial environment. It plans to expand its laptop battery manufacturing and move into different product categories, including mobile gadget chargers and transportation.

Updated at 7:52 a.m. PT with corrected number of HP laptops the batteries fit into.

Hewlett-Packard early next year will begin offering a new line of "Enviro" batteries for laptop users who want to upgrade to longer-lasting and more sustainably designed batteries.

HP and Boston Power have been testing the Sonata lithium-ion batteries for three years. The batteries were designed specifically for laptop use. After three years of use, the batteries will be able to keep 80 percent of their initial charge.

Laptop battery time typically starts to drop significantly after 150 or so charges, or cycles. Boston Power says that its batteries can be charged 1,000 times and get "like new" performance.

An HP representative on Tuesday said that the Sonata batteries will cost between $20 and $30 more than traditional batteries and will be available on some consumer laptop machines. There will be a three-year warranty, and no system changes are required.

The Enviro batteries are marketed as more environmentally friendly for a number of reasons, according to Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and CEO of Boston Power.

The company chose not to use any PVC plastic or heavy metals--cadmium, arsenic, or mercury--in the manufacturing process. The batteries can also be recycled, said Lampe-Onnerud, adding that the battery has received a number of "green" certifications.

More simply, Lampe-Onnerud argued that purchasing one product that lasts for at least three years, rather than buying multiple batteries, is more environmentally sustainable and economical.

"Our tests found that 40 percent of consumers over three years have replaced laptop batteries up to five times. If each is $150, that's almost the cost of the whole system," she said. "I think this will change the appetite for sustainable products. Instead of purchasing something expendable, they can have something that lasts."

Boston Power is in discussions with other computer manufacturers, she added without disclosing any names.

The company also plans to release a portable lithium-ion battery for adding charge to cell phones or other gadgets and intends to enter the auto battery market, Lampe-Onnerud said.

Hewlett-Packard announced plans Wednesday to advance technologies to slash power use in data centers, while building software and an open online community to support manufacturers seeking more sustainable consumer products.

The efforts reveal the company's five-year strategy for the sustainability arm of its HP Labs, revamped in March.

HP would not disclose the budget for the efforts, but said in 2007 it invested $3.6 billion in research and development.

New research includes the Sustainable Data Center project, established to reduce the carbon footprint of building, operating, and dismantling data centers by 75 percent.

And HP's Photonic Interconnect project would work to replace copper wiring in servers with laser-based communication.

"We want to dematerialize the data center," said Chandrakant Patel, HP fellow and director of HP's Sustainable IT Ecosystem Lab. "Imagine circuit boards in close proximity that communicate with light."

Optical laser connections within server equipment would be more flexible and 20 times more efficient than standard copper wires, he explained. And the range of the laser connections could span 100 nanometers to 100 meters.

"Because of our history of nanotechnology, we have the ability to build these kinds of things," Patel said, referring to work at HP in building lasers into chips. "We believe we can scale to data center scale, which is easily 100 to 200 racks."

Patel also hopes to lead the creation by 2009 of a Web-based "sustainability hub" that would would pool research and data from engineers, scientists, and other experts around the world.

He wants that to help create models of the carbon emissions and energy involved in creating myriad consumer products, building upon Lifetime Exergy Advisor software developed by HP Labs and the University of California at Berkeley.

Current tools to measure the carbon footprint of electronics and other consumer goods don't take every aspect of manufacturing and disposal into account, Patel said. For instance, extracting aluminum to make a laptop may involve as much energy as operating the machine for two years.

"How do we come up with an irrefutable metric that says what we are doing is sustainable?" Patel asked. "We look at the life cycle of a product, from the time material is extracted from the ground to the time it is reclaimed or recycled. How do we use appropriate materials so we don't create environmental headaches?"

Patel said he wants to convert each step of making a product, from mining to powering a factory to disposing of toxic materials, into joules, a measurement of energy.

HP Labs researchers are also analyzing how commercial printing and publishing could use digital printing and electronic paper to use fewer resources and less energy, with results they hope will extend to other industries.

Hewlett-Packard is licensing flat-panel display technology to a start-up that could lead to dramatically more productive--and aesthetically pleasing--solar panels.

The deal, announced Wednesday, allows Livermore, Calif.-based Xtreme Energetics to use HP-developed transparent transistors to bend light in concentrating photovoltaic, or CPV, solar arrays. CPV systems squeeze more electricity from panels by maximizing the light that hits solar cells.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of utilty-scale concentrating solar power technologies.

(Credit: SolFocus)

The company is in the process of raising an "imminent" $5 million series A round of venture funding, and it anticipates a series B $35 million round, CEO Colin Williams said.

It intends to have a first-generation solar array aimed at utilities available in 12 months, he said. A product for corporate rooftops is also in the works.

The transistor materials--made of environmentally benign zinc and tin--and related manufacturing techniques could still be used for very large flat displays, said Dan Croft, director of intellectual-property licensing at HP.

Xtreme Energetics will use the technology to create an electronic "tracker" that directs sunlight to hit solar cells straight-on to maximize exposure.

Typically, these trackers are mechanical devices such as ground-mounting systems that position cells to follow the light during the course of the day.

Xtreme says HP's electronics can do the same task of pointing light. But because it's not a motor-driven steel mount, the company will be able reduce the costs of CPV, Williams said.

"The fact that we are using an electronic mechanism to do tracking means the cost scaling in volume manufacturing will go much more like the cost scaling in the electronics industry, rather than (the) mechanical-manufacturing industry," he said.

The full design calls for a multilayered solar panel with the transparent electronic tracker, a plastic "internal reflection" concentrator, and a high-efficiency solar cell.

Because the tracker and concentrator are transparent, an artistic pattern could be put onto the panel, making it possible to use it on a building facade, Williams said.

Niche buster?
The HP-licensing deal is another sign of the active crossover of technologies and of people between clean tech and information technology. IBM, which has a Big Green Innovations initiative, is adapting chip fabrication techniques to solar power, including concentrators.

Click on the image to see a photo gallery of concentrating photovoltaic arrays.

(Credit: Amonix)

Xtreme Energetics has yet to build a product or prototype. Yet its electronic-tracker design could give the budding CPV marketplace a boost.

At a seminar put on by Greentech Media last week, solar expert and Prometheus Institute President Travis Bradford forecast that concentrating solar power--both concentrating solar thermal and CPV--will account for tens of gigawatts of electricity in the next decade, primarily in .

CPV, specifically, remains relatively expensive and, unlike solar-thermal technology, cannot store electricity, Bradford noted. Also, concentrating solar technology works in areas of the globe with the best irradiance, or solar radiation, including the southwest United States, southern Spain, and North Africa.

As a result, he said the extent of the role solar-concentrating power will play in the future is uncertain.

"I firmly believe (CPV) is a market that will be very large, but it doesn't have the ability to work in every market," Bradford said.

Xtreme Energetics' Williams said the electronic tracker tackles one of the biggest concerns with concentrating photovoltaics: the high costs associated with lenses and mounting equipment.

"So long as concentrating PV uses mechanical trackers, it's going to be niche," he said.

CORONADO, Calif.--There's more than one kind of "green" in the eyes of the world's corporations.

Mark Turrell of Imaginatik and Prith Banerjee of HP Labs listen to Steve Di Biase of JohnsonDiversey (left to right) discuss sustainability at FIRe 2008.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

More and more companies are starting to realize that they can enjoy the PR benefits of turning "green," by reducing their carbon footprint through energy savings or changes to their products. But every CEO always has another shade of green somewhere in the back of his or her mind. Companies need to reduce their impact on the environment, but that doesn't mean they can afford to implement every single green idea, or that they even know where to start, according to panelists at the Future in Review conference.

The goal should be "sustainability," or the idea that individuals and organizations should be working on ways to make sure any environmentally friendly improvements or changes they make to their businesses should be sustainable over the long term, or they shouldn't be done at all. But developing and implementing sustainable ideas is harder to accomplish in real life than it is to discuss in luxury resort hotels yards from the Pacific Ocean.

That's where "innovation software" companies like Invention Machine and Imaginatik come in. Mark Atkins, president and CEO of Invention Machine, helps manufacturing companies develop clever ways to make their products more environmentally friendly without killing their cost structure. Some of his clients are starting to realize that they'll have to overhaul as much as 70 percent of their products within the next five years to meet sustainability goals, he said.

Imaginatik CEO Mark Turrell described a project his company did for Wal-Mart helping it unlock sustainable ideas from its own employees. Wal-Mart is notorious for its laser focus on cost reduction, and has started to realize that it can save money by reducing energy consumption in its stores. But the company was having trouble recognizing simple, achievable ideas suggested by employees.

After adopting tools developed by Imaginatik, Wal-Mart was able to collect thousands of ideas from employees that were getting lost in the old "suggestion box," and wound up implementing $38 million in cost savings from just four days of idea gathering, Turrell said.

Hewlett-Packard is using Imaginatik's software to help make improvements to the company's Labs division, said Prith Banerjee, the new director of HP Labs. Sustainability research is one of the new core components of HP Labs' research, and it shows up in products that help HP and its customers reduce cooling and power in their huge data centers.

This is a classic example of sustainability: reducing the amount of power used in data centers helps conserve energy, but it also reduces the costs to operate those data centers. For all the talk thrown out there by corporations as green thinking has become trendier, everything still comes down to the bottom line, said Steve Di Biase, senior vice president and chief scientific officer for JohnsonDiversey, a cleaning products company.

"If you can't be profitable, sustainability doesn't make sense," Di Biase said.

Hewlett-Packard announced on Tuesday investments in renewable energy as part of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its operations.

The computing giant said it will install a 1-megawatt solar array in its San Diego facility.

SunPower will install its solar panels and sell the electricity the panels generate to HP at fixed rates under a power purchase agreement. The system will save HP $750,000 over 15 years and offset 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road each year.

The San Diego installation will be made up of 5,000 panels on seven buildings. It's a relatively large solar array, but smaller than Google's 1.6-megawatt solar array, which is thought to be the largest corporate installation to date in the United States.

As part of the deal, HP employees are eligible for a $2,000 rebate for purchasing solar electric panels from SunPower, an amount that HP will match.

In Ireland, HP has contracted with wind developer Airtricity to purchase 80 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity in 2008. That arrangement will reduce HP's energy costs by $40,000 next year and eliminate the release of 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide, it said.

HP is considered a leader in environmental awareness and corporate social responsibility. Last year, it bought 11 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy to fuel its operations.