Green Tech

Green Earth Technologies (GET) announced Wednesday that its environmentally friendly motor oil for cars will soon be available on shelves across the U.S.

The manufacturer of the biodegradable, carbon neutral motor oil made in part from the animal fat of beef slaughter byproducts has been waiting on certification from the American Petroleum Institute before selling its G-Oil to the public.

G-Oil has received API starburst certification, a symbol put on a product's packaging to signify it meets specific standards and is recommended for use by leading vehicle manufacturers. GET's car oil was additionally granted the API service symbol donut, a seal signifying an oil product has "energy-conserving properties in a standard test in comparison to a reference oil."

Until recently, GET has only been selling a 2-cycle G-Oil and a 4-cycle 10W-30 G-Oil for use in small-motor things like lawn mowers and tractors.

Now that the API approval has come, GET, which will be showcasing new products at the AAPEX show in Las Vegas next week, says consumers will begin to see its G-Oil motor oil for cars and trucks at leading national chains. It already began selling its product at National Auto Stores, a Pennsylvania-based chain, as of October 1.

The announcement is not just good news for a company. If the majority of the general public starts buying motor oil that biodegrades rather than taints groundwater, it could have a meaningful impact on the environment. Used motor oil from a single oil change that is dumped into the ground can contaminate about 1 million gallons of fresh water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But, of course, the motor oil has to work well with your car.

While the International Motor Sports Association's American Le Mans Series has adopted G-Oil as its official motor oil of choice, the real test will be whether or not the American driving public and car enthusiasts like how it performs in their cars.

While no formal announcement has been made, it's likely a deal is in the works with the retailers already carrying G-Oil for small motors. This would include chains like Amazon.com, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and True Value, among others.

As it does with most trends, Samsung is pursuing eco-friendly cell phones with vigor. It already gave us the Samsung Reclaim, and now we finally have a chance to review the Samsung Blue Earth. Like the Reclaim, the Blue Earth's shell is made from recycled materials--specifically, plastic water bottles--but it goes a giant step further with solar panels on its rear face. The solar panels actually work and can charge the phone in a pinch.

The Blue Earth is also free of harmful materials like polyvinyl chloride, and you can minimize battery use by adjusting the display settings. Outside of being green, the Blue Earth offers a functional feature set, but its small touch screen hampers its usability and there was static during calls. Check out our Blue Earth review for a more detailed look.

To mark the annual celebration, CNET creates a green electronics guide, a new weekly show focusing on eco-living, and tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint.

CNET's green electronics guide

At CNET, we take sustainability seriously. Here, you can find information about buying green, starting with our new energy-efficiency ratings and our new weekly video, The Green Show.
(Posted in Reviews by CNET staff)
April 22, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

Images: NASA's biggest achievements for Earth

In time for Earth Day, NASA ran an online contest to let Earthlings pick the top 10 biggest accomplishments in the agency's five decades of observing the planet. The winner: GPS.
(Posted in Image Galleries by CNET staff)
April 22, 2009 8:25 AM PDT

How to reduce your impact

With Earth Day here, many of us are thinking of ways to help the environment. We have five online services that assist you in doing just that.
(Posted in Webware by Don Reisinger)
April 22, 2009 6:00 AM PDT

Energy-cutting apps for PCs

Earth Day may or may not appeal to your eco-conscience, but keeping the reins steady on your computer's carbon footprint and energy consumption makes good technological and financial sense.
(Posted in Green Tech by Jessica Dolcourt)
April 21, 2009 11:50 PM PDT

Photos: Early views of Earth from space

NASA's Earth Day commemoration includes a historic look at our home planet, beginning with images taken in 1947 from a V-2 rocket.
(Posted in Image Galleries by CNET staff)
April 21, 2009 1:00 PM PDT

Green technologies to watch

The pace of change surrounding technology in clean energy and efficiency hasn't been this fast in years. On the eve of Earth Day, we take a measure of which areas look most promising.
(Posted in Green Tech by Martin LaMonica)
April 21, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

My year as a green-living beta tester

CNET News reporter Martin LaMonica has spent the past year in the multifamily competition Energy Smackdown to lower household energy use. He finds a little effort goes a long way.
(Posted in Green Tech by Martin LaMonica)
April 20, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

Photos: Getting your green on for Earth Day

CNET Green Tech reporter Martin LaMonica lists ideas for an eco-conscious lifestyle, ranging from energy conservation for your home to recycling your gadgets.
(Posted in Image Galleries by Martin LaMonica)
April 20, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

From Earth Day 2008

Photos: Plastic by the numbers

Chemists have spun hundreds of kinds of plastics, but most common containers fall in one of seven categories.
(Posted in Image Galleries by Elsa Wenzel)
April 22, 2008 7:45 AM PDT

Photos: Guide to green labels

Reading between the lines on labels can be tricky. But labels created by independent groups--rather than suppliers and retailers--can help identify truly eco-friendly goods.
(Posted in Image Galleries by Elsa Wenzel)
April 21, 2008 4:00 AM PDT

How to green your life

Eco-perfection is impossible, but these tools can help to shrink a carbon footprint, inch by inch.
(Posted in Green Tech by Elsa Wenzel)
April 21, 2008 4:00 AM PDT

Earth Day happens one day a year. But it should spur us to do our best to reduce our impact on the environment for the other 364.

I've picked five sites that provide a framework for how to live your life in a way that's better for the environment. Whether it's car-pooling or simply eating the right foods, you'll find ways to be a more responsible Earthling.

The tools of the trade

Carbon Diet

Though there are countless "carbon calculators" on the Web that try to measure your carbon footprint, the Carbon Diet does it better.

When you start using Carbon Diet, you'll be required to input your usage of electricity, natural gas, and vehicle fuel. Simply input your monthly bill amounts and Carbon Diet will do the rest. It then calculates your impact on the environment. You can go back each month to update your usage. As you input more information about your activities, it continuously modifies your impact, displaying graphs and charts to give you a visual outline of what you're doing to the planet.

The best tool on Carbon Diet is its "analysis" feature, which examines your activities and gives you tips toward becoming a more responsible environmentalist. It told me that I need to stop driving so much. I also need to turn the TV off instead of leaving it on for most of the day.

You'll learn a lot from Carbon Diet. It's the best carbon calculator I've seen. Try it out.

The Daily Green

The Daily Green is the best resource for green living on the Web. It delves into healthy recipes, better living, low-impact gardening, and more.

When you first go to The Daily Green, you'll probably have trouble finding what you're looking for simply because there's so much content to consult. If you start with the news, you'll find a host of interesting articles and discussions on topics that relate to the green lifestyle. The section is also filled with articles on political news surrounding environmental concerns.

But the most value you'll get from The Daily Green can be found in the site's "Tips and Advice" tab, which shows you ways to save money with green products. The site also provides advice on how to turn your home green so you become a more responsible environmentalist.

If you want to change the way you eat, The Daily Green also has green recipes. All of the dishes contain organic products, like soy milk and basmati rice. The site claims green food is just as delicious as dishes that don't use organic ingredients. I can't corroborate that claim--the recipes didn't sound all that appetizing to me.

The Daily Green is the perfect destination to immerse yourself in the green lifestyle. It makes you a better inhabitant of Earth.

... Read more

Earth Day may or may not appeal to your eco-conscience, but keeping the reins steady on your computer's carbon footprint and energy consumption makes good technological and financial sense. Reducing your energy output can prolong the life of your hardware--especially a laptop or Netbook--and can help save cash, which we all know is the 'greenest' motivation around.

This collection of environmentally friendly software lassos together these apps, plus a few others to help understand and appreciate our planet's cities, flora, and outer space neighbors.

ENERGY-SAVERS

Edison

Edison for XP and Windows Vista is the newest one-stop app for monitoring how much energy and money you save when you tighten up your computer's sleep and shutdown schedules. A slider lets you decide after how many minutes you want to shut down your computer's display and hard drive during the peak work day. You can program differing criteria for off hours. Manual customization is also possible if you need to ease into greener computing.

... Read more

From a technology perspective, things have changed a lot since the first Earth Days of the 1970s.

After barely moving for decades, there's been a surge in innovation in energy the past five years, fueled both by society's growing interest in clean energy and by the technology revolutions in other industries, like IT and biotech. That has expanded the definition of clean energy from solar and wind to many other areas.

"We are in a new era of energy innovation," declared Daniel Yergin last week at a forum on clean-energy policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Yergin is someone who should know. As the author of "The Prize," a book about the history of the oil industry, and co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, he advises CEOs of giant oil and gas firms on energy strategy. Like many people in green tech, he's not a typical 1970s-era tree hugger but a hard-boiled business man who sees technology change driven by economic, environmental, and national security reasons.

Innovation "runs across all sectors and it has a very strong climate change focus," Yergin said. "Clearly, one of the areas of major innovation is the nexus of transportation, smart grid, and renewable and alternative" energy.

Which technologies specifically have a good shot at making the biggest impact? As part of our Earth Day 2009 coverage, we try to handicap technologies that bear watching.

The list:
Utility-scale solar. Despite all the press around solar energy, its contribution to national electricity generation is barely a blip. But after a multi-decade hiatus, utility-scale solar power is back on the agenda, led in the U.S. by sun-blessed California's renewable energy mandates.

Over the past five years, several start-ups have designed concentrating solar thermal systems that generate heat by focusing the sun's light to make steam. The steam then turns a traditional turbine to make electricity. Desert areas like the Southwest region of the U.S. are tailor-made for this technology.

After racing forward for the last few years, concentrating solar upstarts have had to hit the brakes or change plans because of the cost and complexity--from environmental permitting, building transmission lines and the like--of these projects.

eSolar and BrightSource Energy stand out for having announced programs to move ahead with their solar tower technologies. Other relevant technologies in utility-scale solar are flat solar panels mounted on racks that follow the sun and concentrating photovoltaics from companies like Cool Earth Solar and SolFocus.

Energy storage. If solar was the technology that venture capitalists loved in 2007, last year and this year it's energy storage. For investors and entrepreneurs who like a tough problem, they picked a good area.

Why are electric vehicles so expensive? The batteries. What will transform wind and solar power from variable to reliable sources? Storage. How do we make our power-hungry electronic gadgets last all day? You get the picture.

There are a dizzying number of technologies to store electrical energy but they just can't seem to be too cheap, light, or environmentally benign.

The breakthrough for electric vehicles has roots in consumer electronics where lithium ion batteries have become the standard. U.S. companies on the forefront of making lithium ion batteries for cars and other portable electronics, like power tools, are Ener1 and A123 Systems, which signed a deal to supply Chrysler earlier this month.

Companies to watch in electric vehicles are, once again, high-profile Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive, which will release its plug-in electric later this year, and Bright Automotive, a company founded by the former head of General Motors' EV1 program.

Meanwhile, a handful of progressive utilities are quietly dipping their toes into grid storage, installing one or two megawatt banks of batteries the size of tractor trailers or a small building. Although the lithium ion battery makers tend to get most of the attention, this is an area where alternative chemistries, such as zinc, or even stationary fuel cells are creeping in.

Efficiency. Ask nearly any clean-energy expert about the best way to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the most economical way and they'll say efficiency. An investment in efficiency, whether it's your home or your data center, will typically be the quickest payback when it comes to energy.

From a technology perspective, efficiency takes many forms, from Ford's EcoBoost to deliver better mileage on gasoline engines to LED lighting. For the power grid, efficiency means smart-grid technologies that help utilities better match the supply of electricity with demand and give homeowners ways to cut their monthly bills.

Although the grid will get a major upgrade from the stimulus plan, it's still unclear how many utilities can successfully make the financial case for investing in smart-grid technologies or how much consumers are willing to pay for home energy monitoring.

Carbon capture and storage. Even if there were massive uptake of efficiency technologies and renewable energy in the next 10 years, the world's economy would still rely heavily on fossil fuels.

During a speech at last week's MIT forum on clean-energy policy, John Holdren, the director of the president's Office of Science and Technology Policy, said carbon capture and sequestration is a technology that deserves more research as a way to mitigate climate change.

Right now, though, technology for pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide underground is still not commercial. There are some companies, including GreatPoint Energy and Tenaska Energy, devising ways to make cleaner-burning natural gas from coal and to store carbon dioxide from that process underground.

The Department of Energy's budget--which has not yet been passed--calls for $3.4 billion in research for "low-carbon coal technologies" to study whether it can be done safely and economically.

Disappointments and a reality check
Looking back at our coverage of Earth Day 2008, perhaps the biggest disappointment, economically and environmentally, was the biofuels area. Because of fluctuating commodity prices, corn ethanol providers got clobbered last year with at least two declaring bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, cellulosic ethanol made from wood chips or prairie grasses hasn't yet been done at commercial scale as some in the industry had hoped. It's still a goal worth pursuing because cellulosic ethanol has a better environmental profile than corn ethanol, but the economic turmoil has slowed progress.

The great hope--and perhaps the sleeper--for the biofuels industry remains the lowly algae, although even the most optimistic say that it will be three years before it can be produced at large scale.

Another disappointment on my list is roof-mounted small wind turbines for homes. It's not that the technology doesn't work, but two studies in the U.K. and Massachusetts have shown that the available wind on people's homes is typically below manufacturers' minimum requirements.

Finally, water technologies attract very little investment even though awareness of water problems continues to rise, fed by high-profile droughts in California and Australia.

Sum it all up and it's clear there's a flowering of innovation in energy and environmental products, from people's homes to businesses. At the same time, we shouldn't fool ourselves: technology alone won't magically create a low-carbon economy and more sustainable lifestyles.

A healthy green-tech industry requires a healthy financial system and supportive policies. Many people are aiming for technology breakthroughs and, no doubt, there will be surprises along the way. But given the scope of the problem, it's clear the road to a greener economy will be long, expensive, and will need a different set of rules.

With a competition called the Energy Smackdown, you might expect to walk away bruised and battered. But after a year of trying to "smack down" energy use in my home, I actually feel pretty good.

Almost a year ago, I signed my household up for the Energy Smackdown, a combination of a community-outreach program, contest, and cable TV show.

Teams from three neighboring Boston-area cities were formed and competed to lower their energy use. About 60 households measured their energy use every month, along with how many miles they drove, flew, and how much trash they generated.

There were one-day competitions between teams for low-carbon travel, lighting, and home energy efficiency. Events were filmed along the way, including home energy audits and a "locavore banquet" made from locally procured food. Teams win by lowering the group's overall carbon footprint after one year and on team event scores.

So how'd I do? Not too bad, considering I had already done quite a bit to lower my home's energy consumption before signing on. The numbers aren't complete, but it looks like we've cut our footprint in the range of 10 percent or 15 percent and that we're on the low end of the scale in terms of total footprint.

At first, I was reluctant to sign on since I thought I couldn't cut much more. But then I acquired a secret weapon: solar electric panels, which were installed last spring. Amazingly, our house has produced a bit more electricity than we consumed over the past year. That's right. Last month, for instance, I had a $3.35 electric bill--and that's after the $6.43 grid interconnection fee.

Working against our carbon count was air travel: two family flights to Europe and the Midwest threw our monthly numbers way out of whack.

Strip away those high-profile factors and I think our score improved because of a few simple, even boring, things--sealing the cracks around the attic staircase, connecting electronics to power strips and turning them off at night, and using our bicycles for short trips. In general, sealing drafts in your home--rattling windows and such--makes a huge difference.

Being something of an energy tech geek, my green-living beta test also involved some toys and science experiments. Before heading for work most days, I put a foldable solar panel connected to a backup battery on my deck. The juice I collect off-grid charges my cell phone, game machines, and rechargeable batteries.

Ready, set, go!
More impressive were the accomplishments of the different teams. Even eco-conscious families significantly cut their carbon footprint--some more than 60 percent. As of the halfway point in the contest, families on average reduced energy use by about 30 percent, according to Donald Kelley, the executive director of the BrainShift Foundation, which conceived of the Energy Smackdown.

The various team events were a lot of fun because, I suspect, they tap into that American competitive spirit. And the activities really did connect neighbors and build community.

One Saturday morning, I joined in a sort of weatherization barn-raising at one team member's home. After measuring the air leakage with a blow-door test, about 10 of us ran around with caulk guns and insulating foam to try to make the building more airtight. The blow door--essentially just a removable door with a large fan--exaggerates the air leaks to help locate them.

During the lightbulb challenge, just a few small groups of people managed to replace 888 incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescents. That's saving the equivalent of electricity to power 87 homes each year, or 650 homes over the life of the bulbs.

There's no financial incentive, but bragging rights clearly go a long way to motivating teams to strategize and compete.

In a transportation event, we biked over 20 miles, rather than carpool, to cover a course with the lowest pollution per person. Another time we consulted with a local chef on how to create a good-tasting banquet menu built around locally procured ingredients. (My wife's sorbet dessert, made from locally picked raspberries, got top prize.)

Big and small changes
So we had a lot of fun, but you might ask, are these green efforts just feel-good puffery that have no real impact? I'd argue that this sort of activity, as playful as it was at times, hits on something important.

For starters, I found that getting a reasonably accurate measure of energy usage is not as trivial as you might expect. You have to go to the trouble, more than once, of gathering and entering data--how many kilowatt-hours, miles driven, therms consumed, etc. There are many companies developing home energy-monitoring tools, which should give people a better grip on where their money is going and how they compare to others.

But right now, most of us have only a general idea of energy use. And yet, better awareness is a vital step to creating a more energy efficient society, say experts. When people realize that their second refrigerator is sucking up $50 a month in electricity to keep a few beers cool, they may decide to pull the plug and come up with an alternative. The same concept holds true in industry, where there is a lot of wasted energy.

Getting better energy data underpins a lot of green-tech business strategies. A trial of a smart-grid program, for example, in the Seattle-area last year found that people reduced their energy consumption by 10 percent when they knew how much appliances consumed and the cost of energy.

The second insight I've gained is, in my experience, greening your lifestyle just isn't all that hard. Besides, who doesn't want to lower their utility bills?

Using a power strip to completely shut off your electronics isn't exactly a supreme sacrifice but it can shave real money from your electricity bill every year. In the U.S., "vampire energy" from plugged-in appliances is about 5 percent of the energy consumed and costs consumers $3 billion each year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Choosing energy-efficient appliances, which don't necessarily cost more, isn't dramatic behavioral change either yet helps spur demand for these goods. A programmable thermostat and low-flow shower heads are other no-brainers.

It's a bit more challenging to know how to improve your overall living space to be more energy efficient. But again, the resources are there--if you make the effort.

To participate in the Energy Smackdown, we were required to get a home energy audit. There are many technologies you could invest in--solar energy, "geothermal" ground-source heat pumps, wind turbines. But the first step is sealing your home's "envelope" from drafts and insulating. In other words, a caulk gun will pay off quicker than solar panels.

Perhaps the bigger point is that "green living" is really about the choices you make every day. Are you going to recycle that old cell phone or send it to an incinerator or landfill?

The grand finale for this year-long journey ends next month and, of course, I'm hoping for a victory for the hometown team. But if another city nudges us out for the win, my energy bills and I can say it's still been a worthwhile trip.

Note: This piece is part of a package for Earth Day 2009. On deck for Tuesday is "Technologies to watch."

A new set of layers for Google Earth is trying to make it easier for solar and wind farm developers to figure out where they are least and most likely to be challenged.

The Path to Green Energy, as the Google Earth tool is called, provides information on lands legally prohibited from commercial development, on natural habitats of endangered species, and on lands proposed for inclusion into the federal wilderness system.

The tool was developed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Audubon Society with sponsorship from Google.org's Geo Challenge Grants. The grants program provides nonprofits with money to develop Google Earth tools. Each group receives a $25,000 grant to gather and organize data from within its own organization and from government agencies, including wildlife, game, and fish commissions.

The Path to Green Energy tool, which went live Wednesday, is freely available to the public and currently covers the Western states and the Dakotas.

The tool shows 14 types of areas within three main categories of land protection. Layers can be turned on individually or seen in merged views.

Representatives from the groups said in a teleconference Wednesday that they see the Path to Green Energy maps as a proactive step in reaching out to energy developers before disputes arise over sensitive areas.

Locating environmentally responsible sites "will expedite rather than delay proposals (and) help gain widespread support for a project. It makes good business sense where your chances of getting approval quicker are better," said Johanna Wald, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Environmentalists, too, want to see renewable energy projects like solar and wind farms go up quickly, and don't want to be tied up in legal battles or prevent progress any more than developers do, according to Wald.

"It will minimize permitting periods, conflict, and oppositions, which in turn will get us where we need to go: more renewable energy in people's homes," said Brian Rutledge, executive director of Audubon Wyoming.

The maps are timely since Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is putting together a federal task force to investigate which public lands could be used for renewable energy generation and transmission. On March 11, Salazar said that the Bureau of Land Management had identified 21 million acres of public land with wind energy potential in Western states, 29 million acres in Southwestern states with solar energy potential, and 140 million acres in Western states and Alaska with geothermal resource potential.

Wald said the Path to Green Energy tool might be useful for researching that task.

After years of confusion and controversy between developers and environmentalists throughout Wyoming, for example, a pilot version of the tool was used to identify habitats of the Greater Sage Grouse population. A current layer in Google now shows the lands that were signed into protection by Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal's executive order last August, while another shows grouse breeding density./p>

"In terms of the potential cost savings, they will be enormous. Anyone who is in the transmission or renewable energy business talks about cost in terms of money, time, and getting these approvals. Sometimes that can take far longer than the build-out process. So if we can streamline that process, it can help enormously," said David Bercovich, program manager at Google.org.

Earth Hour is a sort of open-source movement against global warming. On Saturday, March 28, at 8:30 p.m. in each time zone, millions of people in thousands of cities are expected to turn off the lights for one hour to raise people's consciousness about the link between global warming and energy use.

Started in Australia two years ago, the event is mushrooming thanks in part to the Internet and social media.

One day before the start of the event in Asia, "Earth Hour" is the top search item on Twitter. A 30-second clip about Earth Hour on You Tube has gotten almost 59,000 views. Facebook groups count hundreds of thousands of members.

The goal for this year is to get 1 billion people to turn their lights off for an hour. In 2007, 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for an hour and in 2008, it went to 50 million.

But it's not just individuals: dozens of cities and 829 world landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and the Great Pyramids of Giza, will be dark for one hour as well.

The whole point of Earth Hour is to cast a vote and make a visible statement by turning off the lights for an hour. But it's worth pointing out that that a few watts will be saved along the way and that people waste a lot of energy in their daily lives.

This week, a published study calculated that $2.8 billion is wasted from office PCs that aren't shut off properly. Perhaps people who participate in Earth Hour could unplug their home electronics as well.