Green Tech

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.

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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.

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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."

High price and a strange color. No, we're not talking about a hairdo. Those are the two factors that have kept light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, from becoming a mainstream light source.

But that might change soon, said Zach Gibler, chief business development officer of Lighting Science Group, which plans to announce distribution deals with major retailers for its LED bulbs that screw into a regular socket.

LED bulbs for household use have already been around for some time, but their success has been limited. The main obstacles have been that they cost more than incandescent lightbulbs and emit a sometimes unnerving color of light.

Lighting Science Group this week plans to introduce a portfolio of LED replacement white lightbulbs that it hopes will attract more consumer interest. The product line uses the same sockets as Edison bulbs.

According to Gibler, the bulbs perform well on a warmth and color rendering index--blue looks blue, yellow looks yellow, etc.--they have a long life cycle, and consume 80 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs.

Gibler believes 2008 could be "the year of LED" for residential use and lighting in general. The market potential is big, particularly considering that legislation will outlaw the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012, he said. He compared the adoption of LED lights in homes to another lighting product, the flashlight.

"Three years ago you could hardly find an LED-based flashlight; today it's hard to find one that is not LED light," he said.

Lighting Science Group sells its products through wholesale stores and on its own Web site, but it expects to announce soon distribution deals with one or two retail chains to make the new LED bulbs more available.

At $40 to $110 apiece, the LED "in-screw" bulbs may still seem too pricey for a lot of consumers. But Lighting Science Group's pitch is that a 50 cent Edison bulb will last for 750 to 3,000 hours, while an LED has to be replaced only every 50,000 hours (or 10 to 30 years). The company says the cost savings is almost $740 over a lifetime due to much lower energy consumption.

Vrinda Bhandarkar, a research analyst at Mountain View, Calif.-based Strategies Unlimited, said she is impressed if the "bulky looking lamps" actually perform as well as the company says. But the price has to come down a lot before consumers--and not just businesses--start buying them, she said. For a proper light in the kitchen it would take at least four big bulbs, which would cost about $440.

"They will be used for retail display, hotel lobbies, for paintings that hang up high, and places where you need a high ladder to change lamps," she said.

Gibler, who has a lengthy career in the lighting industry and took on responsibility for business development at Lighting Science Group last year, believes the price for LED lights will come down as chips get cheaper.

"They will be half the cost in another two years," he said.

Maybe I shouldn't come to the office anymore. Working from home would treat the planet better, according to the American Electronics Association.

The trade group issued an Earth Day report Tuesday encouraging employers to expand telecommuting, partly to help cut carbon emissions and use of electricity. Among its arguments:

If everyone who could perform a job remotely did so just 1.6 days per week, $4.5 billion worth of fuel would be spared. That would prevent the release of 26 billion pounds of carbon dioxide each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nearly half of workers commute more than 20 miles total every weekday, according to a 2006 study by the University of Maryland.

Some 45 million people work remotely, according to the Telework Coalition. Employees of IBM, for one, take novel approaches, such as using Second Life to interact.

Various studies show that telecommuting helps to lure attractive employees, prevents them from burning out, and saves companies money. The American Electronics Association promotes telework for potentially bringing parents, retirees, and others with scheduling constraints back into the workforce as baby boomers retire.

That's all good news for providers of Web-based software and broadband services seeking yet another marketing angle.

Online collaborative software, for instance, can reduce a company's paper waste and reduce IT management expenses. The makers of Cisco's WebEx, Google's apps, and others push telecommuting as a "green" practice.

However, telework has downsides. It may help families better balance their personal and professional lives, but it can also can lead to working around the clock, thanks to always-on gadgets. Americans have paltry vacation time as it is, compared with Europeans.

And although workers can deduct many expenses of a home office, utility bills for maintaining one can be expensive.

Plus, companies need to ramp up security measures when allowing a worker to toil on a virtual private network, or cart around a laptop loaded with sensitive data.

Congressional bills have been introduced that would force federal agencies to set up telework programs. Part of the reasoning has been to keep people working despite emergencies such as a natural disaster or terrorist strike.

A growing body of scientific evidence makes plastics increasingly less attractive to "green" consumers. Hormone-altering substances seep from drinking bottles. Great plastic garbage patches swirl in the ocean. And plastic bits have been found to concentrate poisons at levels a million times higher than in the water. Many people don't even know that most plastic is made from petroleum.

But agriculture giants including Archer Daniels Midland and small companies such as Cereplast are baking plastic from corn, soy, potatoes, and tapioca. Start-ups are even exploring pig urine and carbon dioxide to make plastics. Bioplastics could make up 30 percent of the plastics market by 2030, according to Helmut Kaiser Consultancy.

Still, most plastics continue to be made from petroleum or natural gas, which, although increasingly expensive, remain cheaper than using plants.

Fossil fuel plastics involve toxic chemicals to produce, can harm human health, pollute ecosystems, and are rarely recycled. Some people struggling to eliminate daily use of plastics find it nearly impossible.

However, codes marking many plastic products can help people figure out what's inside the bottle and what to do with it when it's spent, depending upon regional recycling rules.

To help recyclers, the plastics industry more than two decades ago started a labeling system that identifies seven major types of plastics by a numeric stamp on the bottoms of bottles. But what do the numbers mean?

I took a look at the seven categories in products from around my apartment. I retain a fair share of ecologically-damaging habits, but it hurt to make a trip to the store for polystyrene cups (No. 2) and root beer for the polyethylene six-pack rings (No. 4). The PET water bottle (No. 1) was mailed to me in a press package from a company that makes "green" products. However, while sometimes I splurge on bubbly bottled water, I try to use a stainless steel Klean Kanteen for flat water. (Ahem, the HDPE foot powder (No. 2) was left by a guest.) Check out the photo gallery for more.

MENLO PARK, Calif.--How much water does it take to make a pair of leather shoes? Eight-thousand liters.

That's from Hans Enggrob, head of innovation at the DHI Water Group, a research and consulting firm, speaking at the Nordic Green conference taking place this week at SRI International's offices here.

It takes 2,000 liters to make a cotton T-shirt, 2,400 liters to make a hamburger, and 1,200 liters to produce a gallon of ethanol, he said.

But beer drinkers should rejoice. It only takes 75 liters for a glass of beer and 140 liters for a cup of coffee, he added. Much of the water in these products goes toward irrigating crops used to make these products.

Enggrob, like many others, points out that the world is facing a pending water crisis. Several start-ups concentrating on water purification and desalination have received funding in recent years and large giants such as General Motors have put more emphasis on water. Still, demand is growing faster than supply. China, Australia, and several African nations are already grappling with water shortages. In the U.S., some believe Lake Mead could run dry by 2021.

In the middle of the 20th century, there was about 4,000 cubic meters of fresh water per person per year, Enggrob said. Now we're close, globally, to 1,000 cubic meters per person per year. One thousand cubic meters per person per year is defined as water scarcity, he said. Water stress is defined as having 1,700 cubic meters per person per year.

Most countries also have to update their regulations and municipal water systems with regard to water reuse and purification. Singapore's NEWater, which constitutes part of the water coming out of the taps there, is actually reprocessed water from the sewer. Japan and Dubai make somewhat extensive use of gray water. But most jurisdictions haven't gone that far.

Purification is the bright spot in water. When oil is burned, the molecule is consumed, forcing humans to look for more. Water gets polluted but it can be cleaned.

"We have pretty much the same amount of water that we had four billion years ago," said Paul Frederiksen, head of research at Grundfos, a Danish company specializing in energy-efficient pumps.

Despite high-profile pledges by major tech companies to green the grid, efforts to improve efficiency in data centers remain stunted, according to two recent studies.

Fifty-one percent of companies have a solid plan to green their IT operations, down from 55 percent in 2007, according to a study released Monday by Digital Realty Trust. The company owns and manages corporate data centers.

But highly publicized efforts to improve data center performance and design include those of the Green Grid consortium of tech bigwigs such as Microsoft and Advanced Micro Devices. The Climate Savers initiative, backed by Google, the World Wildlife Federation, and dozens of other organizations, aims to halve computing power consumption by 2010.

An overwhelming and growing majority surveyed by BPM expressed a need for industry standards for efficiency as well as for heating and cooling systems. Given the absence of such guidelines, more than 60 percent said they turn instead to green building standards from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design from the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council.

However, 80 percent noted that they look at a broad number of factors to green data centers, taking into account hardware as well as the design and operations of the overall facilities.

Fewer company representatives expressed plans to pursue carbon credits to make up for their operations' emissions: 18 percent in the recent survey, showing a drop from one-quarter in 2007.

IT power consumption cost at least $1 million for 20 percent of respondents, and upwards of $10 million for 8 percent of them. The study contacted decision makers at companies with 5,000 or more employees in March.

And although power demand by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2005 , the Business Performance Management Forum found a similar lack of efficiency improvements in its study released earlier in April.

Three-quarters of those surveyed graded themselves a "C" or worse for green computing, and 65 percent said they lacked precise plans for improvement. But nearly half of respondents noted that their use of IT-related energy grew in 2007. Forty-six percent even ran out of space, power, or cooling systems.

A Forrester report in March predicted that spending on green IT services will grow by 60 percent each year to $4.8 billion by 2013.