Walking the halls of the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, it wasn't difficult to find companies making green claims. Along with 3D televisions, 3D cameras and 3D content, words like "sustainable", "efficient" and "green" were everywhere.
From energy efficiency to waste reduction to alternative energy, it’s clear that consumer electronics manufacturers want buyers and consumers to know that sustainability is an important part of their DNA. In fact, the Consumer Electronics Association worked with Nextera Energy to buy renewable energy credits to offset the conference with its 120,000 plus attendees. They also put together panels a track on technology and the environment with topics like e-waste recycling.
The international climate talks have repeatedly bogged down in disputes over transparency and verification, but on one issue, technology is offering a solution.
New forest monitoring technology from tech giants Google and Cisco is starting to come online, allowing detailed tracking of land-use changes, particularly deforestation. The technology combines satellite images, maps and current and historical data for analysis. One system is being designed as a "planetary skin" with a network of sensors across the region and scientists on the ground to raise alerts in time to take action.
The almost real-time monitoring these systems offer may be what world leaders need to lock down a deal on a key component of an international climate treaty: REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.
Talk of the smartening up various things — the electrical grid, buildings, transportation and water systems — often wanders quickly into abstract ideas of a super-wired Jetsons-style future.
But at its core, the idea of making the various systems cities rely on smarter is not actually all that new or futuristic. Companies have been using software and sensors to manage their major assets for years, and now cities are getting in on it.
“Typically, the systems in place in cities are siloed solutions — you’ve got the police department, the transit authority, the parks and rec department and so on — so information is not easily shared,” Bill Sawyer, IBM's vice president of Maximo Operations, told SolveClimate.
“By putting in one system on one platform, they can eliminate a lot of inefficiencies.
For much of the last 200 years, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide hovered around 275 parts per million. In this century, with atmospheric carbon dioxide nearing 390 ppm, and climbing annually by about 2.5 ppm, we are already beyond what many scientists see as a critical threshold in climate change.
Farmers around the world are already feeling the impact.
In India, the worst monsoon season since 1972 threatens the 60 percent of cropland that relies on rain; many fields weren’t even planted this year. In China, a drought that started in the north in the spring (leading some to suggest moving the capital, Beijing) now extends to the central and southern portions of the nation, and is being touted as the worst in 40 years.
The same situation is repeating itself in the Middle East, with serious impacts in Iraq, parts of Turkey, Jordan and Syria as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run dry. The Aral Sea, tapped to grow Russian cotton in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has lost 80 percent of its water since 2006.
In Africa, nations like Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are experiencing severe drought. Where once the rains failed every nine or 10 years, they now fail every two to three years. In Kenya’s Kamba region, where many crops have withered, residents live on a meagre government dole and try to dig wells, but a subsurface rock layer stymies them. Dying livestock add to the turmoil, forcing cattle raids within and across borders that further threaten the stability of governments and facilitate the work of rebels, who leave behind their own trail of dead and dying.
This week, the California Energy Commission will consider new regulations that would require televisions sold in the state to be 33 percent more energy efficient by 2011 and 49 percent more efficient by 2013.
The move is in response to the proliferation of ever larger and cheaper flat-screen TVs, thanks both to the national switch from analog to digital cable and to the increasing availability of larger, cheaper flat screens that suck huge amounts of energy.
The commission, which will be deciding on the regulations at a Nov. 18 meeting, calculates that televisions and their accessories (DVRs, DVD players, cable boxes) account for about 15 percent of home energy use.
Some manufacturers have backed the proposed rules, but the trade group Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), of which the majority of manufacturers are members, is predictably opposed. The CEA claims the energy efficiency regulations would send TV sales plummeting, costing California $50 million in lost tax revenues and 4,600 lost jobs.
“Consumer electronics manufacturers have already dramatically reduced the amount of energy used by digital televisions — without regulation,” said Gary Shapiro, CEA’s president and CEO. “In less than two years, the energy efficiency of Energy Star TVs has improved by 41 percent. These successful efforts resulted from competition among manufacturers to reduce costs to consumers in the global marketplace — not government mandates.”
Manufacturers of sets built around more efficient displays, however, are likely to see a sales boom.
The Cleantech Group just released its first Global Cleantech 100, a ranking by analysts and experts from around the world of the top 100 companies working in the space today.
While there are some obvious picks (among them electric car darling Tesla Motors, smart grid giant Silver Spring Networks, and longtime battery leader A123 Systems, all of which wound up in the Top 10), there are a number of surprises.
Do you recycle your cell phones? It's a great practice for insuring that toxic materials in those old phones don't make their way into the environment. But what about the other side of the cell phone lifecycle? Do you know where the materials come from?
It turns out that many of the minerals in that phone have an ugly story behind them, similar to that of blood diamonds.
TakePart.com, a project of Participant Media, produced the PSA above as part of a larger campaign to educate the public about the role "conflict minerals" play in funding armed groups fighting in the Eastern Congo.
The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras.
Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate an estimated $144 million each year by trading in four main minerals, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, all of which make our consumer electronics products function properly.
Solar, wind and other renewable sources tend to receive most of the attention in the emerging clean energy economy. But a raft of startups are developing technologies that tackle the other side of the equation: When, where and how energy is consumed.
In the process, they are helping businesses and homeowners reduce their electricity bills.
This trend is perhaps most prevalent in the building sector, and for good reason. Residential and commercial buildings account for about 40 percent of total U.S. energy consumption, with the majority of it used for heating, cooling and lighting.
China’s largest electric transmission company has announced an ambitious plan to develop a national smart grid by 2020 that would help utilities and their customers transport and use energy more efficiently.
The sheer size of the project raises some intriguing questions. First, about whether China has the capital and technology for such an extensive upgrade. And second, whether the project could provide an opening for U.S.-China cooperation on technological improvements that could benefit both.
There's little question that the grid upgrade is becoming a necessity for State Grid Corporation of China, which is responsible for delivering power to 80 percent of the population.
Despite the buzz surrounding the smart grid, to date it has consisted of technologies or services geared toward utilities, helping them save money, smooth out supply-and-demand curves, and use energy more efficiently.
Now, with a clear soft spot from the federal government for all things smart grid, investors and start-ups are turning to new opportunities in the market, namely products and services focused on consumers and corporate clients.
While energy management and demand response systems are already beginning to reap rewards for companies with large office buildings and data centers, the consumer market has remained largely untapped, save a few pilot studies.
Matt Denesuk, partner with IBM Venture Capital Group, sees that changing in the year ahead.
Denesuk’s group partners with venture capitalists to offer expertise and product partnerships to start-ups seen as key to IBM’s business; companies picked by the group typically wind up either being acquired by IBM or developing long-term partnerships with the tech giant.
We spoke with Denesuk to find out which companies and technologies we might see Big Blue championing in the not-so-distant future. Here's who he named:
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