The Power Alley

Obama and McCain on the Environment

2008-10-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

It’s October 29, 2008. We are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression AND we are just under a week away from what many are calling the most important United States Presidential election in their lifetimes (no matter what their age). To truly grasp what an historic moment we are currently living in would be impossible, so we’ll leave that to the real historians.

Today, I’d like to narrow the focus to something more palatable. Yes, we’ll continue to talk about the presidential candidates, but in relation to their views on the environment.

In so many ways, this election is very different from past elections. As it relates to the environment, we’re for the first time seeing two major party candidates who are both deeply concerned about protecting the environment. In the past, the environment hasn’t been given the same consideration. However, there are still some substantial differences between the two candidates’ approaches to the climate crisis. I found a good analysis of the different opinions from Grist.com - http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/07/06/candidates/.

If you are still undecided, or simply looking to learn a little more about your favorite candidates’ position, this is a great resource to start with.

The Price of Being Scared

2008-10-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

For a few days over the last couple weeks, I was convinced the New York Times had shut down its offices and stopped updating its website. The same scary headline about the stock market’s dramatic decline coupled with a jagged graph showing a steep drop seemed to show up day after day. Of course, the Times didn’t close, but the market did continue to drop. 600 points here, 700 there, and you could literally see people’s retirement funds evaporating into nothing.

If you weren’t at least partially scared about the state of the world’s economy, my guess is you either have your entire life savings safely tucked away in a shoebox under your bed, or have decided to ride out the market fluctuations and try to ignore the daily trends.

From the enterprise perspective, there is a lot of fear about the prospect of spending money. The need to meet more stringent budget requirements has become increasingly commonplace. However, organizations that approach the issue as an opportunity are the ones that will likely be the most successful in the long run.

While it may be challenging, the tightening of purse strings creates opportunities for researching new ways to save money. Coupled with companies’ recent attempts to become more environmentally-friendly, this need to better stretch budgets creates a perfect storm for getting companies excited about researching and ultimately using tools such as network energy management solutions that reduce energy costs and also curb harmful carbon emissions.

It’s a similar concept to gas prices. While no one enjoys paying over $4 a gallon at the pump, absurdly high prices do force consumers and car companies alike to put more effort into researching environmentally-friendly vehicles that cost substantially less to operate on a weekly basis.

The reality is, tough times make us carefully think about our options. To consider solutions that will serve our future generations well is a skill we haven’t always used in the past, but one we must increasingly use in the future.

Forrester Groundswell Award Entry - Social Impact

2008-09-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Name of entry: Edison

Name of company entering: Verdiem Corporation

Category: Social Impact

Edison Info & Download: www.verdiem.com/edison

Availability: August 2008 to Present

Application Description
Created by Verdiem Corporation, Edison is a free PC energy management tool for everyone. It is an easy-to-use, consumer-friendly application that allows users to set energy savings controls on their PCs. To use the application, consumers merely have to download Edison, scroll the savings bar to the desired level, set schedules and forget it.

Verdiem chose to offer Edison for free to people who care about energy efficiency. Whether it’s about saving money or reducing carbon emissions, Edison offers a simple way to fight energy waste. In fact, by taking a few simple steps to activate energy management software, computers can require up to 80% less energy (source). We hope that as people use Edison, they’ll become more aware of the global energy waste problem and possible solutions they can implement at home and on the job.

Edison launched earlier this summer to tremendous enthusiasm and praise from organizations and individuals literally from around the world. At launch, Verdiem challenged consumers to help support the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s goal of reducing PC-related carbon emissions by 54 million tons by 2010. If just 1% of the world’s PCs – or 10 million – used Edison, we could reduce PC-related carbon emissions by 7 billion pounds, which is equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the road (source).

In addition to the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, Verdiem also worked with Microsoft’s Sustainability teams and the Alliance for Climate Protection (which is affiliated with the We Can Solve It campaign) to promote the launch.

Along with an environmentally-conscious virtual press conference, Verdiem chose to spread the word about Edison through a variety of social media tools, including our website, Power Alley Blog, Facebook page and the viral videos housed on the Verdiem YouTube channel. In addition, we’ll be interacting with users via regular newsletters that will offer tips and tricks for how best to take advantage of Edison and advice on other ways to fight the global climate crisis. Already we see current users who are so pleased with the tool that they have decided to pass it along to their friends, family and colleagues via personal websites, blogs and in some cases, even company websites.

Within all of the tools that we manage, Verdiem has received and continues to receive comments and questions about the application, and is working hard to keep up the open dialogue with users from around the world.

In all, we believe Edison offers concerned citizens the opportunity to make a huge contribution to solving the global climate crisis with minimal effort, and we look forward to continuing to see how consumers respond to the challenge.

How This Entry Accomplishes Business Goals
Verdiem is a mission-driven company committed to reducing the environmental impact of technology. The most fundamental reason that Verdiem created Edison was to make PC energy management easier for all – at home and at work.

By offering a free tool for everyone to use, we are taking another step towards reducing the burden that technology energy consumption places on the planet, and continuing to demonstrate our commitment to our mission.

However, it’s not enough to simply create and distribute this tool to the public; ultimately, the goal of Edison is to reduce PC energy consumption, which can only happen when people install it and use it on a regular basis. This is why the launch of Edison coincided with a challenge for all consumers to help support the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s goal of reducing PC-related carbon emissions by 54 million tons by 2010. Verdiem believes that educating people about the incredible amount of energy PCs consume and how they can now address it in their own lives is the best solution. Once people understand the problem and how they can help, they are much more likely to become involved.

To date we have seen strong adoption of Edison from around the world. While we have not yet begun sharing download numbers with the public, we are pleased to see that Edison is being used today in more than 130 countries. In addition, we have received a lot of positive feedback from individuals regarding their impressions of the tool and how it could potentially help in their daily lives.

While our overall goal to reduce the environmental impact of technology, along with our Edison-specific goal of helping the Climate Savers Computing Initiative to reach its goal of reducing PC-related carbon emission by 2010 is far from completely achieved, the launch of Edison and the participation by each new user takes us a giant step closer to addressing the problem and meeting our goals.

From the Desk of Edison Support – How to Manage Multiple User Profiles on a Single Computer

2008-08-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Edison is a global user application, which means that the settings in the application are not user-specific and are subsequently applied to all users on a PC. This is something to keep in mind as you set your work schedule.

For example, if the users of a shared computer tend to use it at different times throughout the day, set the schedule to account for the times that the computer is generally in use for all users.

Check it out!

2008-08-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Wanted to let folks know we’ve now got a couple more channels for sharing information online. In addition to our corporate website and Power Alley Blog, we’ve got a Verdiem Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Facebook is a great way to track our latest news and read all of our Power Alley Blog entries, and the YouTube channel is a good way to learn more about our company and products (the Verdiem YouTube channel also includes a couple product demos for those interested).

Edison featured on CNN and American Public Media

2008-08-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

CNN’s “Energy Fix” program last Thursday included commentary on Edison from Verdiem’s Kevin Klustner. To watch the interview online, go here.

If you’re interested in radio coverage, check out this link to hear Kevin discussing Edison and Verdiem’s strategy and goals behind the product on American Public Media’s “Future Tense” program.

According to CIO, SURVEYOR Helps Washington Mutual Cut IT Costs

2008-08-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

CIO posted a great piece on how Verdiem SURVEYOR has helped Washington Mutual reduce energy costs, energy consumption and related carbon emissions.

According to the article, Washington Mutual has cut PC-related greenhouse gas emissions by 65% and is on track to save $3 million on electricity costs in 2008.

To learn more about how Washington Mutual has implemented and utilized SURVEYOR, read the article here.

Forrester Analyst Doug Washburn on Green IT Strategies

2008-08-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

In a post on SustainableLifeMedia.com, Forrester analyst Doug Washburn calls out two ways companies can easily begin developing their green IT strategies. I’ve reprinted both below, and recommend checking them out.

From the piece, “Green IT Strategy: Where's the Low-Hanging Fruit?”:

1. First measure, then manage. While green IT extends far beyond energy efficiency, reducing IT's energy consumption does offer tangible environmental and economic benefits. To get started, we at Forrester recommend that you measure your green IT baseline – an annual estimate of the energy consumption, CO2 emissions and financial costs of operating IT. By exposing the energy "hogs" within and outside of the datacenter, you’ll be able to prioritize what greening projects will offer the most bang for the buck.

2. Determine whether or not you're in compliance. Depending on your location, proper disposal and recycling of IT assets may be required. If you are not in compliance, now is the time to start. And here's a tip to save time and money: Use your vendors, since they're required to help. If you operate in Europe, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) imposes the responsibility for the disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment on the manufacturers (a.k.a. your hardware vendors).

Find the full article here.

From the Desk of Edison Support – Explaining Why Some PC’s Just Don’t Want to Sleep

2008-08-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

In addition to the Power Alley’s postings on current events and product news, we’d like to use this blog as a forum to highlight some of the frequently asked questions (and answers!) we’ve received from Edison users since launch.

Today, we’re explaining why some computers simply will not go to sleep at the time they’ve been set for.

And the answer is…

Edison uses the built-in Windows power management functionality to put your PC and monitor to sleep. Within Windows is a tool called an idle timer which monitors idle activity on your PC and, when the idle timer deems a system idle for a specified amount of time, Windows moves the PC into a lower power state (i.e. sleep mode).

The lack of sleeping – or what we call PC insomnia -- is generally caused by various applications and processes that can reset the idle timer. Some common examples include search archiving, virus scans, backup processes, and interactive web pages. Media applications, when running, are also common examples of items that would keep your computer awake.

Unfortunately, this problem cannot always be solved. However, if you find it happening to you, you can try to close applications that are unnecessarily running on your machine, like a media player.

For the enterprise environment, Verdiem SURVEYOR solves this issue by instituting a separate idle timer that better monitors and controls sleep settings, ensuring PCs always go to sleep as directed.

How to Make the Most of Your Edison Experience

2008-08-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

So you’ve downloaded and are using Edison on your PC, but are still looking for ways to maximize its impact in your home?

Here are a few tips and tricks to help you accomplish just that.

-Customize your “Work Time” and “Non-Work Time” settings – Take a few minutes to consider the ideal amount of time for your PC to stay on when you are using it for work and when you are using it for fun. For example, you may prefer for your display to turn off after 5 minutes when you are just surfing the Internet, but would rather it stay on for 15 minutes when you are using it for work.

-Carefully examine your work schedule – If you have Edison on a home PC that you don’t actually use for work, consider setting your schedule so that everyday is “Non-Work Time” with a stricter policy.

-Make sure your PC’s settings allow for you to wake it via keyboard or mouse activity – Enabling your PC to wake-up in multiple ways will create a better overall wake-up experience. Tip: If you choose to wake-up your PC using the power button, just make sure you don’t hold it down for so long that it shuts off completely!

How do you make the most of Edison in your home? Let our readers know so they can follow suit!

Verdiem announces Edison, the free PC energy management tool for everyone

2008-08-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

We are excited to announce today the general availability of Edison, the free PC energy management tool for everyone. The announcement was just made a few minutes ago and in case you missed it, was delivered via virtual press conference with our President and CEO Kevin Klustner joined by Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard and Climate Savers Computing Initiative President, Lorie Wigle.

We are really pleased to have the support of Microsoft and Climate Savers Computing Initiative in announcing this news, and look forward to sharing this tool with you and helping you to reduce your carbon footprint at home.

To learn more or get Edison now, just go to www.verdiem.com/edison.

You can also check out Verdiem’s new Facebook page.

Data Center Grade Energy Efficiency for the Rest of Us

2008-07-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

James Hamilton has an interesting set of slides on his blog focusing on ways of improving efficiency of power consumption in large data centers. He examines factors end-to-end, from utility power distribution all the way down to server hardware itself. Data center size, geographic distribution, load characteristics, hardware profiles, power redundancy, etc. are all important variables to consider in the large data center space. An incredibly fascinating read.

What’s also interesting about what’s going on in the data center space is that it reflects in many ways a more laser-like focus on energy efficiency than one would typically encounter elsewhere. Given the scale that data center folks operate on, they’re thinking about the problems that many other types of organizations haven’t even dreamt of (yet). There’s a lot we can learn from what’s going on in that space, and perhaps even a few things large-, medium- and small-organizations can do to help increase their energy efficiency.

Of course, one thing I’ve always thought made sense was to “carpool” some types of server applications onto services like Amazon Web Services or Google Application Engine that are often served in-house (I’m not specifically endorsing any of these services – just throwing out a few possibilities). From an ecological standpoint, all of the energy (no pun intended) that folks who run data centers put into reducing power and cooling costs really does result in a significantly more efficient operation. Running your own application code in someone else’s data center (“carpooling” with many other applications that have been virtualized or are otherwise able to run well-isolated, securely and in parallel) means less energy wasted in your own data center (or more often, server room) in terms of power, cooling, and idle CPU cycles. This form of computing really is coming into fruition as a bona fide utility.

Naturally, not every application or service can be “carpooled” but given the excellent and in-depth work that’s been done in the data center, why replicate or re-invent the wheel? When planning or building new applications, in today’s world, it may make sense from both an ecological and economical standpoint (think of the reduced capital and operating expenses) to consider “carpooling” applications in an energy-efficient data center.

Al Gore Speaks Today on U.S. Energy Policy

2008-07-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

A New York Times article from earlier today reported on a global warming speech Al Gore made in Washington D.C. According to the article, Gore called on Americans to work towards completely quitting our reliance on fossil fuels within the next ten years. The speech echoed Gore’s consistent messaging regarding the life-threatening danger the world is currently facing due to global warming, and also highlighted how the goal to end our use of fossil fuels “is achievable, affordable and transformative.”

A couple of interesting scientific facts re-stated in the Times are highlighted below:

“’We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet,’ Mr. Gore said. ‘Every bit of that’s got to change.’

And it can change, he said, citing some scientists’ estimates that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth in 40 minutes to meet the world’s energy needs for a year, and that the winds that blow across the Midwest every day could meet the country’s daily electricity needs.”

To read more about this speech, visit New York Times or Al Gore’s website.

Did you know utility companies will pay your organization to use less energy?

2008-07-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

Because of soaring energy prices, there are a large number of utility companies across North America that will actually provide rebates to organizations who implement tools to help reduce energy consumption. In fact, Verdiem’s SURVEYOR software is recognized by many utility companies across the country, and the use of this software frequently enables organizations to receive rebates from utility companies in their area.

A few examples of utility companies that rebate include:

· Avista
· BCHydro
· Bonneville Power Administration
· Hawaii Electric Company
· Idaho Power
· Manitoba Hydro/Saskatchewan Power
· Nevada Power/Sierra Pacific Power
· New York Power Authority
· New York State Energy Research &
· Development Authority (NYSERDA)
· Northeast Utilities
· NSTAR
· Oregon Energy Trust
· PacifiCorp (primarily Utah)
· PG&E
· Puget Sound Energy
· Sacramento Municipal Utility District
· San Diego Gas & Electric
· San Francisco Energy Watch
· Seattle City Light
· Silicon Valley Power
· Snohomish PUD
· Southern California Edison
· The United Illuminating Company
· Wisconsin Focus on Energy
· Xcel Energy (Minnesota and Colorado)

As a point of reference, these rebates are similar to the consumer rebates offered by organizations like Energy Star. Learn more here.

Is pricey gasoline the best solution to global warming?

2008-07-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

When teachers are educated about the best way to instruct a diverse group of students, they are taught to use a variety of different methods to ensure they are properly addressing dissimilar learning styles.

For those of us that track and participate in the fight against global warming, we are sometimes overly idealistic about what motivates people to work on decreasing their carbon footprint. For some, the motivation is as simple as helping the environment. For others, there has to be a more tangible reward involved.

A New York Times article from the weekend, “At $100 for Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill It’,” highlights the continuously rising gas prices and the heavy financial burden placed upon owners of larger vehicles to fill their tanks. The article discusses how many owners of large SUVs are now looking for alternatives.

So perhaps we should look to the way teachers use a variety of teaching methods and apply that to educating people about the damage global warming is causing our planet. Everyone has a different tipping point. To assume that all people are inspired by the same information is both naïve and dangerous, as it inevitably means certain groups of people will not understand the implications that global warming could ultimately have on their lives.

To combat this, it is essential for those of us doing the educating to cater to a variety of different audiences – the environmentalist, the intellectual, the businessperson, to name just a few. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and keeping that in mind will ultimately make us more successful at our endeavors.

EPA Announces Top 25 Purchasers of Green Energy - Intel & Pepsi Lead

2008-07-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

The Green Power Partnership, a voluntary EPA program for organizations who buy green power as a way to reduce their environmental impact, has announced the Top 25 Purchasers of Green Energy.

1. Intel Corporation
2. PepsiCo
3. U.S. Air Force
4. Wells Fargo & Company
5. Whole Foods Market
6. The Pepsi Bottling Group, Inc.
7. Johnson & Johnson
8. Cisco Systems, Inc.
9. City of Dallas, TX
10. HSBC North America
11. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
12. City of Houston, TX
13. Kohl's Department Stores
14. University of Pennsylvania
15. Starbucks
16. DuPont Company
17. Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts
18. U.S. Department of Energy
19. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
20. PepsiAmericas, Inc.
21. Vail Resorts, Inc.
22. New York University
23. NatureWorks LLC
24. Staples
25. The World Bank Group

Source: http://www.epa.gov/grnpower/toplists/top25.htm

Green Up Seattle!

2008-07-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, we got our power bill from Seattle City Light that also included an insert marketing the “Green Up!” program for SCL customers. Here are some details straight from the website:

What is Green Up?
Green Up is Seattle City Light's voluntary green power program for residential and business customers. By enrolling in Green Up, customers purchase green power for a portion of their electricity use and demonstrate their support for wind power and other new renewable energy projects in the Northwest. Choosing green power reduces our reliance on fossil fuels, improves air quality and helps reduce the growth of climate-warming emissions. The Green Up program is Green-e certified and fulfills LEEDTM Project green power requirements.

How does Green Up work?
Green Up customers make voluntary payments on their electricity bill to cover the slightly higher cost of producing and integrating renewable energy into the Northwest grid. These funds are used to acquire Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) equal to the amount of customer demand. Participating in Green Up does not change how Seattle City Light transmits and distributes electricity to your home or business.

How do I sign up?
Residential customers may purchase green power in increments of 25%, 50% or 100% of their electricity use for $3, $6 or $12 per month.

We are planning to begin purchasing green power at our house, and whether you live in the city of Seattle or elsewhere, you might also want to research ways to begin supporting renewable energy initiatives.

Can You Imagine Life Without Plastic?

2008-06-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

More and more, we’re hearing about the dangers of plastic, the harmful chemicals involved in the manufacturing process and the need to start eliminating it from our everyday lives.

It’s a challenging proposition – think about all those iced lattes you have in the summer, the “to go” containers you frequently carry home with you from different restaurants, and the sheer number of items in your household that contain at least some plastic.

This is a great example of a place where small changes are the way to go. If you’re one of the people aiming to eliminate plastic from your life, start small. LifeWithoutPlastic.com has a lot of great plastic-free products that they offer as alternatives to traditional plastic-filled products.

In addition, their website also features a section called “Facts on Plastic” that discusses the health risks associated with plastic and also provides a lot of detail on what all the different resin codes on the bottom of plastic containers mean for the average consumer. Beyond that, they provide tips for living a more plastic-free life if you are interested.

The Malware Arms Race as Hidden Ecological Threat

2008-06-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

Most often, when people think of ways in which they can conserve energy with their computer, they tend to focus on finding ways to more effectively manage their power management settings (for example, by using our SURVEYOR product), or alternately, people try to figure out ways in which to make the software and hardware they use more energy-efficient.

Originally, what I was going to write about was how malware (viruses, botnets and spyware) can infect huge numbers of computers and turn them, often unbeknownst to their owners, into power-eating zombies – carrying out compute-intensive tasks, sending huge amounts of spam, and otherwise just wasting a lot of CPU cycles and thus energy. With some sources [1,2] pegging botnet sizes at an average of roughly 20,000 computers (with many examples of significantly larger botnets), the aggregate annual global energy waste generated by malware could reasonably be estimated to be in the tens of millions of kilowatt-hours or more. In reality, malware is a real and growing ecological threat and financial drain – it’s a grim scene, and one few people are talking about.

But there’s a bit more to the story than just going on the offensive and trying to put an end to malware, as many out there are nobly endeavoring to do. There’s really, effectively, an arms race going on between anti-malware software vendors and malware creators. With each innovation in anti-malware technology, malware creators find a new way to sneak in and exploit some new flaw or technique. As anti-malware technology evolves, it’s worth considering how much extra processing overhead computers and servers must now carry out in order to ensure that data being exchanged is “safe”.

While there will likely always be millions of PCs that will live out their entire natural service lives as energy-sucking zombies without a lick of malware protection, those other computers and devices that do have anti-malware software are also consuming more power than they theoretically should need to (e.g. by having to continuously scan incoming files, memory, the registry, etc.) – simply as the cost of doing business in today’s world. While anti-malware software is incredibly sophisticated, and most of the high-quality products out there are very well-implemented and as courteous and efficient as possible, this still does not take away from the fact that the malware arms race has a real cost in terms of extra energy consumption. I’m not sure how exactly one would quantify the energy cost of this arms race, but it certainly would be interesting (and depressing) to have that data in order to consider the true carbon footprint of the global malware battle.

So what do we do from here? Aside from continuing to research and implement many of the incredibly smart (and respectful and non-invasive) anti-malware solutions at higher levels than just individual clients (e.g. at the network-level), an easy thing we all can do is to simply make sure we power-down or put to sleep our computers when they’re not in use. Of course, we offer the SURVEYOR product here at Verdiem for larger organizations to help reduce power consumption, but individual users can also do their part by taking five minutes or less to ensure that their PC power management is enabled and configured to put their computer to sleep during idle times.

When an idle computer is powered off or sleeping, it has a vastly smaller surface area needlessly exposed to invading malware. Aside from the obvious energy savings of effective power management, that computer also becomes one less player in the hidden global ecological threat that is the malware arms race. That’s something I think we can all feel good about.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021601388.html

[2] M. Abu Rajab, J. Zarfoss, F. Monrose, and A. Terzis. My botnet is bigger than yours (maybe, better than yours): why size estimates remain challenging. In Proceedings of the first annual workshop on hot topics in botnets, March 2007.

Sustainable Summer Ideas

2008-06-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Summer has officially begun. Gas prices are at a record high. And concern for global warming has never been greater.

At a time when the kids are out of school and our vacations are under way, it behooves us to keep focused on trying to live more sustainable lifestyles. We've got a few suggestions for ways to do that:

Summer Tip #1: Summer is all about getting outside and exploring. This year, think about skipping the annual road trip and travelling by train instead.

Summer Tip #2: Save money! Figure out ways where you can cut energy costs to save money at home. Turning off lights/computers/appliances at home and walking or bussing instead of driving are some easy ways to save some cash that can then be applied to more interesting activities.

Summer Tip #3: If your kids are staying home with you, now might be a good time to spend learning about ways to be more environmentally-friendly. You can even turn it into a game - offering prizes for remembering to recycle, taking public transportation or dropping energy usage. Remember to keep it simple and don't expect too much right away.

We hope you enjoy your summer!

Unleashing Your Inner Green Hero, Part 3

2008-06-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

So how do you create a culture of heroes in your organization? How do you inspire more employees to think about sustainability, and to share their ideas more broadly? Here are some suggestions:

Start the Green Team. Create a task force of representatives from various parts of the organization to meet regularly to discuss, prioritize and implement organization-wide sustainability initiatives. Think twice about staffing this team with executives. Find the people most passionate about sustainability – those who will most actively mobilize and empower their respective organizations to participate fully in identifying organization-wide opportunities to reduce waste and environmental impact.

Focus on problems and solutions. Many cross-functional groups (no matter what the topic or charter) spend too much time discussing the problems, and not enough time identifying or discovering solutions. Build a set of ground rules for your Green Team, one of which is that problems cannot be discussed or presented beyond the team unless solutions are also provided. It’s OK if those solutions haven’t yet been researched or fully vetted, but it’s important to create a team that’s focused on action and progress, not just opportunity identification.

Make idea solicitation easy. Members of the Green Team are mere facilitators and representatives of their organizations. Create tools and processes where employees throughout the organization are encouraged to identify and submit opportunities for consideration. Make it easy and fun to be part of the process.

Find low-hanging fruit. Start with what’s easy, both to gain momentum and to show quick progress. There’s no better way to ignite the passion and creativity of a wider audience of employees than to show quick momentum and success from your sustainability efforts. No opportunity is too small as long as the effect is positive and measurable.

Reward the heroes! This may be the most important part of creating an ongoing, fun, and productive sustainability focus throughout the organization. Reward and recognize your heroes. Give them something for their desks, and recognition from company leadership. Associate them with the idea and initiative from start to finish, and ongoing if necessary. Will one of your employees be responsible for $35 million in global energy savings someday? Maybe…

And don’t forget to get your customers to become heroes too. Great ideas for your organization and brand – inside and out – don’t just come from employees. Starbucks is the latest company to directly engage customers in idea generation. (Click here to read more about their initiatives and innovations, and how they’re making their own customers into innovation heroes.)

This is a mere start to what’s possible. Now let’s do as we say, and start the interaction. In the comments section below, share a bit about your organization’s opportunity. What can you do – starting today – to encourage employees and customers throughout your organizational ecosystem to become Green Heroes? What one thing will you do before the end of the day today to get things started?

Unleashing Your Inner Green Hero, Part 2

2008-06-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

Large organizations worldwide are creating sustainability initiatives, and setting aggressive goals to cut their carbon footprints. Those initiatives are creating mandates across the company to reduce waste, and consider the long-term impact of various processes and decisions – everything from manufacturing to supply chain, IT policy, travel and commute policies and more.

Setting ambitious goals is one thing, achieving them in a measurable way is another.

Deb Horvath at Washington Mutual, by the way, is a hero. According to CIO Magazine, her organization is set to save more than $3 million dollars a year by implementing green IT policies organization wide.

Ron Spalter is also a hero. The deputy COO for City University of New York (CUNY) organized the individual IT departments for more than 15 CUNY campuses to cut their IT power consumption by more than $3 million over five years (PDF), putting hundreds of thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year.

But for every C-level executive who’s taken a leadership and early adopter position on identifying and executing sustainable initiatives internally and externally for their organizations, there are dozens of regular people – like you and I – with sustainable ideas, inspiration and ambition.

I see this every day at Verdiem.com. The vast majority of interest we get in green IT solutions is from individual employees throughout organizations – mostly from IT, but elsewhere in the company as well.

My favorite was the HR manager from a large Midwest-based company who was passionate about helping make her company more sustainable, and also knew that tangible “green” results would help with both employee morale and recruiting.

She was just one example of countless employees throughout your organization who just may hold the secret to true environmental progress and sustainable results – for your products, your processes, your customers and your brand.

And the beautiful thing about individual ideas and initiatives is that their true impact is rarely confined to the pure task at hand.

Forrester Research recently talked about the idea of Green IT Heroes in an attempt to inspire IT professionals to think well beyond the traditional IT boundaries in terms of the sustainability impact they could have on their organization.

Sure, IT groups can directly impact things like equipment lifecycle management, energy consumption and more.

But IT can also impact telecommuting options. By partnering with the HR group, IT can create and implement secure remote-access options that make telecommuting a more meaningful, seamless and productive option for more employees.

By proposing and initiating ideas like this, says Forrester, IT can be an even greater Green Hero in the organization.

And those ideas clearly don’t need to originate from the CIO. They can start anywhere in the organization, as long as that individual has both the passion and the opportunity to share.

Unleashing Your Inner Green Hero, Part 1

2008-06-24T10:54:00.000-07:00

There are green "intrapreneurs" everywhere in your company. Whether you tap into their creativity - and your own - is up to you.

We tend to think of our heroes as greater than ourselves - representing feats, achievements and ideals we ourselves aspire to. But many of the best ideas start with us. Regular people, inspired to extraordinary achievements. In your organization, do all of the best ideas come from the CEO? Or do they originate all across the organization?

I thought so.

Take my company, for example. Verdiem tackles the problem of IT energy waste, and has developed technology to cut PC-related power bills by up to 60%, saving some companies millions of dollars on their power bill each year. The idea came not from an MBA, or a venture capital-backed think tank, but from an individual employee of Washington County, Ore.

She left work one night and noticed that all of the computers in her office were still on, fully powered. They would likely stay on all night, she thought, for the next 14 hours or so, until everyone came back into work.

She knew that this happened every night, at offices across the country (and the globe), and it bothered her. She shared her concern with her husband that night, and it bothered him too. As a software engineer, he knew that software could likely be applied to this problem to ensure that power wasn’t wasted when computers were inactive, in a way that didn’t add any additional burden or productivity loss for users.

That’s how SURVEYOR was born. Seven years later, SURVEYOR has saved organizations more than $35 million dollars on their energy bills (and growing), and has been responsible for cutting hundreds of thousands of tons of PC-related CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere.

That employee from Washington County is a hero. Her spark is responsible for an incredible amount of cost and carbon savings worldwide.

Did You Know Companies That Report Sustainability Data Enjoy Higher Gross Margins?

2008-06-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

According to a recent report, “The Food, Beverage, and Consumer products Industry - Achieving Superior Financial Performance in a Challenging Economy - 2008,” from Grocery Manufacturers Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers, “companies that report sustainability data generally experience higher gross margins and return on sales, higher return on assets, and stronger cash flow and rising shareholder return.”

Specifically, the report notes that investment decisions and operational improvements associated with adopting sustainable practices could be responsible for the higher margins.

Click here to read the whole story on Environmental Leader.

The Social Cost of Building Software

2008-06-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

One area that is often overlooked in the software industry is the “social cost” of building and improving software. While most of us who work as software developers spend most of our time figuring out the coolest new features to add, and how to delight our customers to no end, we don’t often sit down and think about what all this extra code means to the world around us. In particular, is what we’re adding actually useful? Are the CPU cycles taken to execute that code repeatedly (and, if you’re truly successful, on millions upon millions of computers worldwide) really necessary?

We’re all familiar with one form or another of performance work in software – setting goals for what is considered “reasonable” for latency and throughput for a particular set of operations. But what if we take this optimization process a step further and apply a second filter of ecological prudence to the mix?

Say, for example, you have a hypothetical program that distributes some large collection of data to all of its clients. Rather than sort the data on the server side, you instead leave the sorting to the clients. While in theory this isn’t a huge deal, let’s also say that this process is repeated hundreds of times a day to tens of thousands of clients. So, what starts out as a minor (and probably trivial) design decision can actually begin to add up to a lot of extraneous CPU cycles spread out over tens of thousands of machines – meaning lots and lots of watt-hours of electricity being chewed up needlessly every day.

Chances are your perf tests won’t hiccup over such a design choice, but the difference in aggregate power consumption between approaches (one where the sort is performed a single time on the server versus n-times on each client) couldn’t be greater.

Now, this isn’t to say that we all need to go and re-think every piece of software ever written – that would be absurd and probably impossible. But, something that we should accustom ourselves to doing, as designers and implementers of software systems, is to think about how our system designs consume power at scale. Are there places where large computations are being performed repeatedly and redundantly? The example of pre-sorting data before sending it to clients is an obvious oversimplification – but in many systems, similar “waste patterns” can emerge.

After spending a number of years building software that ran on millions of computers, I became acutely aware of how many instances of waste patterns actually exist out there. While you could do what I ended up doing (taking a job at Verdiem where I could build software that actively reduces energy consumption), a less severe approach is to simply embrace waste-conscious design practices (many of us are already doing this, often unknowingly).

As you find these waste patterns in your designs, take note of them – share them with your colleagues, write about them in your blog, etc. - and tell the world what you did to reduce waste and why it really can matter (and, more often than not, why getting rid of that pattern didn’t end up tanking performance or killing your software’s functionality). Indeed, as more and more developers become aware of and embrace waste-conscious design practices, the aggregate energy savings will also multiply – less pollution, fewer new power plants, lower energy costs – once again, helping to reduce the hidden “social cost” of building software.

The Irony of Information

2008-06-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, the New York Times posted a story from Alex Williams entitled, “That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise.” As you can imagine from the title, the article was largely about the incredible amount of [sometimes conflicting] information on going green. As Williams describes it, “Two years after ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions.”

Ironically, I read this article shortly after I picked up National Geographic’s “Green Guide” magazine, one in a series of publications produced by top tier media corporations tailored at those interested in living a more sustainable lifestyle and understanding some of the key issues involved.

While scientists are nearly all in agreement regarding the existence of global warming, it seems consumers are reaching a level of information overload regarding “green living,” and sometimes this information is not all complementary.

In closing the article, Williams highlighted a couple organizations who have specifically tried to simplify the process for consumers, pointing to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s website www.simplesteps.org, where users can choose the depth of information they receive. In addition, Williams cited Greenpeace’s new strategy to help people to better understand environmental concerns through combining them all under the umbrella of climate change instead of separating them into distinct categories.

We’d like to hear from you - what organizations do you find produce the most consistent and helpful sustainability information?

Verdiem Wins Microsoft Partner Award in ISV/Software Solutions, Innovation Partner of the Year Category!

2008-06-19T10:18:00.001-07:00

We are really excited to announce that Verdiem has been chosen as the winner of this year’s Microsoft ISV/Software Solutions, Innovation Partner of the Year category. It’s an incredible honor to win this award, and we are especially excited to get this recognition from such a valuable partner.

Click here for more information. To see all of the winners and finalists, you can see Microsoft’s press release here.

Podcast: Brownouts, PCs and How Companies Can Protect Themselves

2008-06-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

To follow-up on his recent post, my colleague Matt and I spent a few minutes last week talking about brownouts. If you’re interested in learning more about them, their causes and effects, and how organizations can protect themselves (and their PCs), check out this podcast.

Listen here:

Quantifying the bottled water opportunity

2008-06-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

Great presentation this week at the Sustainable Brands conference from the chief sustainability officer at Clorox, including a number of things they’re doing to both create greater sustainability practices in their core business, as well as build new product lines (such as Green Works) that set a high bar for sustainable manufacturing and ingredients.

He offered some fascinating stats related to bottled water I wanted to share here.

According to Clorox’s research, 60 million water bottles are thrown away every day in the United States. Only 14 percent of those bottles are recycled.

Clorox sells the Brita water pitchers and filters, which is why these statistics are important to them. According to Clorox, the Brita filter can replace 300 standard 16.9 oz plastic water bottles. That’s over 15 pounds of plastic saved, not to mention shipping costs and associated carbon emissions with getting bottled waters from plants to retailers to our homes and businesses.

The opportunities to lessen our environmental impact, literally all around us, are staggering.

Sustainability can be this simple

2008-06-04T09:49:00.001-07:00

Andrew Winston, co-author of the fantastic book Green to Gold, started the day this morning at Sustainable Brands 2008 with a quick update on green marketing and innovations across various industries. What struck me most from his comments were the innovations that were neither complicated nor still in development.

Two quick examples:

If you watch UPS trucks and vans delivering packages around your area, you will notice they no longer make left-hand turns. UPS trucks now only make right-hand turns, even if it takes a little longer to get there.

Why? Left-hand turns mean sitting at red lights far more often, which means idling, which means wasting gas. By only taking right-hand turns, UPS is cutting their gas consumption (and gas budget) significantly.

In Minneapolis, a handful of office buildings as well as the Xcel Energy Center (where the Minnesota Timberwolves play) have started cleaning their floors with just tap water.

No traditional cleaning products, no chemicals. Just tap water.

They’re doing this by ionizing the water to separate the acid from the base, then applying it to the floor in two separate parts. As the two re-form on the floor back into tap water, the re-ionization process picks up the dirt. Early reports from facilities managers say that the tap water approach is actually doing a better job of cleaning floors than the chemicals and other cleaning supplies they’d been using before.

According to Winston, ionizing water has been used to clean wounds in hospitals for several years. Someone recently thought that technology might work on the hospital floor, thus an innovation was born.

Can’t Afford Fuel Prices? Take the Bus!

2008-06-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

I’ll be honest. I’ve spent most of my life driving in cars, not taking public transportation. Growing up in the Seattle suburbs, public transportation wasn’t as readily available for me as it was for my city friends. I had a car, and it never occurred to me to not drive it.

Today, I live in the city and work in the city. There is a bus that stops literally right in front of my house and drops me off a block from work, so I take it everyday. As I was riding the #12 downtown this morning, I noticed the latest gas prices. $4.25 for Regular, $4.45 for Premium. Yikes.

And I wonder, how many daily commuters are now turning to King Country Metro and similar public transportation organizations across the country? It seems that some of the people who drive long distances every day are now wondering if they can justify the additional costs to fill up.

A recent Associated Press article highlighted this very idea, with the following statistics demonstrating a substantial shift in commuting patterns:

“Among the cities registering big increases in the first quarter were Baltimore, where light rail ridership was up 17 percent from the same period a year ago; Seattle, which saw a 28 percent jump in commuter rail passengers; Boston, where subway ridership rose 9 percent; and San Antonio, where the number of bus riders climbed 11 percent…

…Meanwhile, the number of miles driven on American roads fell slightly last year — from 3.014 trillion to 3.003 trillion, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It was the first time since 1980 that the figure had not increased. The drop has continued this year.”

While public transportation won’t suit everyone’s needs, it certainly seems to be gaining popularity as the alternative becomes less and less financially viable for many commuters.

Are sports the key to widespread green awareness?

2008-06-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today with a recent graduate of the Boston Architectural College, who has been studying the topic of sustainability in sports. His central area of interest wasn’t necessarily to learn what professional sports organizations are doing to green their own operations, but how sports could be the single greatest accelerator of sustainability awareness, momentum and engagement among mainstream consumers.

Sports, perhaps more than any other topic in mainstream America, hold our collective interest year after year, from our youth to our senior years.

The opportunity tactically for sports to accelerate green awareness doesn’t just lie with the teams themselves, but also their participating athletes. It’s one thing for the Los Angeles Lakers to go green. It’s another level entirely if Kobe Bryant does it, and both explicitly and implicitly drives his fans to follow him.

Are any of your local professional sports organizations already “going green”? If so, how are they doing it, and what impact has that already had on fans? Please share in the comments below!

Cradle to grave sustainability

2008-06-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

Sustainable products and brands aren’t just about creation and consumption. They’re also about having a sustainable strategy for disposal. And that end-game isn’t always well thought out today even with sustainable products.

At the Sustainable Brands conference last night, Leonard Robinson from the California EPA commented that the patent approval process for new products should require an analysis of the entire lifecycle of the product, including how it will be disposed of. His comment generated the only spontaneous, mid-speech round of applause of the night.

The fluorescent, spiral-shaped lights we’ve been buying at the hardware store lately? They contain mercury, and must be recycled. But few consumers know this, nor do they have a clear means and location to do that recycling. Subsequently, those mercury-filled light bulbs are being added to our landfills.

Apple’s iPod has been considered a strong green product, since it essentially eliminates the need for CDs and all of their packaging. But what happens to the iPod itself when we’re done with it? When we’ve moved onto the latest model, how can previous iPod models be recycled, re-used or repurposed?

Many companies, such as Keen, are thinking through the entire lifecycle of their products already, and communicating that to their customers. Other brands are directly or indirectly (through government programs) working on take-back programs so that more and more products can be adequately recycled or safely disposed of.

Today’s green products are gaining momentum and market share due to their improved footprint and impact at the front end. But as those products make their way through their use cycle, consumer awareness of the end-game will increase. Brands will do well to think through that element of the lifecycle now.

Does green play in Peoria?

2008-06-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

More than 500 brand marketers, agencies and green marketing specialists are in Monterey this week at Sustainable Brands 2008. But despite our collective passion for what we’re doing in our own businesses, we don’t yet reflect the rest of corporate America, let alone the average American.

While the ranks of early adopters in the sustainability movement are growing, and the volume of interest at an individual level also grows daily, that interest still pales to our collective focus on other national issues.

A Gallup poll this past March indicated that 40 percent of Americans worry about the environment a great deal. That’s compared to 58 percent who worry about health care, and 60 percent who worry about the economy.

Yes, we’re worried about the environment, but not yet enough. Not enough to make it a national priority, and not enough to take collective action at a meaningful scale.

The critical mass of worry and action is still largely focused on the coasts. The West Coast, and California in particular, is leading the way in thinking and acting green. The Northeast isn’t far behind.

But the Midwest – where energy prices are almost half what they are in California or New York - isn’t there yet. Our job as sustainability leaders is to make our message relevant not just to early adopters, but to every American.

Products like the G Diaper may lead the way. It’s something every parent needs, it’s still disposable, but it’s also flushable. It’s biodegradable through our existing waste management systems, vs. sitting in landfills.

It’s continued innovations like this that will take sustainability from early adopters all the way to Peoria.

Profitable sustainability

2008-06-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

It’s clear in talking to many companies here in Monterey this week that sustainability is still largely being driven by marketing objectives – be it PR, competitive differentiation, or simply aligning with growing consumer awareness and activism.

But for others, sustainability has become profitable. Either by tangibly increasing sales or market share, or by cutting costs, brands nationwide are using green to make green.

Some examples heard at Sustainable Brands 2008 this week:

Staples has retrofitted all of its distribution trucks so that they cannot drive faster than 60 miles per hour. This not only makes the trucks safer (think lower insurance premiums) but also increases their fuel efficiency by 15 percent. Staples is saving 500,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year this way.
Stonyfield Farm was one of the first yogurt makers to move from hard plastic lids to foil tops, saving $1,000,000 a year in the process (not to mention reducing the plastic needed for packaging)
More than 55 percent of employees at Sun Microsystems telecommute at least half of the time. While they couldn’t cite specific figures, Sun says this has reduced operating costs for the company significantly (while also decreasing employee commute time and measurably increasing job satisfaction)

How is your organization using sustainability initiatives to make money or save money?

Debate on Climate Change Legislation – Join the Conversation

2008-06-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

A New York Times article posted yesterday discusses the climate change legislation slated for debate in the Senate this week. The goals of this bill are as follows:

(1) to establish the core of a Federal program that will reduce United States greenhouse gas emissions substantially enough between 2007 and 2050 to avert the catastrophic impacts of global climate change; and

(2) to accomplish that purpose while preserving robust growth in the United States economy, creating new jobs, and avoiding the imposition of hardship on United States citizens.

The article cites concerns about whether this bill, in its current form, should get passed, noting that “the debate will force senators to take a stand on some of the most difficult, expensive and potentially life-altering questions that will face the world in coming decades.”

At the heart of this debate are two central themes. Proponents argue that our nation cannot wait until fuel prices come down in order to deal with these larger issues. Opponents believe “the bill would direct the largest changes in the American economy since the 1930s and should not be rushed through Congress without painstaking debate.”

This is what Frank Ackerman, an economist at Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, had to say:

“How do you price the increased deaths, the losses of endangered species and unique habitats, the increased damages from hurricanes that are becoming more intense...Those numbers dwarf any reasonable estimate of the cost of doing something about climate change. The choice is a no-brainer.”

What do you think? Your comments and insights would be greatly appreciated.

A sustainable conference (in every way)

2008-06-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

One would expect a conference about sustainable marketing to be full of sustainability options and strategies itself. For example, upon registration for Sustainable Brands 2008, each attendee had an option to purchase an offset for their travel to and from Monterey.

Now that I’m here, I can see to what great extent sustainability permeates the entire event. Almost everything here is biodegradable, recyclable, organic or offset. Some examples:

The program was printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper from Mohawk Fine Papers, using 100% soy-based ink from GreenerPrinter
Conference signage was printed by EcoBanner; 100% of the signs can be recycled or reused
The conference tote bags are 100% recycled cotton canvas, and conference t-shirts are made of organic cotton and printed at an eco-friendly fabric printer
Even the A/V equipment and strategy for the show emits 58% fewer carbon emissions vs. the typical conference A/V needs

What’s struck me the most – if I had experienced all of this at any other conference – I probably wouldn’t have noticed it was eco-friendly. There’s no reason more of our industry get-togethers can’t be like this.

This afternoon offered some great pre-conference content, and things kick off in earnest tonight with speakers from the California Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Fish and others.

Delayed Flights Waste More Than Just Passenger Time

2008-06-02T08:19:00.000-07:00

No one likes a delayed flight. Now we find out that these flights are costing us more than just time. According to a recent report from the U.S. Joint Economic Committee (JEC), delayed flights in 2007 consumed about 740 million additional gallons of jet fuel totaling $1.6 billion extra in fuel bills and emitted 7.07 million metric tons of CO2.

This was the quote from U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Chairman of the JEC, on the problem:

“It has been apparent for far too long that to millions of Americans who fly, our domestic air travel system is broken and today’s Joint Economic Committee report puts a dollar figure on this mess. In 2007 alone passengers, airlines, and our economy felt a $41 billion punch in the gut from flight delays and the problem is only going to get worse.”

You can find the press release here.

Unscrew America (and your old light bulbs!)

2008-05-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t visited this site yet, you should definitely take a few minutes to check out Unscrew America. It’s a campaign run by Lesley Chilcott, one of the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth," intended to encourage the switch from incandescent light bulbs to more energy-efficient CFLs and LEDs. More details at http://www.playlab.org/unscrewamerica/.

The site features cartoons and lessons about energy-efficient CFL and LED light bulbs, which make it really fun and also pretty educational. Don’t expect requests to go out and change the world – only a statement that “ridiculously good things will happen” if we can all move to more energy-efficient bulbs.

There are lots of interesting facts on the site, but something new that I learned and wanted to share with the group. Apparently CFL’s contain mercury, so need to be disposed of as you would dispose other types of hazardous waste. They suggest you check your city’s website or visit www.Earth911.org to find collection programs in your area. So no throwing them in your trash!

Building (and selling) sustainable brands

2008-05-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

Next week more than 500 brand marketers from across North America will gather in Monterey, California for the now-annual Sustainable Brands conference. It’s a chance not only to learn from industry leaders and early adopters what’s working, but also to share new ideas and perspectives on how to build and communicate green brands.

I look forward to spending a few days with this group, and will post updates here through the week as I can. The speaker list is fantastic, with representatives from companies such as Best Buy, Clorox, Dow Chemical, eBay, GE, IBM, Georgia-Pacific and many more.

What’s particularly interesting to me is the different between building green brands, and marketing them. We’ve all noticed the vast acceleration of green messaging and touts from products and services in every direction. Some of these messages and products are clearly based in a fundamental desire to “do good,” combined with a product direction that prioritizes sustainability and lower carbon footprints.

Other recent brand claims, unfortunately, are more flimsy in nature. It’s the same ol’ product with a new “green” shine, and savvy consumers are crying foul (not to mention adding a heavy layer of skepticism in how they view the rest of us).

My guess is that the vast majority of attendees next week represent the more authentic group – those with either innovative new sustainable brands, or existing brands with an authentic desire to build and market products that truly change the way we’re impacting the world around us.

More next week…

Carbon Emissions Reflect Varying Lifestyles Across the Country, and What This Means for the Average Person

2008-05-29T14:01:00.000-07:00

If you’ve already read your daily news today, you’ve probably seen the stories from coast to coast about a recent study from the Brookings Institution that reports on carbon emissions in the 100 largest cities throughout the U.S. and how they appear to be varying dramatically from region to region.

The New York Times mentioned in the beginning of their article on the report that the West Coast’s “mild climates, hydropower and aggressive energy-reduction policies give its residents smaller carbon footprints, on average, than those of their counterparts in the East and Midwest.” While those of us on the West Coast might be cheering for our success, it’s still not enough. The unfortunate truth that this report points out is that, as a country, our carbon footprints are still continuing to grow.

So what do we do now?

The Brookings Institution report focuses heavily on how critical it is for federal policy to tackle the heart of the problem, and references the importance of policies promoting more transportation choices, introducing more energy-efficient freight operations, requiring home energy cost disclosure, using federal housing policies, and issuing a metropolitan challenge.

That’s all fantastic if you’re in the government or a government lobbyist, but what about the rest of the population who works in the private sector and doesn’t necessarily have the power of a Congressional vote?

We try to participate as individuals on a smaller scale.

At home, we do what we can and what is reasonable for our lifestyles. We turn off the lights when we leave the room, we recycle as necessary, we buy local as much as possible, and we try to remember our reusable bags when we go grocery shopping. At work, we take the bus to the office a few days a week, we think about putting the computer to sleep before we go to lunch or using power management software, and we use a ceramic mug instead of disposable cups.

Our lifestyles do not have to change dramatically to make a difference. And the reality is, making these changes will make our lives better.

What do you do to lower your carbon footprint?

Energy Efficiency Encyclopedia – PC Power Management

2008-05-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

This week, I wanted to take a step back and talk about PC power management. Companies that focus on sustainable technologies frequently throw this term around, but lots of folks today still aren’t sure exactly what PC power management is. And I’m not just referring to people outside the tech sector. In fact, last week I mentioned the term to a friend of mine who works at a large software company, and his first instinct was that power management referred to a computer’s processing power. Point being, it’s worth explaining again.

Within the context that Verdiem uses it, PC power management is all about conserving a PC’s energy consumption to save money and indirectly reduce carbon emissions. The most successful way to manage PC power consumption is to make sure that when you are not using your PC, it is either turned off or moved into a lower power state (like sleep mode). Operating systems, such as Windows Vista, enable users to better manage their PC’s power settings. Unfortunately, people often incorrectly assume that power management functionality will limit their PC’s performance, so frequently turn off the power-saving features on their machines. The reality is that PC power management software is generally built to balance saving power with ensuring the end user’s needs don’t suffer, so won't negatively affect performance.

Given rising energy costs, in conjunction with a poor economy and the increasing threat of global warming, saving money and reducing carbon emissions has become more important than ever before. Conserving your PC’s energy consumption is a great way to simultaneously reduce costs while also positively affecting the environment.

Greening Your Life

2008-05-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

At Verdiem, we think it's important to always be working on ways to create more sustainable practices both in the workplace and at home. Starting this week, we’ll be posting a weekly tip on something simple you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

Tip #1: If your company offers disposable cups in the workplace, consider bringing in your own water bottle or glass instead. Eliminating a cup every workday could save each person from throwing away up to 260 cups per year.

Is a carbon tax coming?

2008-05-23T09:31:00.001-07:00

The concept of a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system, especially for big business in the

, has been discussed for years. But in recent months, the idea of creating firm, regulatory guidelines has picked up steam.

All three major presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system for the US in the not-so-distant future. It could be based on the cap-and-trade system currently working in Europe, or could be something closer to Al Gore’s proposed carbon tax plan.

Already, many companies are participating in the voluntary carbon credit market, through exchanges such as the Chicago Climate Exchange. These efforts are purely voluntary for now, and done to support corporate sustainability/carbon-neutral goals and/or to leverage for marketing purposes.

But earlier this week, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District voted to start charging businesses in nine San Francisco Bay Area counties a 4.4 cents-per-ton tax for the carbon dioxide they’re responsible for emitting.

California has been a leader in seeking government-led solutions to carbon emissions, and could very well mandate broader carbon caps in advance of a national system. Governor Schwarzenegger signed a law back in 2006 mandating several global warming initiatives that are still in development or underway.

There’s plenty left to do to make any one of these systems work, of course. We need a standard way to measure and validate carbon emissions, for example, plus a means of endorsing and/or certifying means by which those emissions can be reduced.

But if developments in the Bay Area this week come to fruition, it should be an interesting experiment watched closely by not only other local jurisdictions, but state and federal regulators as well. If nothing else, it will get more people talking about how to solve the problem, and will get us closer to a solution with real teeth and impact nationwide.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Memorial Day Energy Waste

2008-05-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ah, Memorial Day Weekend.

It’s earlier than usual this year, but no less anticipated. Warmer weather, backyard BBQs, and that blessed extra day off await many of us starting tomorrow night.

Next Monday, unfortunately, also means an extra day of energy waste for the majority of businesses nationwide.

There are an estimated 43 million active computers across the US in businesses of 300 employees or more, and sixty percent of those PCs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, are typically left running at full-power after business hours.

That means the typical weekend PC energy waste will increase by 50 percent this weekend.

What does that mean in dollars and cents?

Those 25.8 million business PCs left on this weekend will burn more than 41,500,000 kWh of energy – on Monday alone.

At the average national energy rate of 8.9 cents per kWh, that’s $3,699,178 in wasted energy bills from PCs left on back at the office.

And the energy generated for those PCs causes carbon emissions of more than 35,620 tons.

That’s equivalent to 5,918 cars on the road annually.

Or 75,149 barrels of oil.

Or 3,667,887 gallons of gas.

If all of those 25.8 million fully-powered PCs and monitors were using SURVEYOR to power down PCs and monitors over the weekend, they could save close to 90 percent of the costs and associated carbon emission equivalencies listed above – for the entire three-day weekend.

If your organization isn’t yet using PC power management software, please invite your PC to join you in some R&R this weekend by turning it off before you leave.

Have a great weekend!

The Energy Efficiency Encyclopedia – PC Insomnia

2008-05-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

We’d like to introduce Verdiem’s new Energy Efficiency Encyclopedia, a resource for people to reference that highlights sustainable technology terminology. Please note that the meaning of these words or phrases may vary depending upon their context.

This week, we’d like to highlight PC Insomnia. PC Insomnia occurs when a PC does not consistently transition to a lower power state due to application nuances, or spurious network, central processing unit (CPU) or disk activity. Some common causes of PC Insomnia include:

Environment: Numerous services or agents within a PC image of an enterprise may spike the CPU utilization during periods of inactivity causing the Microsoft Windows® Idle Timer to reset.
Custom Device Drivers: Device drivers not written to the Advanced Configuration & Power Interface (ACPI) specification may not allow the PC to enter lower power states.
Screen Savers: Some intensive screen savers may require higher CPU utilization causing the Windows® Idle Timer to reset.
Applications: Terminal emulation software, media players, and some custom-developed applications may not allow the system to enter a lower power state.
System Configuration: Some PCs may not have their BIOS configured correctly to allow for system standby or the power state known as S3 or Sleep (ACPI specification).

As a result of PC Insomnia, PCs stay on while not in use and subsequently waste energy and result in increased CO2 emissions.

*Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

Avoiding rolling blackouts this summer

2008-05-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. And thanks to the warmer weather and associated increases in energy consumption, it’s also the unofficial start of what’s become the annual “brown out” season for businesses and households alike. In fact, some are already predicting this year could bring the highest risk of rolling blackouts in years.

Brown outs, of course, refer to temporary power reductions and outages across a metro area due to electricity demand that exceeds a local utility’s ability to generate enough power.

Summer months typically see the majority of urban brown outs, especially in markets that crank up the air conditioning to escape the summer heat.

Late last month, the California Independent System Operator predicted the risk of electricity blackouts especially in Southern California could be more than triple that of previous years due to a lack of supply to meet expected demand.

Similar conditions, as well as the potential for wildfires and continued drought conditions in the Southeast, could tax our power grids even further.

This year’s summer season, unfortunately, could offer the perfect storm for brown-outs and rolling black-outs:

1) Many meteorologists are predicting a warmer than usual summer (thank you, la nina)
2) Energy prices (for electricity, not just gas) continue to rise
3) Our per-capita summer energy use will increase, as usual, due to A/C usage
4) Recession-like conditions will make paying for that increased power consumption even more painful – especially for large enterprises

How can organizations mitigate the impact of these conditions?

The first step is to understand your power consumption habits. Use monitoring tools to know when your own peak demand periods exist, and map that against the largest grouped contributors of energy in your organization. For most large organizations, the largest energy consumer is the PC network (which, according to Gartner, represents 40 percent of an organization’s IT carbon footprint).

When you know your organization’s power consumption patterns, you can take steps to intelligently reduce that volume. For example, two-thirds of the power a typical PC uses is wasted (when the PC is on at full-power but not in use). PC power management software can reduce that power by up to 60 percent.

The power requirement and cost impact is even greater in the summer months, when fully-active PCs have a more than material impact on the temperature within buildings, thereby requiring even higher air conditioning bills (and power requirements).

Some Verdiem customers report that putting PCs into lower power states when they’re not in use not only cuts their PC-related power bill in half, but have reported they also can cut the summer air conditioning bill by 5-15 percent.

Those two reductions alone can have a significant impact on an organization’s summer power requirements. And that will make your utility very, very happy (no wonder more than 30 of them nationwide offer rebates for power reduction initiatives such as SURVEYOR).

Rethinking environmentalism

2008-05-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t read it already, be sure to check out the short but powerful cover story in the June issue of Wired. Through a series of brief but powerful critiques of traditional environmental rallying cries, the magazine clarifies and reiterates the single most important thing we can do to mitigate climate change – reduce carbon.

Environmentalism has been around for decades, but many of its key tenets and focus areas might actually be counter-productive to reducing carbon. For example, according to Wired:

Per kilowatt-hour, a nuclear plant emits just six percent as much carbon as a plant fired by natural gas
Cooling a house produces 93 percent fewer CO2 emissions than warming a house
A single family member taking public transportation to work reduces the household’s carbon footprint by 30 percent
An organic chicken creates 45% more greenhouse gases than a non-organic bird
Pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon to the atmosphere than making a Hummer, due to the nickel in the hybrid’s battery

The article’s main premise isn’t that traditional environmental concerns are bad or necessarily wrong in intent, but that their aims pale in comparison to how important carbon reduction is to the preservation of our world.

This article won’t be online for another month, but it’s worth picking up or borrowing a copy of this month’s issue for the quick read.

Tips to Reduce Energy Costs at Work

2008-05-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

The economic struggles many organizations are facing today, combined with rising energy costs, means lowering the energy bill is more important now than ever before. To help, we wanted to share some tips on ways to cut costs.

PC Power Management Software: 60 percent of business computers in the U.S. are left running after hours, costing enterprises billions of dollars each year. Adopting power management software is one easy way to take action now and achieve energy savings.

Switch PCs off and avoid overuse: IT equipment accounts for around nine percent of all energy consumed by businesses - the third largest source of power for the commercial sector. Putting power management policies in place and ensuring all unused equipment is unplugged are two of the easiest ways to control power consumption.

Use energy-efficient equipment: The EPA is developing ENERGY STAR specifications for enterprise servers and office equipment. When purchasing new equipment, consider energy-efficient versions that will significantly reduce amounts of CO2 emissions and save money over time.

Use Compact Fluorescent Lights: Replace burnt out bulbs with ENERGY STAR CFLs that use 75 percent less energy and last six to ten times longer than standard bulbs. Also, incorporate motion sensors into rooms to ensure lights are off when the room isn’t in use.

Office Environment: Create an optimal energy environment by addressing energy use in other areas such as water and the building. Make sure all building and water systems are working properly and when retrofitting buildings look for good alternatives like energy efficient HVAC cooling systems and low flow toilets.

Announcing SURVEYOR 5.0

2008-05-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

Today’s an exciting day at Verdiem! We’ve just announced the launch of version 5.0 of our flagship PC power management software, SURVEYOR.

This release expands the cost and carbon savings possible across your PC network, with additional tools to tackle IT energy management concerns such as reliable patch management, remote access and PC insomnia. The result of these enhancements is centralized management of IT energy waste and a reduction in PC energy consumption by as much as 60 percent. SURVEYOR also offers a fast and easy way to demonstrate social and environmental responsibility through significant energy savings without undergoing a complete energy overhaul.

In conjunction with this launch, we’re also introducing a new version of our WakeUp for SMS product, and a Wake-on-Web product as well – making it easier for IT to centrally manage power settings for PC networks even when your users are working remotely.

For more information, check out http://www.verdiem.com/SURVEYOR5.

Join the Energy Camp wiki

2008-05-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a full week @ Interop, which included the full-day Energy Camp on Monday. The growing interest in sustainability and intelligent energy efficiency initiatives at companies big and small across the globe is palpable.

The founders of Energy Camp have created what I think will be a fantastic forum to continue the energy efficiency conversation between formal get-togethers. The wiki already has lots of great content and best practices posted, and traffic (as seen by the tickers at the bottom of each page) is accelerating since Monday (with far more visits than we had Camp attendees - a very good sign!).

Check it out here.

Going Green at Interop

2008-05-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

For those of you who weren't able to visit our booth at Interop Vegas this year, I wanted to share with you a decision we made prior to the show. In an effort to live our brand, we decided not to print and distribute the standard set of collateral at the show (thus saving paper, fuel, etc). Instead, we created a small card that included a pointer to our new "Download Zone" on the Verdiem website where we're now housing many of our materials.

Overall, we found the response to this change to be incredibly positive, and will work on continuing this practice where possible in the future.

Energy Camp tomorrow

2008-04-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

Interop Las Vegas doesn't officially start until Tuesday, but I'll be there all day Monday attending and presenting at Energy Camp, a great new pre-conference intensive focused on helping IT departments not just participate in, but lead sustainability initiatives throughout their companies.

This is an "unconference" format, meaning lots of iterative schedule-building based on what the attendees want to know, learn and discuss in real-time.

I'm really looking forward to it, and will report back on topics, best practices and other highlights (from both Energy Camp and Interop in general) later in the week.

Events on the Horizon

2008-04-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

Verdiem will be exhibiting at a couple shows in Las Vegas next week - we hope you'll be able to drop by our booths if you're in town.

Interop Las Vegas
Mandalay Bay Conference Center
Booth #2724
Tues-Thurs

Microsoft Management Summit
Venetian Hotel
Booth #421
Mon-Thurs

The Monster under My Desk

2008-04-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

I've recently spent a little time measuring the power consumption of a significant number of computers. I'd like to share a little bit of the results.

The machine with the highest power consumption of the batch was a quad-core beast which drew 196 watts under full CPU load (171 watts while idle). The machine that drew the least was a brand new laptop with 44 watts under full load (33 idle).

While we shouldn't get hung up about specific machines and configurations at this point because my data set is still pretty small, I had some general impressions:

What you buy matters. Laptops are generally much more power efficient than desktops.

However, the difference in power savings between a laptop and desktop is still dwarfed by the laptop premium.

The performance of desktops can be much higher than laptops. Currently the top of the line Dell laptop is a 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo. The top of the line "desktop" is a dual quad core running at 3.2Ghz.

Given these three factors, I suspect that many organizations will stick with desktop machines as a significant portion of their computer purchases despite the rising popularity of laptops.

For software engineers, like me, the difference in productivity and cost is large enough to keep us buying monster machines and pushing them under our desks. We just need to remember to turn them off.

CBS News TechTalk: Put Your Computer to Sleep

2008-03-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Check out Larry Magid's latest Tech Talk podcast featuring ways to make your PCs (and eventually many more networked devices) more energy efficient.

Larry points out that putting (and keeping) computers in sleep or stand-by mode when inactive isn't always as easy as it should be, and for businesses, there's an equal challenge of ensuring those computers can be "woken up" when they need to be in use again.

Check out Larry's extensive interview with Verdiem CEO Kevin Klustner here.

When Should I Turn Off My Computer?

2008-03-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, people ask how long they have to be away from their machines to make turning it off worthwhile. From the perspective of energy savings, if you are going to be away from your computer from more than 8-15 minutes, you should turn it off. However, the energy concerns are only part of the equation.

To answer this question, we have to find the point at which the extra power consumption required to shut down and restart a machine is offset by the power saved. If the machine is off for any period of time longer than that, we've saved energy.

Modern computers use much more energy when they are doing work than when they are idle. So, to find the breakeven point, I started my typical set of applications: Firefox with a couple of tabs, Microsoft Word, a media player, and Visual Studio. Then, I measured the power consumption using a wattmeter while I shutdown the machine, waited for a little while, then turned the computer back on and restarted all the applications.

Here's a graph of the energy usage on "both sides" of a shutdown and restart:

What you see in the graph is pretty typical, starting at the left of the graph, you see some idle time, followed by some activity caused by the shutdown processing, then some off time. Then you see the startup processing and finally some idle time.

Note that, even though the machine did not return to the idle power consumption for 7 minutes, the computer was usable long before that.I ran this test on a computer that's an energy hog. The hog takes about 30 seconds to shutdown and has peak wattage of 183 watts. It also takes 7 minutes (60*7 = 420 seconds) from startup to idle with peak wattage of 230 watts. The idle wattage is 115 watts. Let's just estimate by taking the shutdown cost as (0.125 hours)*(230 - 115) watts = 14.375 watt hours. The off wattage is 0.7. Therefore, the breakeven point comes when the amount of saved energy is equal to the shutdown energy. In numbers, when 14.375 = 114.3 * h, where h is the time the machine is shutdown in hours. For the energy hog, this works out to be about 7.5 minutes.

Therefore, for this machine, anytime you are going to be away from the machine for more than 7.5 minutes, you can save energy by shutting the machine down.

Some of the most efficient machines available use much less energy but it's safe to assume that, if you're going to be away from your computer for more than 15 minutes, you're probably better off, from an energy perspective, in shutting it down.

So, if you are managing large groups of machines you might consider using software that saves energy and mitigates the productivity losses by actively managing machine power states.

3 Ways To Cut IT Energy Use

2008-03-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

According to CIO.com, there are three incredibly simple ways to cut your organization's technology costs:

1) Turn computers off at night - By turning computers off when they are not in use, companies can reap big savings and lower their carbon footprint.

2) Buy energy efficient equipment - While many IT shops do recycle old equipment, it's just as important to take energy efficiency into account when buying new equipment. According to a CIO survey, currently only 32% of organizations do this.

3) Stop wasting paper - A survey by the Butler Group found that environmentally friendly printing practices can significantly reduce the amount of paper each employee wastes, sometimes by up to 400%! Educating end users about paper waste is one of the first steps a company can take.

Click here to read more.

Staples Copy and Print Centers Using Recycled Paper

2008-03-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

All 1400 Staples Copy and Print Centers will now be using recycled paper as the standard offering for print jobs, Environmental Leader reports. This is a first for a national copy and print organization and makes Staples the office supplier that offers the most Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper overall.

“These FSC-certified recycled content paper products are another way that Staples makes it easy for customers to make a difference for the environment-what we call EcoEasy,” said Mark Buckley, vice president of environmental affairs at Staples.

Staples has set a goal of moving the majority of paper products it offers to FSC-certified paper by the end of 2010, based upon availability of supply and market conditions.

Click here to read more.

EPA Reports Drop in US Emissions in 2006

2008-03-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Environmental Protection Agency is working on an annual report examining US Greenhouse Gas Emissions from 1990-2006, Environmental Leader reports. EPA found that overall emissions during 2006 decreased by 1.5% from the previous year.

With total US emissions in 2006 at 7,202 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, it is easy to see how a decrease of 1.5% is substantial. Overall, emissions have grown by 14.1 percent from 1990 to 2006 while the U.S. economy has grown by 59 percent over the same period. The 2006 emissions decrease is only the third decline in annual emissions since 1990.

Click here to learn more.

Green Investors Put Pressure On Corporations

2008-03-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

The number of shareholder resolutions requesting that companies disclose what they are doing about climate change has doubled in the last two years, US News reports.

Already 14 of the 54 resolutions have been withdrawn after companies chose to disclose their global warming plans. Such commendable companies include Continental, Lowes, Harley Davidson and Southern Company. Among those still holding out are large oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips.

According to Ceres, a coalition of investors and and environmental groups, "Many U.S. companies are confronting the risks and opportunities from climate change, but others are not responding adequately, and they may be compromising their long-term competitiveness as a result."

Click here for the full article.

Forrester Predicts Green IT Consulting Market To Boom

2008-03-07T11:11:00.000-08:00

In a report released by Forrester this week titled, "The Dawn of Green IT Services," a prediction is made that the market for green IT services will reach $4.8 billion in 2013, InfoWorld reports.

Currently, the green IT consulting industry is quite small, around $500 million. But with the recent momentum of the green movement, Forrester expects spending on green IT services to increase by 60% annually for the next five years.

Click here to read more.

Microsoft Speaks Up On Green Initiatives

2008-03-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

Robert Bernard, Microsoft's Chief Environmental Strategist, discussed Microsoft's green strategy last week, CNET news.com reports. While other IT companies have launched large public "green IT" initiatives, Microsoft has remained fairly quiet.

Bernard addressed the issue during a session at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, and indicated that reducing the energy consumption of software is one of his primary objectives. However, as only 3-5% of energy consumption comes from software, Microsoft is also looking to work with its hardware partners to address the other 95%.

Speaking to investors and entrepreneurs, Bernard said that a software infrastructure to integrate their inventions into existing energy networks needs to be created.

Click here to read more.

Energy Efficiency Is Key To New Lenovo Strategy

2008-02-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

Following the lead of competitors HP and Dell, Lenovo is the latest PC manufacturer to make energy efficiency key to its future desktop strategy, VNUNET.com reports.

In order to meet stricter environmental standards, Lenovo is introducing smaller and more efficient desktop PCs, such as the newly launched M57, and the M57p Eco USFF due out in late 2008.

"Lenovo will have a stronger green focus on new desktops," said Per Olesen, desktop product manager at Lenovo. "There are huge potential savings with the new technology."

"Now it's a massive issue and is going to be a major focus for Lenovo. Investors are choosing to invest in environmentally friendly companies and those who use green technology."

Click here to read the full article.

Corporate Responsibility Reporting At All Time High

2008-02-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

In 2007, over two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies issued standalone non-financial reports, according to SustainableLifeMedia.com. What's even more exciting is that of the reports reviewed, 87% address climate change, and 78% include concrete greenhouse gas emissions data.

With consumers increasingly demanding corporations to take responsibility for their business actions, it is refreshing to finally see response to these demands. With reports such as these and with independent third-party validation of the figures within them, we will move away from a distrustful society and towards one that works together.

Click here for the full article.

GSA Switching to Green Computing Products

2008-02-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

Last year, the General Services Administration saw an almost 50% increase in technology purchases, partly due to governments switching to greener IT products, GreenerComputing reports.

Spending increased from $248.5 million in 2006 to $361.2 million in 2007, according to a report by research group INPUT. According to the report's author Jason Sajko, "The groundswell of green purchasing at the state and local level presents a real opportunity for GSA and scheduled vendors to offer green products, with the added administrative savings of cooperative purchasing vehicles."

Click here to learn more.

Screen Savers - Energy Suckers

2008-02-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

When screensavers were first introduced, their purpose was to prevent damage to early CRT monitors, which were susceptible to phosphor burn. Modern CRT and LCD screens are not prone to "ghost images" resulting from phoshor burn. As a result, the screensaver's original purpose exists no more.

Today, screensavers are generally used as forms of entertainment or personal expression. However, from an energy management perspective, screensavers are like a canary in the goldmine, representing an opportunity to conserve energy and save money. Here is why:

1. A screensaver requires the PC and monitor to be in full power mode.

2. A screensaver indicates that a PC is not in use, and therefore that it could be put into a low power state without affecting end-user productivity.

So, the next time you see a screensaver, think about it as a missed opportunity to save money, conserve energy and help the environment, no different really than a refrigerator with the door left open.

If you often see screensavers in your company, then a PC Power Management solution like SURVEYOR is probably worth a close look.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screensaver
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/screenshots/
http://www.verdiem.com

EPA Released First Draft of Server Energy Star Guidelines

2008-02-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Environmental Protection Agency has released the first draft of specifications for Energy Star for servers, EDN.com reports. Energy Star is completely voluntary, but has become important for businesses looking to be energy efficient, an increasing need in the corporate business world due to customer demand.

The new specifications are tiered, beginning with relatively easy to attain power efficiencies, gradually getting stricter as end-users demands for energy efficiency get higher and more consistent.

EPA will work with industry groups like Climate Savers and 80Plus to develop consistent test procedures and efficiency levels.

Click here for the full article.

You can view the draft here: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=new_specs.enterprise_servers

Top 12 Green IT Users

2008-02-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Last fall, Computerworld set out to identify 12 companies that are implementing strategies to achieve "green IT," Julia King reports. Computerworld selected experts to help develop a set of criteria to identify companies that are actively working to reduce energy consumption in their IT equipment or using technology to conserve energy and lower carbon emissions.

Companies in the Green IT dozen include Highmark, WellPoint, Monsanto and Ryder System Inc. Strategies utilized include virtualization, teleconferencing, PC power management and thin clients.
With IT leaders being publicly recognized for the work they are doing to reduce energy, more and more companies will be encouraged to follow suit.

For the full article and list click here.

NRDC's Top 5 Cities Fighting Global Warming

2008-02-18T09:23:00.000-08:00

In an video interview for the Wall Street Journal online, Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council picks five cities are that on the cutting edge in using alternative energy. Environmental Leader reports how that’s helping the environment and saving money.

Cavanagh's top picks:

1) Portland, Oregon
2) Seattle, Washington
3) Sacramento, California
4) Palm Desert, California
5) Chicago, Illinois

Click here for the full video.

Commercial Energy Star Building Up By 25% in 2007

2008-02-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

In 2007, commercial buildings and manufacturing plants to earn the Energy Star for superior energy efficiency increased by more than 25%, Environmental Leader reports. The amount of carbon dioxide emissions reduced reached an all time high of more than 25 billion pounds.

Commercial Energy Star buildings use almost 40% less energy than regular buildings, and emit 35% less carbon dioxide. Many Energy Star buildings excel due to superior energy management practices such as energy benchmarking.

The total number of buildings to earn the Energy Star is 4,056, with 1,400 earning the Energy Star in 2007 alone.

Click here to read more.

Gartner Predicts Green IT Audits for Suppliers

2008-02-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

According to Gartner, IT vendors will soon be subject to green audits by the global corporations they supply, Sustainable Life Media reports. This is according to Gartner 's annual list of topics expected to affect the IT industry, specifically where IT professionals will need to take action in 2008.

When discussing supply chains, Gartner predicts that "by 2011, suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. These policies go well beyond minimizing direct carbon emissions or requiring suppliers to comply with local environmental regulations."

Many large organizations are already putting such policies in place, such as Home Depot, Timberland and Wal-Mart.

Click here to read more.

California May Tax Corporate Emissions

2008-02-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing to charge businesses an annual fee based on their CO2 emissions, Mercury News reports. This would be the first such program in California, and would charge 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted. The program would affect all types of businesses, large and small.

The largest fee would be paid by The Shell oil refinery in Martinez, $186,475 a year for its 4.4 million annual metric tons of emissions.

The air district board could take a final vote on this rule by May, meaning businesses looking to avoid the fees should focus on measures to reduce their CO2 emissions immediately.

Click here to learn more.

Hillary Clinton discusses Verdiem

2008-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

While on the campaign trail Thursday night, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton highlighted Verdiem as a company doing important work to reduce our country's energy consumption.

Her discussion of energy efficiency recommendations came about eight minutes in during a 42-minute speech to a gathering of supporters in Seattle last night.

You can see the full video here.

North America Lags in Green IT Adoption

2008-02-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Two new reports have looked at the trends surrounding green IT.

The Standish Group examined the issues driving green computing and found that ultimately cost reduction is the main incentive. With energy bills ever increasing organizations continue to look for ways to cut costs in new places. Cost isn't the only driving factor however, with government mandates, the need for more power and environmental concerns also listed.

Another research group, the Info-Tech Research Group, looked at how fast green IT is spreading around the world. They found that green IT initiatives in the US and Canada are lagging behind those in Asia and Europe, mainly due to older infrastructure.

Infrastructure isn't the only the only place they saw differences however, as 75% of respondents from Asia said their organizations have policies in place for turning off computers while not in use and only 35% in North America indicated they have such policies. As each corporate PC can waste up to $60 per year in energy costs North American countries are missing out on huge savings.

Click here to learn more.

Top Ten Reasons to Green IT

2008-02-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

Our venerable CEO is featured in Environmental Leader today with his top ten reasons why IT departments should go green.

The #1 reason: It saves money (a lot of money): PC power management software can cut energy costs by $20-60 dollars per PC per PC, which can translate to six- and seven-figure annual savings for large enterprises. For many organizations, this can mean a 5-15 percent reduction in overall, organization-wide energy consumption.

Read the full list here.

See Verdiem at the Washington Technology Summit

2008-01-31T14:24:00.000-08:00

If you're local (in Washington state), mark your calendar for the Washington State Technology Summit, April 15th at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue. We'll be on a panel in the afternoon addressing clean technology.

See you there!

Gartner Predicts Green IT is the Future of Tech

2008-01-31T09:27:00.000-08:00

As Computing Business editor Mark Samuels reports, Gartner has issued a new set of predictions for business technology. While making tech predictions is no new thing for the analyst, the consistency of Green IT showing up on these lists is relatively new.

Green IT shows up three times out of 10 on Gartner's new list as predictions of areas where executives and IT professionals will need to take action in 2008. The predictions include:

By 2009 - More than one third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods. In the future, IT organizations will shift their focus from the power efficiency of products to asking service providers about their measures to improve energy efficiency.
By 2010 - Seventy-five per cent of organizations will use full life cycle energy and carbon dioxide footprint as mandatory PC hardware buying criteria. Most technology providers have little or no knowledge of the full life cycle energy and carbon dioxide footprint of their products.
By 2011 - Suppliers to large global enterprises will need to prove their green credentials via an audited process to retain preferred supplier status. Organizations with strong brands are already helping to forge the first wave of green sourcing policies and initiatives.

Click here to learn more.

Two simple steps to "green" your office printing

2008-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

Sustainable business practices can be incredibly complicated - if you let them.

Take printing at the office, for example. If you over-think it, you can come up with dozens of things you'd need to do across the entire "supply chain" of printing, things that together would completely and comprehensively "green" your printing. This would include a more energy efficient printer, more environmentally-friendly ink, recyclable ink cartridges, fewer printers across the office, etc.

Or, you could do two simple things right away:

1. Get better paper.
2. Print fewer pages.

Two smart companies (New Leaf Paper and GreenPrint) can get you started.

A pleasure to be nominated...

2008-01-31T08:50:00.000-08:00

Verdiem has been named a finalist for the National eWell-Being Awards in the UK.

From the SustainIT Web site:

The National eWell-Being Awards are unique in celebrating the social, economic and environmental benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The aim is to identify and promote the most innovative uses of ICT by local authorities, businesses, third sector organisations and academic institutions.

Winners will be announced at the end of April.

No plastic, mo' money

2008-01-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

In December, Whole Foods took away plastic bags as a carry-out option in its Austin store. By April, plastic bags will be banned from all nationwide Whole Foods stores.

How can you take your Whole Foods purchases home this summer?

1) Use paper bags (still provided by Whole Foods)
2) Use reusable bags (nylon or canvas, sold by Whole Foods)
3) Carry them (not recommended)

The Whole Foods brand is organic in nature to begin with, so this move is already well-tied to the parent company's core values. However, one can't help but think the move is also rooted in the financial benefits of both eliminating cost (no longer buying gazillions of those bags as an operating cost) and a nice incremental top-line revenue bump and profit on something that most customers will likely buy (the nylon/canvas bag sold at a high markup).

Jan 31 Update

EcoGeek makes a compelling argument this morning for why plastic bags are actually more environmentally-friendly than paper. To quote them:

Whole Foods' moving over to 100% recycled paper is actually going to be worse for the environment.

Creating recycled paper, it turns out, is a much more energy-intensive process than creating plastic bags. That's why grocery stores prefer you take the plastic. Plastic is also much easier to ship, as it takes up way less space in packing, and they weigh far less per item of shopping you take home with you. And while we might worry that all that plastic is coming from foreign oil, the amazing thing is that even with all the billions of plastic bags we use every year, they constitute about 0.03% of our oil use in the U.S.. Obviously not the most pressing problem we've got.

Check out their full rationale here.

Talk is cheap, save the world

2008-01-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

Sustainability is important, we say. It needs to be a priority, we say again.

Yet our words are not always followed by action - at least when it comes to corporate citizenship and sustainability initiatives.

A survey released by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship (BCCCC) and The Hitachi Foundation shows CEOs and other executives support responsible corporate citizenship, at least in principle. The third biennial 2007 State of Corporate Citizenship in the US, "Time to get real: Closing the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality," studies what CEOs and other business executives say they believe about the importance of corporate citizenship and what policies are actually in place at their businesses.

Although 73% of the 751 top executives surveyed said that corporate citizenship needs to be a priority for businesses, only 39% of the businesses include corporate citizenship as part of their business planning. An even smaller percentage of these businesses (28%) actually have written corporate citizenship policies or statements.

The gap presented here is much more than just words vs. actions. It's actions vs. results. It's nice to say we want to improve our carbon footprint, and reduce our impact on the world around us. But the typical corporation needs more than a "good feeling" to move forward, and rightfully so.

In the face of a possible economic downturn, successful corporate citizenship projects need to be tied directly to financial results for the business. Without that tie, corporate citizenship and sustainability projects could likely become unfunded mandates - or worse.

5 Midwest Corps Meet Green Power Challenge

2008-01-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

5 corporations from the Midwest were recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency for taking the initiative to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Kohl's, Baxter, GE Healthcare, General Motors Services Parts Organization and Monsanto were all commended for purchasing significant amounts of renewable energy.

Since 2006, when EPA issued this nationwide challenge, 53 Fortune 500 companies have collectively purchasing over 6 billion kWh of green power annually. This amount has surpassed the goal set by the Green Power Partnership by 130%! EPA estimates that the CO2 emissions avoided from the program are equal to more than 570 million gallons of gas.

For the full release click here.

GreenBiz's State of Green Business - What about PC energy waste?

2008-01-30T08:45:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Joel Makower and the GreenBiz team for their 2008 State of Green Business report. If you're relatively new to the sustainability opportunities available to corporate America, it's a great first read. You can download a copy of the PDF report here.

At the same time this report highlights some important sustainability opportunities and challenges in enterprise businesses, it goes light on one of the fastest-growing, fastest-to-implement, and highest cost-saving potential initiatives companies are implementing - PC network power management.

The typical computer wastes nearly two-thirds of the energy is uses, simply by operating at full power when it's not in active use. By leveraging centralized PC power management solutions, enterprises can cut PC costs by as much as $60 per PC per year, adding up to significant operating cost savings.

This isn't meant to be a sales pitch (if you want one, you can find it here), but a reminder that, of all the sustainability projects out there, there's still plenty of wading and triaging to do.

The biggest projects aren't always the best to start on right away. The most visible projects, the sexy sustainability projects, don't always generate the kind of short-term and sizeable payback and ROI that companies need, not only to compete in slower economic conditions but also to quickly leverage the impact and benefits of sustainability across the enterprise.

Accenture: Still has to make business sense...

2008-01-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

According to a new Accenture study, nine out of ten companies report that climate change is not a big priority.

According to the report, just 5% of big businesses consider global warming a top priority, and only 11% peg it at second or third place.

"Climate change is not going to get nearly the same degree of attention here as it would have achieved if the economic outlook were brighter," says Mark Spelman, global head of strategy at Accenture. "Whenever there are underlying economic concerns, people will focus on them."

I wrote last week about whether or not sustainability practices would be recession-proof. Accenture's findings confirm that, as a stand alone, climate change and the associated work required by an enterprise company, are not important enough to prioritize. But if those changes can be aligned with a strong, direct business benefit - higher profits, growing revenue, reduced costs - that's when projects get prioritized and green lighted.

More on recession-proof green practices here.

Federal Govt Could Save $1 billion from Green IT

2008-01-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

HP and Intel worked together to examine the amount of energy and power that the Federal government could save by adopting green data center technology. Just what does this amount to? $1 billion over 5 years.

Their Go Green Power Play report explains that by implementing various energy saving technologies, notably Dynamic Smart Cooling, Virtualization and Power Distribution Efficiencies, potential savings equate to around 40%. Cost savings for the first year alone are almost $200 million.

And cost savings aren't the only benefit. After 5 years the additional savings equate to:

Removing 1,459,3791 cars from the road
Providing 9,589,8722 text books to children
Recycling 2,270,1463 tons of waste in the U.S. instead of landfilling them

Click here to learn more.

Green Marketing Best Practices

2008-01-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

The perils of misleading consumers into thinking your product or service is green (when it's not) are well-documented. It seems the rise in popularity of green products and environmentally-friendly marketing has been paralleled with growing consumer skepticism, and a distrust of green claims by mainstream and emerging companies alike.

Navigating that minefield is no easy task, but William Brent appears up for the challenge. Brent is senior vice president of Weber Shandwick's CleanTech practice, based in Seattle, where he manages a portfolio of clients focused on lessening the impact we have on the world around us.

I asked William to talk about green marketing, what it really means, and what lessons we've learned so far about how to do it well. You can read the results here.

Is green recession-proof?

2008-01-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

I was asked last week what the impact of a nationwide economic downturn could be on companies prioritizing and funding sustainability initiatives. It's a great question with two answers.

I believe in the not-too-distant future, sustainability will be a fundamental, "table stakes" part of doing business for global enterprises. Reducing the impact companies have on the world around them will soon become non-negotiable, and a requirement for doing business with customers (commercial and consumer) that expect them to act responsibly.

Today, that isn't the case - at least not yet. While several businesses have blazed a trail with significant corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives, not enough of those efforts had paid off - either in increased sales or decreased operational costs. Unless such initiatives demonstrate a consistent ability to provide value to the organization, they'll be close to the chopping block in leaner times.

That said, technologies are emerging that allow companies to "go green" and save green at the same time. Verdiem's SURVEYOR software, for example, is helping companies save up to 60 percent off their PC energy bill, while cutting associated carbon emissions up to 40 percent. That represents a high, measurable impact on both the environment and the bottom line.

And if this kind of savings is both real and verifiable, it's the kind of thing that will get prioritized higher in lean times.

SHOCKING: Electricity rates shoot up 7% in three months (March to June 2007)

2007-12-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

A large part of my job at Verdiem is to advise senior executives in large organizations on how to measure, analyze and manage energy consumption of IT equipment, particularly PCs and monitors, which account for up to 40% of the average IT department's carbon footprint and electricity usage.

For obvious reasons, I keep a close eye on electricity rates, especially in the Western US where most of my clients are based. Despite the high level of media attention on energy issues, I was shocked to see that electricity rates on average increased 7% between March and June 2007.

Here is a breakdown of electricity rate increases in the Western States during this period (March to June 2007):

Hawaii: $0.21 per kWh (6% Increase)

California: $0.14 per kWh (9% Increase)

Alaska: $0.13 per kWh (7% Increase)

Texas: $0.11 per kWh (4% Increase)

Nevada: $0.10 per kWh (9% Increase)

Arizona: $0.09 per kWh (12% Increase)

Colorado: $0.08 per kWh (5% Increase)

Montana: $0.08 per kWh (no change)

Oklahoma: $0.08 per kWh (4% Increase)

New Mexico: $0.08 per kWh (5% Increase)

Utah: $0.07 per kWh (2% Increase)

Oregon: $0.07 per kWh (10% Increase)

Washington: $0.06 per kWh (4% Increase)

Wyoming: $0.05 per kWh (3% Increase)

Idaho: $0.05 per kWh (11% Increase)

Source: http://www.neo.ne.gov/statshtml/115.htm

Green Tech Predictions for 2008

2007-12-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

While 2007 set the scene for Green IT, it will be interesting to follow the trends in 2008. Corporations and governments will have a tough job finding a happy medium and vendors will be scrambling to supply solutions.

If you're one that doesn't buy into the Green IT phenomenon, a good place to get a reality check is from the experts themselves. InfoWorld interviewed over a dozen IT industry experts from leading companies to validate the hype. Among their predictions:

A continued emphasis on "greening the datacenter"
A focus on scrutinizing vendor supply chains
Technology solutions taking center stage in solving the climate-change challenge

Click here to get the full scoop from the experts.

2008 IT New Year's Resolution - Go Green

2007-12-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

2007 is quickly coming to a close and with the start of 2008, New Year’s resolutions are on everyone’s minds. That includes C-level execs and IT managers. Sustainability is now a major focus for organizations, and execs are considering how it pays, how it doesn’t and where it counts to make changes. This year, many discovered it can strengthen their reputation, improve employee morale, deliver cost savings, and of course, benefit the environment.

Where do you begin and what is a logical, easy first step? Reducing PC energy waste. Below are 10 other reasons why greening your IT department is an important starting point toward sustainability. The number-one reason - the bottom-line, of course.

Verdiem’s Top Ten Reasons to Go Green in IT

It saves money (a lot of money)
It’s the right thing to do
It’s not easy not being green
Sustained growth requires sustainable operations
Attract and retain customers
Inspire employees
Improved reputation and brand value
Be a cost-savings and sustainability hero for your organization
Lower exposure to energy prices
Energy-efficient IT is high performance IT

The Vampires Strike Again

2007-12-14T11:02:00.001-08:00

Vampire energy is estimated to cost U.S. consumers $3 billion every year. For those that don't know, vampire energy is a type of energy used by appliances when they are turned off or not being used.

GOOD Magazine sums it up nicely for the average consumer with a chart depicting just how much energy each of those devices is sucking up.

Some surprises are in store for the skeptics:

A plasma TV sucks up $160 each year when not in use
A game console sucks up $25 each year when not in use
A computer can suck up $34 each year when not in use

When you add these costs to the energy costs of actually using the devices, it's no wonder that according to the Department of Energy, "vampire energy amounts to about five percent of energy consumed in the United States."

To learn more about saving energy click here.

Google's Latest Venture, Coal-Free Power

2007-11-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Google, the corporation that loves to invest in the triple-bottom line, announced yesterday it will be pouring tens of millions of dollars into research and development for renewable energy sources in 2008. While renewable energy as an environmental measure is a popular bandwagon to jump on these days, co-founder Larry Page expects the company to see returns "on a reasonable time scale," either in the form of higher stock prices of the companies it invests in or in the sale of licensing solar and other technologies it develops.

As the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports, Google wants to find cheaper, more reliable energy to run its power hungry datacenters. Google typically avoids the question of just how much power its datacenters actually consume; some estimate it costs the company as much as $2 million a month. It's no wonder Google wants to invest in a cheaper source.

But Google isn't the only company that stands to gain; its goal is to develop technology that makes clean energy sources less expensive than coal, something beneficial for the entire nation, not to mention the world.

To learn more click here.

Go Green, Not Broke

2007-11-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

In part 3 of a 4 part series on Green Computing on Worldchanging.com, Jeremy Faludi gives businesses a tip for going green in IT without breaking the bank.

The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT, is a system that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select desktop computers, notebooks and monitors based on their environmental attributes. It ranks a computer's eco-friendliness in a manner similar to the way in which LEED certification ranks buildings, on a tiered system of Bronze, Silver and Gold. However, unlike LEED, which can be costly and time-consuming, EPEAT is absolutely free and can be implemented quickly.

The difference with EPEAT is that it places the onus of eco-responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the manufacturers, who then pick and choose which criteria they will adhere to. So far only 12 desktops qualify for EPEAT Gold status.

To learn more click here.

Pass Your PC a Turkey Leg

2007-11-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

While you’re napping off this year’s turkey-induced tryptophan high, your PC at work should be doing the same. After all, you’re taking a long, four-day weekend. Shouldn’t your computer be taking a rest as well?

Unfortunately, for the majority of corporate computers, this isn’t the case. Consider these surprising statistics, which suggest that the risk of excessive energy waste is high this coming holiday weekend:

There are an estimated 43 million active computers across the US in businesses of 300 employees or more
Sixty percent of enterprise PCs are normally left running at full-power after business hours

What this means is that, among those mid to large-sized organizations, more than 25.8 million PCs and monitors will be left on for the holiday weekend, wasting an estimated 113 million kWh of electricity and emitting 282.7 million pounds of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, equal to the emissions of 1.7 million mid-sized cars over a four-day period.

113 million kWh would power every residential home in Los Angeles for the entire four-day weekend, and is equivalent to more than 3.3 million gallons of gas used on the road.

Not a festive thought, is it?

Fortunately, close to 500,000 PCs nationwide will be using SURVEYOR software over the holiday weekend, cutting their power consumption by close to 90 percent while eliminating nearly all of their carbon footprint during that time.

If those 25.8 million fully-powered PCs and monitors were using SURVEYOR to manage PCs and monitor power consumption during the Thanksgiving break, they could save a cumulative $5.6 million in energy expenses for four days. That’s why it pays to manage PC power use- for the environment, and for the bottom line.

If your organization isn’t yet using SURVEYOR, please invite your PC to join you in some R&R by turning it off before you leave.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins to Finance Green Business

2007-11-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

While one might think that former Vice President Al Gore has reached his peak with his recent Nobel Peace Prize and Academy Award winning documentary that started an environmental revolution, Gore disagrees. His newest foray into the environmental arena is taking a job at the prestigious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Gore will be working as a partner for the firm, advising which companies and technologies have the most environmental promise, the San Francisco Gate reports.

Gore's no stranger to seeking out sustainable investments; he co-founded Generation Investment Management with Goldman Sachs executive David Blood in 2004. Generation now has $1.5 billion in investments.

Gore insists it's not about the money. While those looking to complain might gripe about the salaries paid to such high profile investors, no need to worry here, Gore is putting his money where is mouth is. Gore will be donating his entire Kleiner Perkins salary to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a CA non-profit that advocates for policies to fight global warming.

As Kleiner Perkins plans to spend one-third of its $600 million investment fund on green technology startups next year, there's no denying the immense potential for this new relationship.

To learn more about this partnership click here.

The eco-friendly myth

2007-11-15T13:15:00.001-08:00

Credit Jacquelyn Ottoman for calling marketers onto the carpet today with a great, short piece in the Sustainable Brands Weekly e-newsletter.

Her premise? That claims such as "environmentally friendly" and "ozone friendly" can be misleading to consumers. There's really no such thing as a completely eco-friendly product, she writes. All products use at least some resources and create waste that's not natural to the planet.

She goes on to point out key takeaways from the FTC's Environmental Marketing Guidelines, including:

Be specific. Marketers are liable not only for inaccurate statements but also for consumers' misinterpretations of their claims.

Don't overstate. Biota’s water bottle was theoretically biodegradable, but not compostable in backyard composters or even many municipal composting facilities. Bad press from this claim helped sink the company.

Qualify terms such as “refillable,” “energy-efficient,” and “reusable.” Answer the key questions: How much? For how long? By whom? Where? Compared to what? Avoid saying “recyclable” if products or packaging are theoretically recyclable but not collected by municipal recycling programs.

You can read more from and about Jacquie on the Sustainable Brands Web site, and sign yourself up for their great weekly newsletter here.

Real Savings from PC Power Management

2007-11-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

When people think about saving on energy bills, and cutting their carbon footprint, they don't always think about what could happen if they simply cut their PC's energy consumption. But studies show that nearly two-thirds of the power needed by the typical PC/monitor combination is wasted - because the PC is not in use.

Clear Channel's San Francisco Bay Area office just started using SURVEYOR from Verdiem to monitor and manage its PC energy use and IT carbon footprint. We've been tracking usage and consumption of the office's machines for a few weeks, and the savings this office is about to experience is incredible. Consider the following:

- PCs (including the CPU and monitor) at Clear Channel's San Francisco office are consuming on average 763 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. For 195 PCs, that's 148,820 kWh. Slightly above average, but relatively normal.
- To put that in per-PC usage in perspective, if you left a 75-watt light bulb on 24 hours a day all year, it would consume 657 kWh.
- Using SURVEYOR, Clear Channel PCs will each use just 343 kWh per year. That means they'll be saving 81,859 kWh per year just in their office, reducing carbon emissions each year by a whopping 71,955 pounds!

That's the equivalent of taking seven cars off the road, saving more than 3,700 gallons of gas, and eliminating the equivalent yearly electricity needs of 4.2 households. It's also means more than $11,000 in electricity savings in just the first 12 months for this Clear Channel office.

Amazing results for an office of less than 200 employees!

To learn what kind of cost and carbon savings your business could realize, try this calculator.

SMBs Feeling the Pain from Rising Energy Costs

2007-11-09T10:32:00.000-08:00

SMBs continuously face a myriad of financial issues. Costs are rising in all directions, in quality healthcare and compensation for employees, office rental costs and equipment investments. However, none of the above-mentioned costs are hitting SMBs quite as hard as rising energy costs.

CNN Money reported the results of an IBM global survey of nearly 1400 small and midsized businesses, and found that energy costs have faced the "biggest cost increase" over the past two years. The interviewees expressed concern over these cost increases, for both financial and environmental reasons.

The bad news is that US businesses were less likely than their foreign counterparts to know how much their IT systems contributed to their overall costs, a mistake as IT equipment is a major power suck and is ripe for savings.

The good news however is that the majority of SMBs have begun to make at least basic changes in IT, such as installing energy efficient lighting and turning off equipment when not in use. The study indicated that 55% of SMBs are currently taking active steps toward reducing the energy consumption of their information technology, a wise move as recent research from IDC estimates that for very dollar spent on IT, 50 cents is spent on related energy costs. By taking advantage of energy efficient measures and technologies SMBs can mitigate these rising energy costs and focus their efforts on more important issues.

Click here to learn more about IBM's global SMB survey.

Al Gore: Turn that PC off!

2007-11-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Rumor has it that Al Gore will make an appearance on the popular NBC sitcom 30 Rock this evening, as part of NBC Universal's "Green is Universal" week.

Tonight's episode will have a decidedly green theme, with the former Vice President making a surprise guest appearance that includes chastising a 30 Rock staffer for leaving her computer on when it's not in use.

Catch it tonight at 8:30 local time.