World is Green

• Geothermal-rich SE Asia struggles to tap earth’s power | Environment | Reuters - Annotated

  tags: wiglinks

  • Both are in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, an area peppered with volcanoes and home to the world’s biggest reservoir of geothermal power.

    “When I think of Indonesia and energy, I think geothermal. Indonesia has more than 500 volcanoes, of which 130 are active,” Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, told CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in a speech in June.

    • Geothermal will play a big role in the coming decades. - post by suhit_a

• Environmental taxes on aggregate materials in the EU: towards sustainable construction - Highlights — EEA

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  • While the study acknowledges that there is potential to extend taxation in the area of natural resource management to other sectors, it also reflects that the four countries surveyed in the report have achieved mixed results. Italy and the Czech Republic showed weak evidence of improved landscape following the introduction of the tax, whereas Sweden has succeeded in reducing demand for natural gravel — an invaluable resource to guarantee groundwater quality.

Trendwatching writes about the eco-iconic wave of marketing. It provides one of the best reasons why Prius and products like that have an edge over other green products.

When applying this ever-wider embrace to green products and services, the shift looks somewhat like this: we’ve gone from ECO-UGLY (ugly, over-priced, low-performance, unsavory yet eco-friendly versions of the ‘real thing’) to ECO-CHIC (eco-friendly stuff that actually looks as nice and cool as the less sustainable originals) to now ECO-ICONIC:
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Well, just take a look around: a surprisingly high number of green products and services, imagined and designed in a distant past when green was seen as a compromise, still try to hide their sustainable superiority by looking as much like ‘normal’, ‘non-green’ products as possible.
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Now translate the above to the eco-sphere. To create eco-icons, creating a eco-friendly version of an existing product and sticking a ‘hybrid’ or green label on it may work in some cases, but will most likely prove problematic, as it will either be (literally) invisible, or will still be associated with the polluting version. The Volkswagen Golf Hybrid—more on that later—is a good example. Instead, the solution is to make it new, bold and above all, to make it look very different from existing non-green offerings. Like, yes, wait for it: the Prius. Want examples that aren’t as overused?
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“While the current good intentions of corporations and consumers are helpful, serious eco-results will depend on making products and processes more sustainable without consumers even noticing it, and, if necessary, not leaving much room for consumers and companies to opt for less sustainable alternatives. Which will often mean forceful, if not painful, government intervention, or some serious corporate guts, or brilliantly smart design and thinking, if not all of those combined.
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Think green buildings, or a ban on plastic bags or gas-guzzlers—anything that becomes truly embedded into daily life, and by default leaves no choice, no room for complacency.”
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Green buildings, cities and… nations. The rush is on: in April 2007, Norway, the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, stated that it was aiming to be carbon neutral by 2030, while Costa Rica aims for the same by 2021. California (practically a country by itself ;-) aims to cut emissions by 80% by 2050. Sweden claims it will be the first oil-free country in the world by 2020. And last but not least, in Iceland, 99.95% of all electricity used is already produced by green energy

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• How to cut your fuel bills 80% or more | Software as Services | ZDNet.com - Annotated

  Software consultancy TG Allison, for example, which helps dairy farmers in rural Wales maximize their milk yields, has cut average weekly mileage by its employees from 200 down to 40 miles — an 80% drop — at the same time as increasing productivity and customer satisfaction. Instead of spending hours driving out to a client’s farm whenever something goes wrong, the company’s staff now use an Internet link to connect to the farm’s computers and resolve the problem, often within minutes. Many farmers are also pleased to know the company has reduced its carbon emissions, says owner Thomas Allison.

  tags: wiglinks

  • Software consultancy TG Allison, for example, which helps dairy farmers in rural Wales maximize their milk yields, has cut average weekly mileage by its employees from 200 down to 40 miles — an 80% drop — at the same time as increasing productivity and customer satisfaction. Instead of spending hours driving out to a client’s farm whenever something goes wrong, the company’s staff now use an Internet link to connect to the farm’s computers and resolve the problem, often within minutes. Many farmers are also pleased to know the company has reduced its carbon emissions, says owner Thomas Allison.
    • More and more companies are doing this now…carbon emissions or productivity. In fact some big savings can be made in office space. - post by suhit_a

• CSRware CEO: 4 Ways to Save Energy in Cloud Computing « Earth2Tech - Annotated

  tags: wiglinks

  • And one company that we met in the halls of the conference that is helping companies manage power is San Francisco-based CSRware, which offers what it calls “eco-analytics,” or a suite of services that measures and manages a company’s energy consumption, water use and waste.
    • More and more companies will be working on providing tools to measure and manage environmental data. This will be a big market. - post by suhit_a

Suzlon is the biggest wind farm manufacturer in India and one of the biggest in the world. Over the years they have grown from strength to strength. Interestingly, my cousin works as a Intern for Suzlon in the US and he sent me some info about their new plant in South Australia.

Last year Suzlon signed two contracts.

The contract with RPV calls for delivery of 63 units of Suzlon S88 - 2.1 MW wind turbine, translating to 132 MW of capacity. The project, named ‘Capital Wind Farm,’ will come up in New South Wales, approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Canberra. The contract includes full turnkey delivery, including a 330 kV electrical substation and power line works, and is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2009.

The second contract, a repeat from AGL Energy, calls for the delivery of 34 units of Suzlon’s S88 turbines, translating to 71.4 MW of capacity.

The AGL plant was inagurated by the Premier Mike Rann on 13th June, 2008. This is a company to watch in this sphere.

My friend, Richard Surace, pointed me to a marketing tip about being transparent. The example being of Timberland and its Green Index.

By checking out Timberland, what interested be was their integrated CSR strategy.

They call this the 4 pillar strategy revolving around energy, products, workplaces and service. A lot of companies comes out with initiatives but very few are transparent. This is where Timberland scores in my book.

This is best captured by their use of the nutritional label on their footwear.

But when a boot is made of recyclable and renewable materials, bound by water-based adhesives, manufactured with energy generated by wind and sun, transported by green freight and sold in 100% recyclable packaging distinguished by an industry first nutritional label …you’ll understand a bit about what we strive for as an enterprise.

Timberland uses Just Means to participate in a ongoing dialog with their stakeholders. Good stuff.

People are the key. And the best way to learn more and make life interesting is to meet more people.  And what better way to do that than to have a regular place to chill out, drink and discuss.

And in the green area, there is something called Green Drinks managed by Edwin at Biothinking. Green Drinks is an organic, self-organising network running in 380 cities worldwide.

Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney have their version of Green Drinks and Adelaide lacked this. Well, not anymore.

I am pleased to announce the launch of Adelaide Green Drinks. This has solely come about from my interest to meet people in this field. Frustrated with not finding any networking event, I decided to start one.

This will be a monthly meeting on the second Tuesday of every month starting July ‘08. The venue is being decided but it will be in a easily accessible pub in the CBD. John O’Brien from Australian Cleantech is helping me getting started and his wife Kate is arranging the venue. Thanks Kate and John.

The details are on the Green Drinks website’s Adelaide section. For those interested, there is a Facebook group where you can join, discuss anything or use all the nice facebook features. For those on LinkedIn or MySpace, the groups are coming there too.

I will provide more updates as and when we decide on the venue.

First meeting: 8th July ‘08.

Venue: TBA

Regular meetings : Second Tuesday of the month.

Contact Details: suhit.anantula [at] worldisgreen.com

For now, please pass this on to people you know in Adelaide or who are visiting Adelaide.

Super Cheap Autos today announced the purchase of two bicycle retail chains for a combined $7.4 million, just a week after travel specialist Flight Centre announced the purchase of a bicycle brand and talks over a possible joint venture with the 99Bikes retail chain.

So what could be attracting the interest of two companies involved in the transport industry heavily dependent on fossil fuels?

The answer, according to Super Cheap Auto CEO Peter Birtles, is soaring energy costs and environmental concerns. Birtles says the bike retail and accessories market is worth around $1 billion a year, but is a highly fragmented market.
Bike sales grew by nearly 20 per cent last year and further growth is expected because of those environmental concerns, the rising cost of fuel and expected government investment in bike paths and the like.

A very forward thinking management at these companies. More from Business Spectator.

Some sensible words from Gottliebsen.

The green movement in Australia has a deep hatred of nuclear technology. They are not wrong in pointing to the hazards of nuclear energy, but unfortunately carbon is a thousand times worse than any risks on the nuclear horizon. In addition the cost of building nuclear power stations has fallen dramatically. Nevertheless, it is also vitally important that we foster wind, solar and other renewables, plus clean coal. The world will need all these technologies if it is to reduce carbon emissions by the huge amounts scientists are demanding without going into a deep depression.

But the world needs to make sure that nuclear waste is properly stored and cannot be converted to nuclear weapons. Australia is unique in the world in being able to supply nuclear fuel from its vast reserves of uranium and then store the waste in stable remote regions such Martin Ferguson’s proposed nuclear fuel dump in the Northern Territory.

An interesting talk with one of the biggest venture capitalist in the clean tech area.

Khosla talks about why he does not pursue the hot markets and the concept of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in the technology world.

From the Alt Energy Stocks Blog:

Firstly, on May 30, the Montreal Exchange, a derivatives exchange, announced that it was launching an emissions trading market for CO2. The Montreal Exchange is now a unit of the TSX Group (TSXPF.PK or X.TO), the firm that runs all of Canada’s exchanges.

The second announcement came last week, when the premiers of Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s two largest provinces and the heart of its industrial base, announced that they were moving ahead with a cap-and-trade scheme to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Together, these two jurisdictions form North America’s fourth largest economy, so needless to say this is a market with some potential.