We have been  reading postings and briefings on all sorts of touch pads and e-Reader recently, be it the Amazon Kindle or much disputed Apple’s iPad. But apart from usability and innovation involved in developing the product one feature that inspired me to write this post is  its long term affect on existing Carbon Di Oxide emissions when adopted and accepted globally.

I still wonder if in a hypothetical scenario when every book and publication is digitized into an e-book and every reader only uses his gadgets to read the digital content instead of having a printed version on a paper. Will this be a much Greener situation to one we have right now? There are  views and opinions prevalent in media which are more of equivocal nature. E-readers aren’t typically marketed as environmentally sound, but their environmental impact is now becoming a topic of discussion and research.

Point of Views : Expert’s View on e-Readers

At least Don Carli doesn’t thinks so, according to him e-Readers aren’t Greener than print (which is a common view held by consumers who don’t know the backstory of evolution of an e-Reader ). Actually few days back I had an opportunity to read an interview with Don Carli on News Media Innovation, Convergence and Sustainability.

As far as print media is concerned it could do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener. Computers, eReaders and cell phones all have a cost of operation, cost of manufacturing and cost of disposal. When Compared directly to the book, a Kindle produces 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide compared to 7.46 kilograms for a book.

Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals including gold, silver and palladium as well as extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. To function, digital devices require a constant flow of electrons that predominately come from the combustion of coal, and at the end of their all-too-short useful lives electronics have become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man. Until recently there was little if any voluntary disclosure of the lifecycle “backstory” of digital media.

Point of Views : CleanTech Research based on Scientific Evidences.

Another interesting survey report from CleanTech Group which published the report based on life cycle analysis of a Kindle e-Reader. The research and media company drew on existing studies to do a lifecycle analysis and found that the carbon emissions from electronic books are far lower than traditional book publishing.

As reported  in the analysis, “The roughly 168 kg of CO2 produced throughout the Kindle’s lifecycle is a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle DX. Less-frequent readers attracted by decreasing prices still can break even at 22.5 books over the life of the device,”.

Finding a conclusion to this article seems difficult:

eReaders are capturing media attention and there appears to be significant latent demand for gadgets that can replace printed media, but mainstream adoption still remains years away. E-reader device sales and eReader content revenues are still rounding error in relation to print media revenues. In a survey of attendees at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair 40% predicted digital book content sales would overtake traditional printed book sales by 2018, but over 30% said digital content would never surpass traditional books sales, and 66% said they expect traditional books to dominate the market for the next decade.

With universities like Princeton and six others already testing the technology in a pilot, I hope e-Readers will make their way to schools and workplaces  replacing traditional paper books. Ultimately, it comes down to how an e-reader is used. If a person continues to buy books and print periodicals and doesn’t recycle the product, the environmental impact could potentially be negative.

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This post is partially motivated by my colleague(I hope he is not reading this) who spent all his Christmas and New year Vacations at home with his PC still running next to my desk. I am amazed to calculate how much electricity he just wasted. Well, you wouldn’t leave your television ON for all day while you are at the office, and yet, across the world, millions of work PCs are left on all night—wasting energy, costing owners millions in utility costs, and contributing to global climate change.

Generating the electricity needed to power those computers requires hundreds of power plants that produce billions of tons of CO2 emissions. Many of those machines sit idle for 12 to 16 hours per day, burning electricity, but not doing any work, because businesses habitually leave their computers running overnight.So how much does this one click matters? Here is an awesome report published by Harris Interactive some time back.

Some Numbers Worth Understanding

A mid-sized company with nearly 10000 PCs,  wastes more than $165,000 a year in electricity costs for computers that have been left on overnight. By turning these computers off, an employer can keep more than 1,381 tons of carbon dioxide (C02) out of the atmosphere.  Across the nation(read USA), this adds up to more than $1.72 billion dollars and almost 15 million tons of CO2 . When calculated using EPA’s  Green House Calculator the emitted Carbon is equivalent to  Annual CO2 emissions of  4  coal fired power plants.

As of April 2007,  145,800,000 Americans have full-time jobs. 72 percent of all employed adults regularly use a PC for work purposes at their jobs. Combining these findings suggests that more than 104 million workers reach the end of the work day with a PC to shut off—or not to. Next most important things is to analyse the reason for this type of behavior from the office goers.

Workers Attitudes behind this Wastage:

In an enterprise like situation, when asked whose responsibility it should be to save energy in the workplace, 28 percent of PC users said it should be down to management or the IT department. More than half (53 percent) said they were not at all concerned about their companies’ carbon footprints, indicating that effecting change in “shut down” practices at the behavioral level might yield disappointing results.

Making Business Out of IT:

Almost all the industries (be it mid or large sized) are facing similar challenges of harnessing maximum output with minimum power and infrastructural expenditures. And with global recession the idea of Cost cuttings also include supervised use of Power and Infrastructures in the enterprises and commercial centers. No  company likes to waste money. On the surface, the financial impact of 24-hour computer power consumption may seem insignificant compared to traditional concerns such as payroll, supply, and rent—but the waste is actually substantial. A few important findings from enterprise point of view :

• Energy costs—typically 10 percent of the corporate technology budget—could rise to as much as 50 percent in the next few years.
• If not exaggerating, a good  Power management software can reduce a PC’s power consumption by 80 percent, allowing companies to save between $25 – $75 per desktop PC.
• Turning off PCs, with their heat-intensive power supplies, will also reduce the load on air conditioning equipment, leading to even more energy savings.

If you are working in/for an enterprise, its your responsibility to turn off/hibernate  your PC when you are not working. On the funnier side, Gary Hird, IT strategy manager at UK retailer, John Lewis, says “I joined the company in 1989 and one of the first things I noticed was that every light switch had a sticker next to it, reading ‘switch off, you’re burning my bonus” .

But on a Serious Note “It takes between 60 and 300 trees to absorb the yearly CO2 emissions generated by a single PC left on 24 hours a day. That means it would take between 1.24 and 6.24 billion trees to absorb the emissions caused by the nation’s office computers that are never shut down.”

Take one step towards being Green, try to hibernate the PC whenever possible.

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The European Commission’s  Joint Research Centre has developed a high resolution digital view of man-made green house gas (GHG) emissions for any 10 km x 10 km area in the world. Scientists from the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) have made it possible to visualize the distribution of GHG emissions all over the world at local level through an add-on layer to Google Earth™.

This application brings environmental information closer to the world’s citizens. By simply entering a city name, the amount of greenhouse gases released since 1970 can be visualized. In addition, the main sources of GHG emissions in the year 2005 can be identified: industries (fuel combustion, process and waste emissions in energy and manufacturing industries); transport (road, rail, shipping); residential fuel combustion and waste handling; and agriculture.

As in my last post Jeremy pointed out  “the environmental footprint of their premises, logistics and supply chain, paper and ink consumption, utility consumptions (water, electricity,…), transportation and travels, waste, etc. must also be a point of concern”. Using this application we can definitely get a better view to the complete picture.

How to Use the Application:

• Install Google Earth

• Downloaded EDGAR GHG viewer 2005

Once you have installed Google Earth, install EDGAR GHG viewer and restart the application. Its just a matter of some clicks. I was really excited to see it for the first time. I am attaching a few snapshots that I took today morning. Try it yourself, you will understand how grave the scene is atleast in Europe, China, India  and USA.

Snapshot 1 – US of A.                                                           Snapshot 2 – Europe and Middle East with Africa

Snapshot 3 : Asia.

Representations : The data presented here covers carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorcarbons (HFCs), perfluorcarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In order to compare different greenhouse gas emissions the emissions of individual gases have to be converted into CO2-equivalents. The Green Areas of Map has 0.00 -0.10 G equivalent of CO2 and Black/Blue spots are worst affected areas with or more 250 G equivalent of CO2 .

Personally, I hope this modeled simulation of World Wide GHG emissions will help a lot of people involved in Carbon Foot printing or planning to join the Green movement world wide. Let me know your ideas and reviews about this. The data sets are also available for download (free ) at the link.

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“For those new to Tech IT Easy who could obviously not remember the initial announcement, Anand Kishore Raju is a new blogger on Tech IT Easy, who will focus on providing you with analyses of greening the internet, carbon footprints, energy and power figures of the internet and web2.0. Anand, the floor is now yours…”

The debate on climate change has moved beyond an argument about whether it is happening or not, to a discussion about what can be done to tackle its root causes. Pollution and energy savings are keywords that are becoming more and more of interest to people and to governments across the globe, and the research community is also becoming more sensible towards these topics.

McKinsey & Co. recently reported that the world’s 44 Million servers* consume about 0.5 percent of total electricity productions across the globe and emits about 80 megatons of Carbon Dioxide a year, which is nearly the emissions of entire countries like Argentina or the Netherlands (Data needs an Update ).

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The coming weeks, I’ll be pretty busy with a business development project in the technology sector. As usual, I cannot discuss it in depth (ok, it’s Fight Club, we bash each other half to death every week and can’t talk about it), but I want to discuss some stumbling blocks that we’re sure to be hitting. To give you an idea, some of the questions are now:

• Patents and their limitations: while we have filed for a number already, the issues are whether there is prior art and how to deal with it, as well as whether patents are really enough protection against competitors. Since, I’ve attended a pretty interesting New Venture seminar last week on IP, I think that will be my next post.
• The usefulness of market research: I breached this topic before already, but I don’t believe in researching innovations that consumers cannot touch yet, and will instead focus on expert-input, I think, as well as getting a testable prototype ready as soon as possible (we’ll be looking for subjects!). I hope to have something more to write about it soon.
• Pricing strategy: this is really exciting! I’m reading the excellent book “The strategy and tactics of pricing” and am in the position to apply some of it’s lessons now. Thoughts about it to follow on Tech IT Easy soon, but to give you an idea, it’s about the battle between costs, what the competition charges, and what your customers want to pay for your product.
• Dealing with bureaucracy: Since, we’re going to be applying to an incubator, it might be interesting to see how that process goes.

In other, equally important news:

• Verteego: You may have noticed a new badge on our site. It’s the Verteego sustainability badge, which links to a report analysing our weblog. I’ll be trying to increase our grade a little there/here and will write about my impressions. I didn’t even know that I can take leave for pregnancy-reasons, wow!
• Public transport in the Netherlands: I don’t know how it is in your country, but we’re doing exciting RFID-related stuff here. Starting February, we’ll be going through the transition of going from a stamp to a beep, and I’ll write a little about my impressions here.

That’s all I can predict for now, and I hope to make it all a reality soon! Until the next time, on Tech IT Easy!

Vincent

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Premise: A while ago, Fred Wilson, a (possibly biased) tech-investor, wrote that he was bullish on the tech-industry. Recently, the New York Times reports that e-commerce is up because people want to travel less (fuel costs). And previous stories reported on the migration of advertising revenues from traditional media to online media.

A note: I don’t know that there will be a recession. I know that the real-estate bust in the US is a pretty big deal, and that banks from Europe and Asia have been pretty heavily invested in that supposed goldmine. And any fall-out in the US, i.e. banks shutting down or otherwise, will likely have global repercussions on the banking-sector, and affect other industries also.

With that out of the way, three problems/phenomena I associate with these times are:

• A lack of accountability in investments (e.g. currently real estate and previously startups & Enron), also accompanied by emotions like fear & greed.
• Rising input-costs (the market should normally adjust for that, but the explosive growth in demand from emerging countries + the lack of an alternative for, in this case, fuel, make this a pretty big uncertainty)
• Changing paradigms, such as the rise of webware, the (expected) fall of hardware-prices, the possible fall of software-sales, the continuing displacement of brick & mortar business models, businesses being forced to go & think green, and much, much more.

So, there’s probably a few more symptoms (throw them out in the comments!), but it seems to me that the internet is pretty well placed to deal with some of these problems.

Let’s start with accountability. The strength of the web is that everything on it is digital and, in theory, nearly (*) everything can be measured (*: I am quite sceptical about the measurability of video & audio, though arguable the serious data is still in text). Added to this, there are technology-shifts, like digital television, mobile computing, and E-Ink, which make it easier to have a wider reach as a data-gatherer, not to mention that business are increasingly placing their data online, again facilitating data-exchange in partnerships. This should make it easier for businesses to base their expense on actual data, the same for investors and advertisers. Together with the consequences of the last internet-bust, I think that everyone is pretty careful to base their decisions on information, not hopes and dreams (well, I’m still sceptical about Twitter).

Next, rising input prices. Having blogged on the topic of food and retail for about a year, I’ve obviously had to follow this trend/reality quite a bit. The NYTimes heading I linked to above summarises my feelings quite well, customers are looking at the opportunity cost of fuel (as well as the cost of being green) and alternatives like e-commerce may seem much more attractive. In the long-term, people like James Howard Kunstler are calling for more and more “locality,” i.e. that people will be willing to migrate less for work and, I guess, shopping, which opens up opportunities for e-commerce and ways of working across a distance.

Finally (?), changing paradigms. Well, whatever the new world looks like, a pretty warm place is reserved for the web. Web-apps and -services are maturing, offering more and better features, and providing individuals and businesses with a comfortable ecosystem to operate in. The OLPC, the Asus EEE, and other cheaper systems (when Dell comes in, it will be mass), may be less powerful, but they will be optimised to use the web most of all. Societally, it may eventually become the logical choice for the mainstream to spend less than $500 for a laptop, in which case hardware-makers and, possibly, software-makers will suffer. But the web won’t. Similarly, while I don’t yet see brick & mortar disappearing, it is clear that eventually 99% of B&M businesses will have to have an online presence. About the world going green, I can’t sell everything, perhaps someone else can give the answer to that.

Is the internet recession-proof? My guess is as good as the next guy. But, more efficient use of computing, datamining, search, advertising, e-commerce, and logistics are all technologies I am extremely bullish on these coming years.

What do you think?

Vincent

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Hello again, Vincent here.

Let’s face it, even with nature knocking on our door, some accountant will still ask what this whole thing is going to cost. Science, facts, morality… it’s not enough. I compare it to smoking; even though everyone knows smoking kills, it took pressure—social, governmental, commercial—for people to quit. And the same applies to businesses going green.

Without further ado, here’s five pressures that make the business-case for companies to change.

1. Governmental pressure – let’s ignore for a fact that government is the one keeping its finger on the pulse of scientific research, social, business, and technological trends. But what is hard to ignore is that the government is actively pushing businesses to change, either by punishing the wrong-doers, by subsidising clean practices and technologies, or by providing new infrastructures around these new rules, allowing for businesses to dispose of their waste in better ways and use alternative, cleaner energy-sources.

2. Consumer pressure – like with smoking, not all consumers have been following the new green “religion” quite as passionately. That said, there are the early adopters, the geeks, the pressure-groups, that are insisting on businesses changing their ways. And those businesses are themselves customers to their suppliers and are doing the same thing to them.

3. Business climate pressure – apart from the above, two things will strongly pressure businesses to change: costs and competition. The rising cost of fuel, electricity, and water, etc., as well as the cost of disposing their waste, is a good incentive to implement technologies that help conserve energy and produce less waste. Similarly, as competition will do the same, businesses are forced to respond.

4. Knowledge-carriers – with the amount of scientific research being produced everyday, it was only a matter of time before methodologies would be developed to help businesses become greener. Since this is still a specialised activity, both commercial parties (consultants) and governmental institutions are there to advise companies on how to change.

5. New technologies – new inventions are constantly being brought to the market, that help businesses conserve energy or get it from alternative sources. Think: technology to monitor and regulate energy-use, water-conserving toilets, more efficient lights, green roofs, etc.

Anything I missed?

In a way, you can’t blame businesses for resisting. There have been lot’s of change-initiatives these last decades—from ERP to joint ventures—which have produced questionable, if not disastrous results. For change to happen, it must be driven by strategy first, because doing business is like doing war. There is a high price for failure and no one will be congratulating the loser.

But what is certain, is that eventually there will be no more choice. Those that are slow to react will do so at the cost of an unsympathetic government, of the competition racing ahead, and of customers dropping their support.

This article is mirror-posted on my blog.

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