+ Plug into the Smart Grid

Last month, Google hosted a panel discussion at their DC Office regarding the future of smart grid technology. Panelists from Google, their partner GE, utilities, and the government discussed how best to utilize the $11 billion (part of the $83 billion of the stimulus allocated to clean technologies) set aside for modernizing our electric grid. The panel also answered questions from the public submitted online. You can watch the entire discussion here.

“What does a world with smart power look like? As Washington develops the road map for a bigger, smarter electricity grid, how can we ensure that it provides every household in America with real-time energy information enables the scale up of hundreds of thousands of megawatts of clean renewable power and supports millions of plug-in cars and trucks?”

Part I: Envisioning smart power
Energy tools and technologies to empower people with information and choice

• Moderator: Bob Gilligan, GE
• Adrian Tuck, CEO, Tendril
• Ron Binz, Chairman, Colorado Public Utilities Commission
• Jeff Renaud, Director, Ecomagination, GE
• Ed Lu, Advanced Projects, Google
• Kelly Speakes-Backman, Principal, RE+GENeration Consultants LLC
• George Bjelovuk, Managing Director, American Electric Power

Part II: Accelerating the energy revolution
State and federal policies to drive smart power

• Moderator: Dan Reicher, Google
• Fred Butler, President, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
• John Podesta, President, Center for American Progress (invited)
• Andy Karsner, Former Ass. Sec. for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
• Chris Miller, Office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

On a related note, GE has rolled out an interactive site to help visualize the impact of smart grid implementation. If you have a webcam and access to a printer, you can take advantage of the “augmented reality” portion of the site and see the Smart Grid “come to life in your hands”.

+ Rethinking the Public Drinking Fountain

A 2007 article from Fast Company points out that North Americans spent $15 billion on bottled water. That's not only a lot of petrol to make the plastic, but also requires mountains of energy to transport the more than one billion bottles around the country every week. And on top of that, over 95% of bottles made in 2005 were single serving sized, which has one of the lowest recycling rates of other forms of plastic packaging.

There's a major, and costly, irony with the perception and reality of bottled water. Most people drink it because they think it's healthier than "free" tap water, when the reality is 24 percent of bottled water in 2005 was just filtered tap water packaged by Coke or Pepsi. Most people don't know that federal standards for tap water is higher than bottled, so in some cases it's not even cleaner.

And when you add in the economic strain of bottled, tap becomes much more attractive. A person keeping to the eight glasses a day would spend $2500 a year if they bought Aquafina, and upwards of $10,000 if you're springing for FIJI. The cost of the same amount of tap water is roughly $1.

Considering all that, it seems like a no brainer to stop hitting the bottle, and the people at triplepundit.com have a few interesting ideas about how to overcome the perception problem with the public watering hole.

What could be done to change this? What if the access point was moved away from the bathroom at the sake of being near plumbing and brought closer to a communal area? What if instead of being painting a dismal shade of beige it was modern like an Eames chair or designed by a Philippe Stark-esque type of icon? Perhaps these students could be educated to drink from the water fountain and making the fountain attractive and fashionable could enforce their behavior changes. At the very least, let’s make it a little easier to fill [personal bottles] rather than drink directly from the fountain.

An Eames-style iconic water fountain? Sign me up! Their article highlights this as part of a project and we can't wait to see the results.

+ New Products Visualize Home Energy Use

About a year ago, we created our Current State concept to visualize home energy use. Since then we've seen a growing interest in the subject and there are two interesting articles about products that make this concept more of a reality.

Make created Tweet-a-watt, an open source piece of hardware that posts your data to Twitter. Tweet-a-watt captures and documents energy use but takes the idea a step further, by letting your friends and followers also track your energy use. In theory, this could create competition among neighbors or family members to be the most responsible energy users. Tweet-a-watt is an entry to Core77's Greener Gadgets competition, so if you like it let them know!

Appliance Design also continues to be a great resource for us. Electronics: Powerline Potential discusses an affordable technology called PLC (powerline communications). According to the article, PLC allows devices to communicate through our electrical lines, so it's an existing, low-cost technology that we're beginning to use in a new way: precise and efficient energy usage for homes and buildings.

+ Edward Norton's $9 billion green housing project

I'll admit that I'm a pretty big fan of celebrity gossip, so I was pretty surprised to come across this piece about Edward Norton on Fast Company:

Edward Norton, the two-time Oscar nominee, stood at the podium at the Hilton Washington this past May and tried to be humble. The actor was in the capital to present a major civil rights award to someone he knew well -- his grandmother. It was gearing up to be a nice moment. "I work in a profession," he told the crowd of social workers, lawyers, and community organizers, "that gets a totally disproportionate amount of attention relative to its true contribution to our culture."
...
Norton's appearance wasn't merely a cameo, a movie-star drive-by. On the contrary, he has been an active participant in Enterprise since he was a kid. His first job after college was an analyst spot there; he sits on the board and has donated more than $1 million. What's more, he has played a key role in encouraging Enterprise to embrace green building -- a shift that has enabled the business to keep moving despite the housing crisis and mortgage meltdown. In fact, Enterprise is arguably the one bright light in an industry dominated by excess and foolishness. Its model offers clues to how we all might climb out of our real-estate mess.

It's always great to see people like Norton, Brad Pitt, and Oprah acknowledge and use their profile for a meaningful cause like this. It's also a good reminder that you can't judge a book by its cover!

Read the full piece here

+ Sony Ericsson GreenHeart

We've heard lots about phone recycling and how takeback programs are a key method for closing the loop on business's product cycles. We even did our own take on it, the LINC Lifecycle Phone.

Sony Ericsson seems very close to making this concept a reality with the GreenHeart. The phone features bioplastics, a 3.5mW zero charger, and eco-friendly packaging. According to many blogs, it was said to be a concept. But Appliance Design recently reported that 500 GreenHeart collection points are already in operation in 7 countries, including the U.S. Has anyone visited one of these collection points yet?

+ Roofray Solar Calculator

What's your solar potential? RoofRay locates and calculates the solar potential of your roof. The site allows you to estimate your ROI, compare various array sizes, see other RoofRays in your neighborhood, and includes a section on how photovoltaic cells work.

This is a smart idea, because even though we know solar energy is a generally good thing, installing a solar panel on top of your roof can feel like a major project. RoofRay's site helps it to become a more simple and accessible investment.

+ Q&A: GreenRep.org Founder Danny Clayton

Transworld Biz has a great interview with Danny Clayton, the brains behind some exciting green initiatives in the action sports industry (one of my personal favorite topics):

Based in Johnson, Vermont, GreenRep.org was launched in September 2008 by Danny Clayton, a veteran sales representative with more than 20 years experience in the industry. The company, which donates five percent of all profits to green organizations and educational sources, was created with a mission to sell green products and advance green initiatives in the surf, skate, snow and outdoor industries.

Clayton got started with his career as a rep in 1987 when his uncle, veteran O’Neill rep Gary Clayton, got him involved as a sub-rep. More than two decades later, Clayton has developed his own company based solely on his two passions, recycling and the outdoors, and doing what he says he was cut-out for: being on the road.

Read the full article here