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Written by Megan Treacy on 21/10/09
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Microsoft announced on its blog recently that Seattle City Light will be the first utility to offer customers the ability to monitor their energy consumption with the Hohm application. Customers who sign up for the service will receive automatic data feeds on their energy use through the online software. All other users of the software can still enter their energy information manually.
Hohm's major competitor, Google's PowerMeter, has been partnered with a handful of utilities for a few months now, but recently, Google made their software available to users of the TED 3000 devices, allowing customers to skip their utility and get their energy use information directly.
As this is Microsoft's first full-fledged partnership for the application, it will be interesting to see if they answer Google's move and come out with their own gadget venture.
Hohm, from first impressions, appears to be a much slicker and comprehensive software than PowerMeter. I'm excited to see how it performs when linked with its first utility.
via Microsoft Environment Blog
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Here at EcoGeek we write about all the various and powerful ways in which our brains are saving our planet. Enjoy! |
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Written by Megan Treacy on 14/05/10
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China's telecom sector released a report this week claiming that it had slashed CO2 emissions by 48.5 million tons in 2008 by increasing telecommuting, a greater reliance on electronic data storage and more efficient logistics. This savings is comparable to the amount of emissions Sweden's entire economy is responsible for each year.
The report came from the WWF and China Mobile who had Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications carry out the study. The report says the emissions savings came from all of the transportation, freight and paper and material production that was avoided by digitizing the sector.
The study also concluded that future increases in telecommuting could save up to 340 million tons of emissions in China by 2020. Even better potential is seen in virtual meetings over air travel, which could save 623 million tons of emissions by 2030.
The report is slightly controversial because the growing energy demand of data centers is increasing emissions, but the report says that those increases are more than offset by the overall emissions savings.
via Guardian
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Written by Megan Treacy on 26/04/10
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Indonesia's 17,000 islands are home to hundreds of volcanoes and approximately 40 percent of the earth's geothermal energy potential and the nation's government is ready to harness that hot, clean energy.
The country has set a goal of bringing online 4GW of geothermal capacity by 2014, which will almost quadruple the current capacity of 1,189 MW. If you think that sounds ambitious, you're right. It generally takes three to five years just to complete field exploration and then another three years to actually build a geothermal plant.
And then there's the cost of the project -- $12 billion to be exact. The country is looking to the World Bank, private investors and developed countries like Japan and the U.S. for help raising the money. But once the plants are up and running, they're basically tapping into endless, clean energy with little overhead required.
Plus, this plan will go a long way towards reaching the Indonesian president's goals of cutting emissions to 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and adding 10GW of clean energy capacity by 2014.
via AFP
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Here at EcoGeek we write about all the various and powerful ways in which our brains are saving our planet. Enjoy! |
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Written by Philip Proefrock on 03/06/10
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Ending use of petroleum will mean not only ending its use as a fuel, but also finding alternatives for the numerous materials that use petrochemicals in their production. Plastics are perhaps the most obvious item on the list, but even electronic circuit boards are candidates for production with biomaterials.
University of Delaware materials scientists have developed circuit boards made from chicken feathers and soybean oil, instead of glass and petrochemicals. "The biobased materials are derived from renewable plant and animal feedstock, which use carbon dioxide from the air and help minimize global warming, as compared to petroleum feedstock," according to Dr. Richard Wool, director of the Affordable Composites from Renewable Sources (ACRES) program at the University of Delaware.
In addition to reducing petroleum use, the circuit boards produced using chicken feather keratin have a lower dielectric potential to prevent "electron rubbernecking" and increase circuit speed. There is no indication of this being commercialized as yet. But feather based circuit boards would also help to deal with the waste disposal problem of nearly 3 billion pounds of chicken feathers annually in the US.
via: Transmaterial
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