greenpowerZONE Archive of engeniusBLOG
Mar 10, 2008 at 00:00
Greetings from Washington, DC., home of the nation’s newest major league baseball team, some of the ugliest government architecture outside the Soviet Union, and the site of the 2008 Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC). Although the calendar is now littered with alternative energy conferences, WIREC is perhaps the most unique because it brings together several unlikely communities, each of which holds important pieces of the puzzle that will enable us to get a handle on our civilization’s nasty carbon habit without killing the economy (or ourselves) in the process. Although WIREC’s main mission was originally conceived as a conference for policy makers at the state and national level, it’s expanded to become one of the few places... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Mar 03, 2008 at 00:00
You can’t open a business magazine these days without bumping into an article where some CEO is waxing poetic about Sustainability or The triple Bottom Line – a far cry from four years ago when I first started thinking about an award that acknowledged environmental leadership within the tech community. Back then, there were only a handful of folks sticking their necks out trying to preach the gospel of sustainable technology and green capitalism, with darned few takers in the mainstream economy. Things have certainly changed since Pasquale Pistorio, STMicroelectronics’ former CEO, received our first Green Hero award, and there’s now so many folks doing good work it’s getting hard to choose a winner. That’s why I’m asking our readers to suggest their own favorites for this year’s award. But before you drop your suggestions onto our blog, it m... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Dec 10, 2007 at 00:00
Back when I wrote my first article on Green PC design for IEEE Computer back in 1998, the idea that your average desktop box would incorporate things like a high-efficiency power supply, a recyclable case, a Pb-free mother board and features that extended its useful service life seemed close to science fiction. It’s taken nearly a decade for these basic concepts to become common wisdom within the chaotic, penny-pinching computer industry but the results are impressive. Although only a relatively small portion of the millions of PCs produced this year are truly Green, nearly all of them meet basic international standards for hazardous waste reduction (RoHS) and energy efficiency ( EnergyStar in North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, and Click Here to Read More >>Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Nov 12, 2007 at 00:00
The eco-design competitions that have popped up like mushrooms after a rain are an exciting sign that our industry has stepped up to the challenge of creating the tools we’ll need to start building a future we can be proud of. For better or worse, these competitions also raise lots of the same questions about how to actually measure a product’s EQ (environmental quotient) that we’re starting to face as the industry begins to factor sustainability into its bottom line. At this early stage, not even the questions are fully-defined, but my recent experiences with several contests illustrate the sorts of issues we’ll all be dealing with in the not-too-distant future. The simplest eco-topics to deal with are those involving energy. Whether it’s energy conservation or renewable energy technologies, comparing watts in versus watts out makes for a well-defined way to measure a design's performance and overall goodness. When you add in a few other factor... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Oct 08, 2007 at 00:00
Greetings from Long Beach California, home of the Queen Mary, some of the most attractively-camouflaged offshore oil rigs in the world, and the Solar Power 2007 conference. Beside the record crowd of over 11,000 hard-core solar types, this year’s event should be remembered as the last year that the Great Silicon Shortage of 2005 was the limiting factor in an industry facing a seemingly unlimited demand for its products. With silicon supplies about to ease, all players in the solar-electric market are going to be adjusting to some dramatically different economic realities that will re-shape the technology and the folks that make it.
It will be sometime in mid-2008, w... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Aug 20, 2007 at 00:00
When I was a kid I used to love playing in my eccentric Uncle Martin’s basement which was stacked high with lots of tools, gadgets, and technology from the early 1900s. I still smile every time I remember the day he helped me fire up a 1920s-vintage carbon arc light which he’d salvaged out of a theater -- its white-hot glare lit up the basement brighter than daylight. Perhaps some day we’ll have the same nostalgic feelings about the inefficient light bulbs in our homes and the mercury and sodium lamps that light most of our streets today. If the doings in Raleigh, North Carolina and Toronto, Ontario are any indicator, that day may be arriving sooner than expected.
Toronto and Raleigh are first two cities to commit to modernizing their lighting technologies in partnership with LEDCity, a community o... -- Click Here to Read More >>Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Jun 18, 2007 at 00:00
Even after working with him for more than a decade, my colleague, Paul, is always surprising me with one thing or another. Last week I was doing research for a story about the environmental issues involved with compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology when he beat me to the punch with his editorial. He also went a bit further and pointed out the less-than-rational legislation that's driving their adoption before those problems can be addressed. While I might disagree with Paul about whether or not CFLs are quite the toxic threat that he feels they are, I think his analysis of the legislation that will virtually ban incandescent bulbs in Canada by 2012 is spot-on. More importantly, it's another example of well-intended environmental laws creating as many problems as they... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Apr 23, 2007 at 00:00
Last week I finally managed to track down a minor but annoying mystery involving a slowly-rising electric bill that's haunted my household for the past year or so. The 15% - 20% bump in the overall electricity use we'd seen was especially frustrating since I've been slowly upgrading most of the appliances, light fixtures and infrastructure in our suburban New Jersey ranch home as much I could, without arousing too many complaints from my wife -- or the neighbors. In the end, finding that slow leak took a bit of sleuthing, some persistence, and a bit of dumb luck.
The process of greening our home has been a slow but steady one, paced in equal parts by the limits of our free time and money. Instead of immediately putting solar panels up (an illogical place to start in any case), all the work we've done so far has been unglamorous and nearly invisible, but should have made a significant dent in our bill. Of course nearly all of the lights which that we use more than a couple ho... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Apr 16, 2007 at 00:00
I saw lots of hints that green power issues are on the minds of the industry's early adopters when I attended the Embedded Systems Conference where former Vice President Al Gore challenged the engineers attending his keynote with developing the tools to build a greener future. Mr Gore's inspirational talk -- and flashy demos, like the teardown of a Toyota Prius on the show floor -- are great ways to raise the average engineer's awareness about their potential role in designing more energy-efficient products; but it won't amount to anything without some solid follow-up.
That's why I'd like to challenge my colleagues David, Rich, Patrick, and the rest of the ESC team to move beyond the sizzle and start to give engineers some of the tools they'll need to build the energy-efficient technologies t... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Mar 05, 2007 at 00:00
Management By Photo-Op: George Bush's Carney-Style Energy Policy
Why is our president playing a shell game with the nation's energy R&D budget?
by Lee H. Goldberg
Trading in his flight suit for a lab coat last week, President Bush staged his latest photo-op at Novozymes North America, the North Carolina-based subsidiary of a Danish technology company involved in cellulosic ethanol development. This public relations exercise touting his newfound interest in renewable energy technologies reminds me of a carnival shell game. You remember how that works? All you have to do to win that big doll is to figure out which of the three shells the guy with the straw hat is hiding the pea under -- but somehow that pea is never where you think it is. Much as the carnival barker's clever légère de main keeps you from figuring out where the pea is, Mr. Bush is using photo-ops and mislead... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Dec 04, 2006 at 00:00
It's been about a year and a half since one of our readers offered up a very insightful reality check to my overly-optimistic editorial on the future of solid-state lighting (Blinded by the Light, February 2005) which put the commercial availability of ac-LED room lights just over the horizon. Back then, he pointed out several technical issues that he believed would likely delay the arrival of solid-state area lighting for the masses by at least a couple of years - a prediction that apparently was quite accurate. But with the predicted delays nearly past, and the chatter I'm picking up from my usual sources (and a few kind readers), it looks like we may start to see the first practical ac-LEDs hitting the market some time in 2007.
The most public indicator that ac-LEDs may be hitting the market in a big way is Seoul Semicond... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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May 02, 2005 at 00:00
One of the best parts of being on EN-Genius Network's editorial team is the mail I get from readers. Whether you agree or disagree with me, thank me for my insights or call my attention to a stupid oversight, it's great to hear from you. Besides the satisfaction of knowing that there's somebody besides my Mom reading my articles, your letters are one of the best QC mechanisms for ensuring the stuff I publish meets your tough standards. I've also found that I always learn things from the people who are involved with the technologies. Take for example a recent letter from a reader in response to my Editorial on the emerging LED lighting industry. His letter takes me to task for some sloppy reporting on what I thought was a "breakthrough" in the field.
I've posted his letter below (name withheld for his privacy) along with my response, in hopes that ou... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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Feb 21, 2005 at 00:00
The quick note on the first ac-powered LEDs that Dave Bell slipped into our green-powerZONE's news area last week may be the harbinger of a very exciting new era for solid state lighting. Because they eliminate the cost of a power supply, the direct-ac devices should greatly accelerate the market acceptance of high-brightness LED (HBLED) lamps, ceiling fixtures, and other products that can light your home or office with 75 - 80% less electricity and operate for 50,000 - 100,000 hours.
Seoul Semiconductor's claims to be the first ac-driven LEDs may be a bit exaggerated since I've seen (and reviewed) direct-ac LED Christmas lights, but this is the first time a company has taken aim at the area lighting market. I'm surprised I didn't see much mention of this in the rest of the we... -- Click Here to Read More >> Posted in greenpowerZONE
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