Green Wombat

IBM Moves into Carbon Consulting

August 23, 2007 by Todd Woody

With its Big Green initiative, IBM is parlaying its computing, data and networking expertise into environmental services. Green Wombat last week chatted with Peter Williams of the company’s Big Green Innovations group, and Drew Clark of its Venture Capital Group, about Big Blue’s burgeoning environmental business.

The company has its hand in everything from designing Stockholm’s congestion traffic pricing system to deploying weather forecasting systems to help utilities better manage the electricity grid and make more efficient use of renewable energy like wind power. It’s also creating data networks to monitor water quality and building better membranes for desalinization plants.

But Green Wombat was particularly intrigued by IBM’s (IBM) move to add carbon consulting to its huge global business consulting operation. "We�re working with customers that want to take carbon out of their supply chain," says Williams, the CTO for IBM’s Big Green Innovations group. "It�s like taking waste out of supply chain. We have a very large capability for computer modeling and we allow companies to optimize supply chains to take out carbon."

Demand for such services is being driven by competitive pressures to be seen as green as well as by all-but-inevitable caps on greenhouse gas emissions. IBM itself faces such pressures. "We had to submit a bid the other day where the customer requested the carbon content of our computers," says Williams, who works at IBM’s offices in the Bay Area suburb of Danville.

Adds Clark, who is director of strategic insights at IBM’s Venture Capital Group in Silicon Valley: "It becomes a competitiveness issue when everyone else is doing it and you look like the ogre of the block if you don’t." He says the pressure is particularly intense in Silicon Valley, where companies like Google (GOOG), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) increasingly compete on carbon. "There�s incredible pressure to toe the line here and be more proactive by reducing the carbon content in product design or whatever you do."

The presents an opportunity for IBM to help clients calculate their carbon footprint and then re-engineer their manufacturing processes, supply chains and other systems to minimize their contributions to global warming. The goal is to manage carbon just as a company would manage the cost of electricity, raw materials or any other aspect of its business.

Williams says the biggest demand for carbon consulting currently comes from retail and consumer goods companies under the gun from consumers to be green as well as by the pressure Wal-Mart’s (WMT) is putting on its suppliers to make their products more environmentally friendly.

"There are some humongous pitfalls in working out carbon footprints," notes Williams. "There is no agreed protocol for calculating carbon footprints. You�re going to have people make all kinds of claims." He says figuring out the carbon content of transportation and packaging is comparatively easy while calculating the carbon content of an individual product "is a tough nut to crack."

Says Clark: "We think the added value is being able to integrate carbon accounting with the rest of your business. You manage your supply chain to a set of parameters and one of those is carbon. And of course as you get carbon trading coming in, businesses want to know what their carbon position is."

"We see it as a huge growth area," he adds.

Posted in enviro capitalism | 2 Comments »

Applied Material’s Solar Machine

August 22, 2007 by Todd Woody

photos: Applied Materials
It’s been almost a year since Applied Materials – the Silicon Valley company that is the world’s biggest manufacturer of the machines that make computer chips and flat-screen video displays – announced it was jumping into the booming solar energy business. It was a natural fit – most solar technology is silicon based and the Applied (AMAT) machines that churn out video displays can, with a few modifications, produce thin-film solar panels. And tools used to make the chips in your laptop can be reconfigured to make wafers for solar cells. Applied’s move into the solar market promises to lower the cost of solar electricity. How? By standardizing and improving the solar manufacturing process, much as the company did for the semiconductor industry, allowing companies like Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to produce ever-cheaper chips that made laptops and mobile phones mass commodities.

So Green Wombat recently headed down the 101 to pay a visit to Charlie Gay, a solar industry veteran who runs Applied’s Solar Business Group, for a Year One update and to take a look at the company’s big metal. An avuncular exec, Gay began his solar career more than three decades ago at Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab. He subsequently joined Arco Solar and worked at its various incarnations and later served as director of the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He recently chaired solar-cell maker SunPower’s (SPWR) advisory board.

�Things are growing very rapidly, both for the solar industry as well as for Applied,� says Gay at the company�s Santa Clara campus. In the first quarter of the year the company forecast its solar business would sign $200 million in contracts in 2007. By the second quarter, it raised that estimate to $400 million, and last week during the third quarter earnings call, CEO Mike Splinter upped the ante to more than $600 million.

The reason for the optimism is Applied�s growing thin-film solar business. So far this year it has signed contracts to build thin-film production lines for half a dozen solar companies in Europe and India. Unlike traditional solar panels, thin-film manufacturing involves depositing photovoltaic materials on large and slender pieces of glass or flexible material. Though not as efficient at converting photons into electrons as standard solar cells, the promise of thin-film is that will be cheaper to produce. (Unlike thin-film solar startups like Nanosolar, which are developing next-generation technology based on copper indium gallium diselenide, or CIGS, Applied’s clients use an older amorphous silicon-based process.) "What we’ve done is lay out production lines for thin-film solar," says Gay. "One advantage we bring is integrating the tools with the production process in a solar factory." The aim is to cut the cost per watt of solar electricity by designing smooth-running and efficient factories.

Over at another Applied building I don a lab coat, booties and safety glasses – not quite the full-on bunny suit – and Teresa Trowbridge, an Applied senior manager in the solar group, takes me on a tour of the massive clean room where Applied builds its equally massive flat-panel manufacturing machines (photo above). Sheets of glass as large as 7 by 8 feet (2.2 by 2.5 meters) are fed into the AKT Gen 8.5 and layers of semiconductors and circuitry are applied. Once the machines are tweaked to handle thicker thin-film glass and a couple of other mechanical changes are made, they can use the same process to produce solar panels.

CIGS thin-film would seem to threaten Applied’s silicon-based thin-film market. But Gay says CIGS thin-film processes still use layers of amorphous silicon – layers that can be deposited by Applied machines. "It grows our market," he says of efforts by startups like Nanosolar and Miasole. Applied also makes tools that can be used in the production of crystalline silicon wafers for traditional solar panels. The company has not yet done any big wafer deals but Gay hinted that some may be in offing. "There’s a real renaissance of solar," he says.

Posted in solar energy | 13 Comments »

Sun’s Green Data Center

August 21, 2007 by Todd Woody

photo: sun
Two weeks after the U.S Environmental Protection Agency warned that server farms could double their energy consumption over the next five years, Sun Microsystems today unveils a green data center that has resulted in a dramatic decline in electricity use. Deploying new server technology and state-of-the-art cooling systems, Sun (SUNW) consolidated its Silicon Valley data centers, halving the square footage while cutting power consumption nearly 61 percent. Although Sun reduced the number of servers from 2,177 to 1,240, computing power increased 456 percent, according to the company.

Last week Sun gave Green Wombat a sneak peak at its Santa Clara campus’s next-generation data center. Through virtualization – enabling one server to do the work of multiple machines – Sun slashed the number of computers in the data center and the heat they generate. Sun has invested in smart cooling technology to reduce the considerable energy the typically goes to cool hot-running servers. For instance, in one data center room on the Santa Clara campus, servers are arrayed in long black pods called hot aisles. Hot air from the machines blows into the interior of the closed pod where it is captured by heat exchangers. (The visual effect of the stark white room and rows of black server pods is something of a cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Borg.) In a traditional data center, each server rack might consume much as 2,000 watts and produce a lot of heat, says Dean Nelson, Sun’s director of global lab and data center design services. The hot aisle server racks in contrast need just a fraction of that power. He points to displays in each rack that monitor the temperature of individual servers, allowing the network to distribute cooling where it’s needed. As we head toward the exit, the noise level drops as the cooling system has been automatically turned off in those pods where servers aren’t operating. "In a traditional data center the air conditioning would be blasting the entire center all day long," says Nelson.

If all this is good for the environment and contributes to the fight against global warming – the consolidation will eliminate 4,100 tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the company – it’s even better for Sun’s bottom line. By shrinking the square footage needed to house its servers, Sun avoided spending $9.3 million on new construction. Company executives say the investment in the new data center will pay for itself within three years. And by taking a load off the electricity grid, Sun earned a $1 million incentive payment from local utility Silicon Valley Power. Sun has also opened green data centers in India and the U.K.

Of course, the server and software company also hopes to sell its eco-data center solution and is launching "Eco Ready" services to assess and improve a data center’s energy efficiency. "We’re dealing with a lot of the same things as our customers," says David Douglas, Sun’s vice president for eco responsibility. The company faces competition from IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), all of which are increasingly marketing the energy-efficiency of their servers.

Douglas says Sun is continuing to explore other ways to further green its data centers. For instance, the polluting diesel back-up generators that most data centers rely on might be replaced by fuel cells – Sun’s Silicon Valley neighbor Fujitsu last week began using a fuel-cell generator to power its data center – or converted to run on biodiesel. "They could be used in an emergency or during peak demand to take some of the load off the grid," he says.

Posted in green computing | 2 Comments »

Fujitsu’s Hydrogen-Powered Silicon Valley Campus

August 17, 2007 by Todd Woody

photo: UTC Power
Google (GOOG) has its 1.6-megawatt solar array and Applied Materials (AMAT) is following suit with an even bigger solar installation at its Silicon Valley headquarters. Not to be left behind in the greening of the valley sweepstakes, Fujitsu says it has become the first SV company to power its operations with a fuel-cell generator (photo at above). The Japanese computer maker today is unveiling a 200-kilowatt fuel-cell at its Sunnyvale campus that it says produces half the carbon dioxide of a conventional power plant. The generator, made by UTC Power (UTX), reforms natural gas to produce hydrogen which is then used to generate electricity. Besides emitting far less greenhouse gases than a fossil-fuel power plant, fuel-cell generators do not produce pollutants like nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide. The fuel-cell will provide half the power needed to cool the Sunnyvale campus’s data center. The hot water generated by the fuel-cell in turn will be used for heating. The project won Fujitsu a $500,000 incentive payment from utility PG&E (PCG). Fun fact: The UTC fuel-cell generator can be hooked up to a wastewater treatment plant and an anaerobic digester to tap methane gas from what we’ll politely call effluent to produce hydrogen.

Posted in corporate sustainability | 9 Comments »

Big Banks Back Big Solar

August 16, 2007 by Todd Woody

Wells Fargo said today it has invested in Nevada Solar One, a $266 million, 64-megawatt solar power plant. The solar trough power station outside of Las Vegas was built by Spain’s Acciona Energy and will supply carbon-free electricity to two utilities. Northern Trust (NTRS) and JPMorgan Capital (JPM) joined Wells Fargo (WFC) in taking equity stakes in Nevada Solar One. The willingness of such heavy hitters to finance Big Solar is an encouraging sign for developers of other utility-scale solar power plants. While companies like Stirling Energy Systems and BrightSource Energy have scored deals with California utilities Southern California Edison (EIX), San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) and PG&E (PCG) for massive solar power plants, obtaining financing to build the projects remains a big hurdle, particularly for technologies that have yet to be commercialized. That isn’t the case with Nevada Solar One. The plant’s solar trough design is a tried-and-true solar technology, which no doubt took some of the risk out of the banks’ risk assessments. In a solar trough plant sun-tracking parabolic mirrors heat tubes of synthetic oil to create steam and drive an electricity-generating turbine. Nine solar trough power plants built in the 1980s continue to operate in California’s Mojave Desert.

Posted in solar energy | 11 Comments »

Solar Startup HelioVolt Scores $77 Million

August 16, 2007 by Todd Woody

Thin is in. HelioVolt, an Austin, Texas-based thin-film solar startup, has raised a $77 million round, indicating that investors are still betting on the yet-to-be-realized promise of a technology that could integrate solar cells into everything from windows to building facades. Although the efficiency of thin-film solar is less than conventional photovoltaics, the cells can be printed on rolls of flexible material at lower costs. The payoff, HelioVolt executive John Langdon told Green Wombat last year, is a relatively inexpensive solar film that could be incorporated into the roofs and walls of homes and office towers and, eventually, even windows so that a skyscraper, for instance, might generate half of the electricity it needs. The $77 million that HelioVolt raised from a group of international investors puts it within shouting distance of better-known competitors like Silicon Valley’s Nanosolar, which has raised around $100 million. HelioVolt will tap the $77 million to build its first factory to produce so-called building-integrated photovoltaic systems. Leading HelioVolt’s latest round are Washington, D.C.’s Paladin Capital Group and Masdar Clean Tech Fund – funded by the government of Abu Dhabi, Credit Suisse (CS) and Siemens (SI). Other investors include Silicon Valley’s New Enterprise Associates, Spain’s Sol�car Energias, Morgan Stanley (MS) and Sunton United Energy.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Back to School Savings: Turn off Your Computer

August 15, 2007 by Todd Woody

It’s time for the annual back-to-school computer buying binge, as college students get the ‘rents to cough up for that new aluminum-clad iMac (AAPL) or the latest from Dell (DELL). But according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only about 10 percent of students turn on their desktop’s power-management software that minimizes energy consumption and puts the computer to sleep when not in use. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative – the consortium of tech companies led by Google (GOOG) and Intel (INTC) – has done some calculations to show how students can lower electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions by clicking on the power-management feature: If the 61 percent of the U.S.’s 18 million university students who use desktop computers activate their computers’ power-management program, they could eliminate 1.8 million tons of greenhouse gases – the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road – and save $206 million on their schools’ annual electricity bill. Those calculations were just for desktop computers; add in the laptops many students carry and the environmental and economic benefit would be even greater. Of course, turning on power-management software at the factory, as it were, would be best.

Posted in green computing | 4 Comments »

Tesla Roadster to Make First Road Trip

August 14, 2007 by Todd Woody

photo: squiddphoto
The Tesla Roadster hits the highway later this month for the electric sports car’s first public road trip, a 200-mile journey from San Francisco through the Sierras to Lake Tahoe. Sure, it’s a publicity stunt but one designed to demolish the perception that electric cars are short-range put-put mobiles more suited to suburban cul-de-sacs than the open road. As the Silicon Valley startup gears up for production of the zero-to-60-in-four super car this fall, it will use the final prototype of the Roadster for the August 29 road trip. The Global Hyatt hotel chain is sponsoring the event and the Roadster will stop at Hyatts in Sacramento and Incline Village, Nevada, on Lake Tahoe. Hyatt is considering installing charging stations at some properties – Tesla in May won a $561,000 grant from the state of California to develop charging stations that can be deployed at hotels. While this is the first public road trip for the Roadster, Tesla has put the $98,000 car through its paces during long-distance testing, says Tesla public relations director David Vespremi.

Green Wombat recently had an opportunity to take a ride in the Roadster with Vespremi while reporting a story on electric cars ("Have You Driven a Fjord Lately? in the August issue of Business 2.0). The test car is a "fusion red" prototype that screams sex and speed. Vespremi – like other Tesla employees, he’s a gearhead – backs the Roadster out of the garage at Tesla’s Silicon Valley headquarters and turns onto a busy thoroughfare. We cruise at about 40 mph for a bit and then he punches the accelerator and the car shoots forward into the traffic. I�m pushed back into my leather seat, subconsciously bracing for impact as we silently rocket straight toward a tractor trailer ahead. David flicks the steering wheel and the car effortlessly swings around the truck and heads toward the entrance ramp to the 101. It�s rush hour and the metering lights are on. He hits the accelerator and we rocket up the ramp at 90 miles an hour, gliding around the traffic as we merge onto the freeway. Green Wombat briefly considers taking out a second mortgage and adding his name to the wait list. The drive back to San Francisco in the Zipcar Prius is anti-climatic, to say the least.

Posted in green cars | 3 Comments »

Toyota Exec: Lithium-Ion Hybrids Not Ready for Prime Time

August 13, 2007 by Todd Woody

A blogging Toyota exec has fired back at a Wall Street Journal story that claimed the automaker has delayed by up to two years a plug-in hybrid Prius that uses lithium ion batteries. "To suggest that any timing has been changed for the introduction of a vehicle for which an introduction schedule hasn�t been finalized and published, using battery technology that we�ve previously said isn�t ready for prime-time, is � well, it�s curious and perplexing," wrote Toyota (TM) corporate communications exec Irv Miller on the company’s Open Road blog on Friday. Still, Miller indicated that you won’t see a lithium ion Prius hitting the road anytime soon. "We have consistently affirmed that there are many issues that need to be resolved, beyond the safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries, before a commercial lithium-ion-equipped hybrid � and what we�re talking about here is the so-called plug-in hybrid, or PHEV – is ready for the market," he wrote. "These issues include battery cost, availability, performance and packaging. All of the car makers face the same problems when it comes to these issues. The answers, unfortunately, are not just around the corner.

Miller contends that "nobody has fully figured out the optimum use of lithium-ion batteries in automobiles" and thus "promises of longer driving ranges on a single charge appear to be several years away." Not exactly. Tesla Motors is preparing to roll out its lithium ion-powered Roadster later this year and has just named a new CEO to ramp up production. But what may have also incited Miller’s ire was the Journal’s suggestion that any delays will open the door for Ford (F), General Motors (GM) and Honda (HMC) to catch up to the industry’s technology leader.

Posted in green cars | 5 Comments »

Eberhard Out as Tesla CEO

August 12, 2007 by Todd Woody

Tesla Motors co-founder Martin Eberhard has been replaced as CEO of the Silicon Valley electric car company by former Flextronics chief Michael Marks. Tesla marketing executive Darryl Siry told Green Wombat that Marks, a Tesla investor, will serve as interim CEO as part of a planned transition. The news was first reported Saturday night on San Jose Mercury News auto editor Matt Nauman’s blog. Tesla communications director David Vespremi says Eberhard will become the startup’s president of technology as it prepares to roll out its Roadster super car later this year. "We were looking for someone who could help take the business to the next level, someone who had manufacturing experience," Vespremi told Green Wombat. "Michael Marks definitely has those credentials with Flextronics. This is all part of growing the business and positioning us to be ready for even more success. Which is why Martin is still very much involved. If anything, it allows Martin to do what he does best, be a technology leader."

After stepping down as Flextronics CEO in 2005, Marks joined private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Flextronics is an electronics manufacturing services company that designs, engineers and builds tech products. Siry said Marks will remain with KKR while he serves as interim CEO.

"Martin and the board have been looking for a permanent CEO since early this year and the plan was to have someone in place before we got into production because the amount of manufacturing expertise needed is tremendous," says Siry. "We haven�t found the right one yet, and since we�re about to head into production we decided to name an interim CEO so we could get through this period. Michael Marks has a tremendous amount of manufacturing experience and he knows Tesla."

So far more than 500 people – including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Google (GOOG) co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and inventor Dean Kamen – have ponied up nearly $100,000 each for the thrill of going zero-to-60 in four seconds. The leadership change comes as automakers like General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM) step up programs to develop plug-in hybrid electric cars. The Roadster takes its first public road trip later this month.

Here’s what Green Wombat wrote about Eberhard in Business 2.0’s 50 Who Matter Now list from the magazine’s June issue:

Eberhard’s high-tech, battery-powered electric car is less about bland eco-consciousness than about sex and speed. The Tesla Roadster does zero-to-60 in a whiplash-inducing four seconds, reaches over 130 mph, and goes more than 200 miles on a single charge.

And oh, yes, it’s also helping to save the earth. No surprise that the likes of Larry Page and Arnold Schwarzenegger have lined up to buy the six-figure supercar. Next up, Eberhard will take aim at the mass market by introducing a four-door sedan, the WhiteStar, that’s slated to debut in 2009 at half the price.

Posted in green cars | 4 Comments »

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