Green Wombat

Report: Green Data Centers Could Save Billions, Help Planet

photo: wirenine
Time to put server-farm hogs on a diet of greens. Left unchecked, data centers could double their energy consumption over the next five years at a cost of $7.4 billion annually, according to a report issued today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. By 2011, the equivalent of 10 new power plants would be needed to supply 12 gigawatts of electricity unless the energy efficiency of data centers can be improved. That's bad news for the corporate bottom line and the environment. It's also a hit on taxpayers' wallets: federal government data centers alone consume about 10 percent of that electricity.

The good news, says EPA's researchers, is that greening the data center through consolidating servers, energy-efficient equipment and tapping alternative energy sources could cut annual electricity costs by $1.6 billion to $5.1 billion by 2011 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 47 million metric tons a year.

A tech industry consortium called the Green Grid is working to ramp up data center energy efficiency as is the Climate Savers Computing Initiative led by Intel (INTC) and Google (GOOG). But the EPA report called for federal leadership to spur such measures, including working with industry to establish standardized performance standards for data centers, establishing energy efficiency standards for government contracts with data centers, and investigating whether Energy Star efficiency standards should be applied to servers and other data center equipment. State and local governments, say researchers, should consider requiring separate utility meters at large data centers while utilities could offer financial incentives for energy efficient data centers. Some utilities, like California's PG&E (PCG), already provide such programs.

The push to make data centers more environmentally friendly is a boon to companies like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has focused on energy-efficient chips, as well as data storage companies like Network Appliance (NTAP) and virtualization software makers such as VMware (EMC).

The Feds Go Solar

photo: Blipem
How big is the opportunity to provide solar energy to the U.S. government? Consider that the federal General Services Administration alone controls more than 1,800 buildings containing 347 million square feet. Today the GSA announced it has taken a step to go green, signing a $6.9 million contract with solar systems provider SunEdison to build a 1-megawatt solar park on six acres next to the massive Denver Federal Center in Colorado. The photovoltaic arrays will meet about 10 percent of the one-square-mile complex's peak electricity demand. It's also a good deal for local utility Xcel Energy (XEL), which is under the gun to generate 20 percent of its electricity in Colorado from renewable sources by 2020.

Dean Kamen's Stirling Solution

photos: green wombat
In a world of Stepford executives who never deviate from the corporate party line, there's something refreshing about an entrepreneur willing to take a tumble - literally - for his latest innovation. In uber-inventor Dean Kamen's case that meant crashing his Stirling electric hybrid scooter in front of Green Wombat and a photographer. In June, Green Wombat visited Westwind, Kamen's estate outside Manchester, New Hampshire, to talk to the Segway inventor about his plans to install a Stirling heat engine in an electric car made by Norway's Think. (See "Have You Driven a Fjord Lately?" in the August issue of Business 2.0.) But first, Kamen wanted to demo the scooter (photo above) to show how a virtually greenhouse gas-free Stirling engine could extend the range of an electric vehicle by trickle-charging the battery. As he zooms down the driveway, the scooter goes sideways - its weight distribution needs some tweaking - sending the inventor flying into the grass. "Say you're in Bangladesh or anywhere in the world where people don’t have electricity," says Kamen, dusting himself off and not missing a beat. "You get home and you plug your house into it." He shows off power plugs behind the scooter's seat.  "It’s your power system, it’s your heating system, it gives everybody electricity. When you leave in the morning, you drive away with your local power plant."

Over the past decade, Kamen, who made a fortune as inventor of the insulin pump and other medical devices, has spent some $40 million developing Stirling engines. They can use virtually any fuel source to heat a sealed container containing a gas - hydrogen or helium, for instance - that expands and contracts to drive a piston and produce electricity. (The scooter uses a small can of propane as the fuel source.) "We run two villages in Bangladesh on Stirlings that run on freakin' cow dung," says Kamen, who envisions Stirling engines powering the world's off-the-grid villages and using the waste heat produced by the engine to purify water.

But Kamen needs to get to mass production to realize that dream and that's where Think comes in. Kamen met Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums last year at MIT.  "I took him up to New Hampshire and we spent half the night speculating about how cool the world could be if you put the right technologies in the right place at the right time," says Kamen. "I need some killer app to put this thing into production. And one way to do that would be to create the world’s first hybrid Stirling electric car." So Willums shipped a Think City to Kamen, who is now modifying the two-seater coupe to carry a Stirling engine (photo at right) powered by veggie oil, for instance. ("You could drive across the country, stopping a McDonald's to fill up," says Kamen.) That would not only extend the Thinks range by hundreds of miles but turn the car into a mobile generator. When electricity demand peaks during the day, thousands of Thinks plugged in at office parks could feed power back to the grid so utilities like PG&E (PCG) and Edison (EIX) could avoid having to fire up planet-warming power plants. The Stirling engine would then recharge the car's battery for the commute home. When we last spoke in July, Kamen had the autmotive version of the Stirling engine up and running. The next step is to hook it up to the City and see if it'll work as planned. You probably won't see a Stirling in a Toyota (TM) or Ford (F) but the device gives Think another power plant to offer its customers.

“If you have enough Thinks out there you would literally change the architecture of the grid,” says Kamen, taking Green Wombat for a drive around Westwind and past his wind turbine before parking the blue Think City near his pair of Enstrom helicopters. (He keeps the Think in a garage that also houses his 1898 steam-driven car and a 1913 Model T.)  Kamen heads to the control room of his 33,000-square foot house. An Internet-enabled blue box called a Teletrol controls the home’s power systems, including a Stirling engine about the size of an air conditioner that can act as a backup generator or a mini power plant that kicks on when electricity demand soars. Kamen invented the Teletrol and his company of the same name remotely operates the heating and air-conditioning systems of buildings like the Sydney Opera House. Kamen, of course, would like to see a Teletrol in every house, acting as the interface between your Web-enabled Think and the grid (and, ideally, the Stirling engine that sits in your basement or utility room.)

"The big advantage is once we’re in production with that engine, where it will really be uniquely valuable is to the 1.6 billion people on this plant who’ve never used electricity," says Kamen. "We will become the Con Edison of every village in Asia, Africa and Central America."

 

 

Green Media Payday: Discovery Buys TreeHugger

Discovery Communication's acquisition today of green blog TreeHugger - for a cool $10 million, according to the New York Post - is another sign of the shifting media landscape and how companies are turning to online magazines to reach green consumers. Not too many years ago a publisher seeking to ride a societal shift and rake in advertising would have started a print publication. After all, the great dot-com boom of the late '90s inspired a passel of dead-tree - and now mostly dead - magazines like The Industry Standard and Business 2.0 (Green Wombat's employer).  Not anymore. TreeHugger launched online in 2004 to chronicle a growing interest in the environment and the green lifestyle. Stylishly designed and tapping a global network of correspondents, New York-based TreeHugger serves up a mix of news, advocacy and product reviews through its blog and pod-and-vodcasts.  The purchase price might seem modest but Green Wombat bets TreeHugger's overhead runs at a mere fraction of a print mag's. TreeHugger's reach - 1.4 million visitors a month - clearly appealed to Discovery (DISCA), whose cable TV holdings include the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, the Science Channel, and the upcoming Planet Green eco-network.

Big Blue's Big Green Iron

As part of its Big Green initiative, IBM is replacing some 3,900 servers in its data centers with 30 mainframe computers - a move that the company says will result in a staggering 80 percent decline in energy usage. Ever more powerful servers were supposed to be the death of the mainframe but Big Iron is back - with a twist. Software will let each Linux-powered mainframe act as thousands of "virtual" servers, providing the same capabilities of individual physical servers while consuming significantly less electricity. IBM (IBM) will roll out the project at data centers in Australia, Japan and the United States. "The mainframe is the single most powerful instrument to drive better economics and energy conservation at the data center today," said James Stallings, general manager, IBM System z mainframe, in a statement. IBM's greening of the server farm comes as tech companies like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) join Internet giants like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YAHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) to slash computer energy consumption and combat global warming through such programs as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative and the Green Grid.

California Clean Tech Open Finalists Push the Green Envelope

The California Clean Tech Open startup competition has named 50 finalists, and this year companies vying for $600,000 in cash and services need to be as green as their products. Entrepreneurs will be judged, in part, on the sustainability of their business model and business practices. In other words, it's not enough to come up with the killer enviro app, you have to be as carbon neutral as possible. To that end, the competition is providing finalists with "sustainability starter kits" to to put contestants on the green path from the get-go.  The competition is backed by such Silicon Valley heavyweights as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Google (GOOG) and SunPower (SPWR) as well as more than a dozen  venture capital firm. Other sponsors include the big three California utilities - PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE).

The California Clean Tech Open offers a look at where entrepreneurs - and the judges - think the green wave will be breaking next. This year, the contest named finalists in six categories:  Air, Water & Waste;  Energy Efficiency; Green Building; Renewables; Smart Power; and Transportation. Some of the finalists that caught Green Wombat's eye include Friendly Cow Biogas, which is developing a methane digesters to turn cow poop into biogas; Civil Twilight, which is making streetlights that dim when the moon is full; Vertical Landscape's system of transforming load-bearing walls of buildings to support vegetation; SolarAire, which has created a solar-powered air conditioning system; Grid Saver, whose home appliance remote control system allows utilities to manage power usage; and High Merit Thermoelectrics, which  converts waste heat from heavy truck exhaust systems to electricity to run the vehicle's alternator, power steering pump, and air conditioner pump.

The Electric Car Opportunity

photos: green wombat
While reporting a feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think that appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 ("Have You Driven a Fjord Lately?"), Green Wombat had the chance to sit down with Ion Yadigaroglu, co-founder and partner at Palo Alto's Capricorn Investment Group. Capricorn, the investment vehicle of former eBay president Jeff Skoll, has invested in both Think and Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company making the Roadster super car. "This is the first time in a very long time that there are two car companies – two real car companies - that are being launched," says Yadigaroglu.  He believes there's an opening for electric car startups to grab market share while Detroit and Tokyo dither. "The reason there might be a window is because, clearly, the incumbent car companies didn’t take this electric car phenomenon seriously," says Yadigaroglu. "They have, as always happens, big incentives to drag their feet and maintain the status quo." 

Automotive history, of course, is littered with the rusting name plates of failed startups, from Tucker to DeLorean. But thanks to the economics of electric car production, companies like Think and Tesla are able to make cars for $100 million versus the $1 billion automakers will spend on just retooling an existing model. "Fundamentally, by going all-electric there is a radical design change involved," Yadigaroglu says. "The complexity goes down. Half the complexity of a regular car is in its drive train, its engine and transmission and all that. You have such savings by going all-electric in terms of what engineering is needed." Tesla and Think will use Tesla's lithium-ion battery packs, piggybacking on the billions spent to create such batteries for laptops and cell phones. Think is also benefiting from the $150 million that former owner Ford (F) pumped into the company to develop a highway-ready electric car that met European and U.S. safety standards. And both companies are pursuing a classic Silicon Valley strategy: attract high-profile early adopters with disruptive technology and then popularize it for the mass market.

Think and Tesla will roll out their cars this year from from opposite ends of the market - Think with a two-seater urban runabout called the City and Tesla with its two-seater $100,000 Roadster. The challenge will be ramping up to get costs down so both companies can expand production to more mainstream passenger vehicles. "The real game here is how are we positioned in 2009," says Yadigaroglu. "There will be two electric car companies in the world that will have significant numbers on the road with the knowledge and assets in order to be competitive with Toyota. Car company incumbents are maybe slow but they’re not stupid. I guarantee you in two years there will be interesting vehicles coming out of even the U.S. automobile industry."

Whether an electrified Toyota (TM) or General Motors (GM) will attempt to crush or co-exist with the upstarts in the great unknown. To help drive down the cost of electric cars and boast Think and Tesla, Capricorn plans to start a battery leasing company. Think, for instance, will sell the City but lease the battery, which accounts for half the cost of the car. When you buy an electric car you're essentially paying upfront the fuel costs for the life of the vehicle. (It would be like buying a $20,000 Honda and then having to pay a $20,000 surcharge for the gasoline the car will consume over the next decade.) Capricorn's lease might be sold as a "mobility" fee that could include insurance and other services. Utilities like San Francisco-based PG&E (PCG) are interested in buying thousands of used electric car batteries to store renewable energy and ease demand on the power grid. "

Yadigaroglu met Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums last year when he invited Willums, an expert in corporate sustainability, to a meeting at Capricorn. As the two were driving back to San Francisco - in a Prius - Willums mentioned he and his investment group had just bought Think. "He’s a very interesting person and delightful to be with and very generous," says Yadigaroglu. "They’re not in it just for the money. They really aren’t. One thing that always keeps me optimistic about the world is that sometimes when you try not too hard to make every last dollar of profit is when you actually create companies, organizations or ideas that are truly worth an outstanding amount of real value."

Clean Cash: Technology Partners Raises $300 Million Fund

The green tech investment boom continues, with Silicon Valley venure capital firm Technology Partners announcing this morning that it has raised $300 million for its latest fund. The cash will be invested in clean tech and life sciences startups. "We think the convergence between life sciences and clean tech represents the next wave of opportunity," Ira Ehrenpreis, a general partner at Technology Partners, told Green Wombat. To Ehrenpreis, a leading green tech guru (or "cleantech" in the nomenclature preferred by some valley VCs), that means everything from bioengineering new biofuels to deploying advanced material sciences to develop new drug delivery systems. The new fund has already invested in electric car company Tesla Motors, NFocus Neuromedical, which is developing technology to treat brain aneurysms, and laser hair-removal startup SpectraGenics. The Palo Alto firm's lastest fund has also invested in a "stealth solar company" that Ehrenpreis declined to identify in any way. It's de rigeur these days to ask whether the big bucks being poured into such ventures herald a green tech bubble a la the dot-com bubble of yesteryear. Sure, some people will inevitably lose their shirts but the global warming-driven political and regulatory changes spurring such investments are unlikely to subside anytime soon. "I think this is just the beginning of another industrial revolution," says Ehrenpreis.

Australian Solar Entrepreneurs Look to U.S. Market

Green Wombat had lunch Friday with EnviroMission's Roger Davey and Kim Forte, who flew into San Francisco from Melbourne, Australia, to promote their solar tower project. (Green Wombat chronicled the company's six-year quest to build the solar tower in "Tower of Power," which appeared in the August 2006 issue of Business 2.0 magazine.) Of the various Big Solar technologies out there, the solar tower is one of the most out there: A tower between 1,600 and 3,000 feet is surrounded by a glass canopy a mile or two wide, which heats the air underneath.  Hot air rises and the tower operates as a vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it produces wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure. The turbines in turn generate electricity. EnviroMission had purchased 24,000 acres of land on the edge of the outback in south east Australia to build the tower but got knocked back last October when it lost a bid for $57 million in government funding to cross-town rival Solar Systems. Since then, EnviroMission CEO Davey has focused on the U.S. market, studying potential sites in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. In April, the company put in a bid to El Paso Electric (EE) in response to the utility's request for proposals to supply 300 megawatts of renewable electricity. Davey says the company also has had contact with Arizona's largest utility, Arizona Public Service (PNW), and California utilities like PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX). "Right now, the best market in the world for large-scale solar is the United States," says Davey. He says EnviroMission is currently reconfiguring the tower's optimal size, having downsized it to qualify for the Australian government funding. But the first solar tower may well be built in China. EnviroMission's joint venture with a Chinese development and construction company is close to receiving approval to build a kilometer-high solar tower outside Shanghai, Davey told Green Wombat. "I just got an email from China last night. Things are moving forward."

One of EnviroMission's more interesting strategies is to work with Native American tribes. The company currently is conducting a site assessment of land owned by the Fort Mojave tribe that spans Arizona, California and Nevada. As the New York Times reported Friday, some Native American tribes in the Southwest are being riven by plans to build heavily polluting coal-fired plants on their land to take advantage of the rich mineral deposits.  Clean technologies like the solar tower might provide a green alternative.

Who's Resurrecting the Electric Car?

Green Wombat's feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 and is available online. A startup acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 and now owned by a group of Norwegian entrepreneurs backed by Silicon Valley and European investors, Think is revving up the production line for its zippy two-seater City coupe. (Alas, the convertible City on the Business 2.0 cover is a prototype.) The company, which has attracted the attention of everyone from Google (GOOG) and Tesla Motors to inventor Dean Kamen and PG&E (PCG), will begin selling cars in Europe in 2008 and hopes to bring the Think to selected U.S. markets in 2009.  Like Tesla, Think is attempting to upend a century-old automotive business model as it rolls out the first highway-ready production electric car since General Motors (GM) scrapped the EV1 in 2003. Over the next few days, Green Wombat will feature bonus material that didn't make it into the Think story.