Comments on: Is IT green? It depends on your PR agency http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/ Trends, happenings and innovations in the clean technology market Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:28:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1903 Anonymous Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:29:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1903 Well said. I understand the idea of more products being pumped into the market might not look like a good thing. The point I am making though is on energy efficiency, not commerical nor business efficiency. Tata Motors was able to take a vehicle and design it to be very cheap. Sure the engine can provide great mileage, but the innovation was reducing the cost of producing a car. This is much different than increasing the fuel efficiency of the entire existing GM fleet as an example. Energy efficiency did not inspire the cell phone to become staple item in your pocket/purse. It was an increase in manufacturing efficiency of electronic componets that created an affordable market for cheap commuication devices. I believe efficiencies exist everywhere, even nature experiments, with an adavatage of having millions of years of experience. Energy efficiency, though, is a reduction of energy consumption for the same service/output. So obviously, our Indian friends are increasing their energy consumption for the same service of getting from point A to B. By definition, this is not energy efficiency. To reinforce my point, saturations of energy efficiency exist because: human preferences are complex, your saved fuel cannot drive you further than where you already want to be, your saved lighting cannot make a lit space brighter than it already is and so on. Darklamp Well said. I understand the idea of more products being pumped into the market might not look like a good thing. The point I am making though is on energy efficiency, not commerical nor business efficiency.

Tata Motors was able to take a vehicle and design it to be very cheap. Sure the engine can provide great mileage, but the innovation was reducing the cost of producing a car. This is much different than increasing the fuel efficiency of the entire existing GM fleet as an example.

Energy efficiency did not inspire the cell phone to become staple item in your pocket/purse. It was an increase in manufacturing efficiency of electronic componets that created an affordable market for cheap commuication devices.

I believe efficiencies exist everywhere, even nature experiments, with an adavatage of having millions of years of experience. Energy efficiency, though, is a reduction of energy consumption for the same service/output. So obviously, our Indian friends are increasing their energy consumption for the same service of getting from point A to B. By definition, this is not energy efficiency.

To reinforce my point, saturations of energy efficiency exist because: human preferences are complex, your saved fuel cannot drive you further than where you already want to be, your saved lighting cannot make a lit space brighter than it already is and so on.

Darklamp

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1902 Anonymous Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:18:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1902 That's a simplistic way of looking at it. $2500 cars from Tata, for example, that have incredible fuel efficiency create a whole new market for cars that never existed before. People that were once priced out of the market are now included as potential customers and fuel consumers. And over half of the Western populations now carry cell phones in their pockets because electronics are so efficient that such an affordable portable device is possible, creating a demand for tens of millions of batteries that only last 3 years (and for phones that have a defacto lifespan of the same, or less). All of these phones are being charged and losing energy throughout the day, and they are charged with chargers that dissipate energy in their transformation of AC to DC. And this is obviously just one very small example. I agree that, in absolute terms, saturation points do exist. But if that saturation point is 6 billion people driving 30km to work every day then I think we'll kill the planet before we reach the saturation point. That’s a simplistic way of looking at it. $2500 cars from Tata, for example, that have incredible fuel efficiency create a whole new market for cars that never existed before. People that were once priced out of the market are now included as potential customers and fuel consumers.

And over half of the Western populations now carry cell phones in their pockets because electronics are so efficient that such an affordable portable device is possible, creating a demand for tens of millions of batteries that only last 3 years (and for phones that have a defacto lifespan of the same, or less). All of these phones are being charged and losing energy throughout the day, and they are charged with chargers that dissipate energy in their transformation of AC to DC. And this is obviously just one very small example.

I agree that, in absolute terms, saturation points do exist. But if that saturation point is 6 billion people driving 30km to work every day then I think we’ll kill the planet before we reach the saturation point.

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1901 Anonymous Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:31:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1901 Of course of course. Now that I have an energy efficient refrigerator, I am going to buy four more and fill them with food. Or better yet. I am going to drive 30 kms to commute to work instead of 20 kms, just because my vehicle can do 50 mpg now. Saturations exist! Darklamp Of course of course. Now that I have an energy efficient refrigerator, I am going to buy four more and fill them with food. Or better yet. I am going to drive 30 kms to commute to work instead of 20 kms, just because my vehicle can do 50 mpg now.

Saturations exist!

Darklamp

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1905 Anonymous Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:01:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1905 What makes an energy source clean is how it was produced. A city like Santa Rosa, for instance trying to do its bit for the environment. Popular Science called it "Tapping Geysers for Watts," and in an article described how 12 million gallons of wastewater the city pumps to the steam fields daily gets converted into 85 megawatts of power, enough to power 85,000 homes. When appliance and electric vehicles run on power generated in this way, there is no carbon footprint at all. http://www.zapworld.com What makes an energy source clean is how it was produced. A city like Santa Rosa, for instance trying to do its bit for the environment. Popular Science called it “Tapping Geysers for Watts,” and in an article described how 12 million gallons of wastewater the city pumps to the steam fields daily gets converted into 85 megawatts of power, enough to power 85,000 homes. When appliance and electric vehicles run on power generated in this way, there is no carbon footprint at all.
http://www.zapworld.com

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1900 Anonymous Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:01:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1900 .... that's simply not true. …. that’s simply not true.

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1899 Anonymous Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:43:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1899 "There is nothing you can buy with the saved energy that has more energy content per dollar than the energy you just saved" - Amory Lovins Bounce back effects have little overall impact. Saturation points exist, so over-consumption is a moot point in energy efficiency. Darklamp “There is nothing you can buy with the saved energy that has more energy content per dollar than the energy you just saved” – Amory Lovins

Bounce back effects have little overall impact. Saturation points exist, so over-consumption is a moot point in energy efficiency.

Darklamp

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1904 Anonymous Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:54:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1904 I think this suggestion makes a lot of sense: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/18/carbonemissions.news I think this suggestion makes a lot of sense:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/18/carbonemissions.news

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1898 Anonymous Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:35:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1898 Yup. It's like food. If it's half the fat, people often think they can eat twice as much. If a bulb uses half the power, people leave it on twice as long - I'll leave a 25watt CFL on for a hour, whereas the 150watt Incandescent right beside it gets flipped on for only a few seconds at a time due to its higher power consumption. But in the end my power bill's energy usage stats are going up:(. Increased efficiency always means increased consumption. Yup. It’s like food. If it’s half the fat, people often think they can eat twice as much. If a bulb uses half the power, people leave it on twice as long – I’ll leave a 25watt CFL on for a hour, whereas the 150watt Incandescent right beside it gets flipped on for only a few seconds at a time due to its higher power consumption. But in the end my power bill’s energy usage stats are going up:(.

Increased efficiency always means increased consumption.

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1897 Anonymous Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:25:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1897 Forgot one other thing... computers may get more efficient over time, but the efficiency gains are often done in order to increase capability and the efficiency gains are eaten up by faster processing speeds. The current line of Core 2 Duo CPUs from Intel, for example, may use up to 65W at their peak. This is a huge improvement over the preceding Pentium 4, but the original Pentium of 12 years ago used less than 1/4th of this amount of power. But this is a general trend, I think... power efficiency gains are eaten up by the increased use that they make possible. Portable devices would not be possible without highly power-efficient electronics. Now that we have such electronics, all kinds of new power-consuming applications are possible that were not possible before. Efficiency just seems to pave the way for further growth. Forgot one other thing… computers may get more efficient over time, but the efficiency gains are often done in order to increase capability and the efficiency gains are eaten up by faster processing speeds. The current line of Core 2 Duo CPUs from Intel, for example, may use up to 65W at their peak. This is a huge improvement over the preceding Pentium 4, but the original Pentium of 12 years ago used less than 1/4th of this amount of power.

But this is a general trend, I think… power efficiency gains are eaten up by the increased use that they make possible. Portable devices would not be possible without highly power-efficient electronics. Now that we have such electronics, all kinds of new power-consuming applications are possible that were not possible before. Efficiency just seems to pave the way for further growth.

]]> By: Anonymous http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/comment-page-1/#comment-1896 Anonymous Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:15:00 +0000 http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/03/18/is-it-green-it-depends-on-your-pr-agency/#comment-1896 My previous employer started to put "green" categories into the yearly objectives. This company had a telecommuting program, allowing people to work from home occasionally (a lot of managers seemed threatened by the program, but that's another story). Anyway, when I said that I was going to meet my "green" objective, in part, by working from home more often and reducing pollution by driving less, it was not received very well. This was one of the banks (the green one, ironically). Telecommuting is such a powerful tool to solve some of our current congestion and smog problems. The government should be supporting it with tax credits and subsidies if they're not already. Regarding "shades of green"... I have a hard time calling any product "green", really... I think "more efficient" is OK, but to say that any product is environmentally-friendly is kind of missing the point: the environmentally-friendly product is... no product. It's environmentally-friendly to reduce consumption. Especially, there's no such thing as an environmentally-friendly car, only a less environmentally-destructive car. My previous employer started to put “green” categories into the yearly objectives. This company had a telecommuting program, allowing people to work from home occasionally (a lot of managers seemed threatened by the program, but that’s another story). Anyway, when I said that I was going to meet my “green” objective, in part, by working from home more often and reducing pollution by driving less, it was not received very well. This was one of the banks (the green one, ironically).

Telecommuting is such a powerful tool to solve some of our current congestion and smog problems. The government should be supporting it with tax credits and subsidies if they’re not already.

Regarding “shades of green”… I have a hard time calling any product “green”, really… I think “more efficient” is OK, but to say that any product is environmentally-friendly is kind of missing the point: the environmentally-friendly product is… no product. It’s environmentally-friendly to reduce consumption. Especially, there’s no such thing as an environmentally-friendly car, only a less environmentally-destructive car.

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