Green Options

Where is the grid going, big or small?

This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

For a while it looked like Google might actually bailout the newspaper industry by buying a stake in newspapers that have been struggling with debt and declining ad revenues.  However, it appears that this plan ha been called off.

Meanwhile, the Treasury department has committed $ 7.5 billion in aid to GMAC, the auto lender [...]

Google’s plan to roll-out home energy monitoring systems took a step towards reality Tuesday when the company announced the first round of utility partners for its PowerMeter demand-side energy management software.

The pilot program for Google’s foray into smart grid and energy management infrastructure will be available to select customers at a group of eight utilities that have installed—or are in the process of installing—smart meters. With the move, Google will be making the company’s first significant play in energy-use data, an entirely new dimension of consumer data for the company.

By having real-time information about home energy usage on a desktop (running as a Google Gadget), those using the meter will be able to use their energy more efficiently, save money on their monthly bill, and be able to monitor/reduce household carbon emissions.

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch

As we are gearing up for week full of interviews from Clearly Green Design and the Futuresonic Festival and Conference (a sneak peek photo of the Futuresonic interview above!), this week’s uber-short post is on some valuable and unique tools for business owners looking to refresh their green marketing efforts.

1. Widgetbox allows you to search for widgets and once you find a good match [...]

Things must be getting serious. At least for the planet and the environment. What else would explain the plethora of eco documentaries hitting the film festival circuit or that will hit mainstream theaters in the near future? Many of these green docu films cast a waving finger along with charts and graphs about what will happen to the planet in the future if we don’t act now. The Age of Stupid works a bit in reverse.

The Age of Stupid takes place in the year 2055 with a man called the Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) sitting in a Noah’s Ark type storage tower with a collection of famous art, pairs of animals, and enough computer servers to make Google envious.  The tower exists because the world has turned into a fiery, and flood ridden disaster area. The Archivist  searches through archived video footage to see where man went wrong after having the opportunity to change things. The film takes futuristic standpoint of looking at the present (like right now).

At the Mountain View, CA headquarters of Google, goats have been employed as a low-carbon alternative to gasoline lawnmowers. About 200 goats are used for a week at a time to trim weeds, eat grass, and clean up brush. They also fertilize as they consume.

A border collie named Jen keeps the goats in a manageable herd. They were rented from California Grazing, a company which has 800 goats for rent (also known [...]

For years, green activists were “anti-technology”, claiming that technological advances were largely responsible for the polluted state of Mother Earth. This was a fair claim, as yesterday’s technologies only looked at the bottom line, and not the resulting mess. In today’s reality, the words “green” and “technology” no longer constitute an oxymoron, as technologists have turned their attention to cleaning up the mess previous generations have made.

Larry Page, co-founder of searh engine giant Google is planning an environmentally-friendly mansion, according to reports.

Page’s green-certified home should be 6,000 square feet, hardly modest for most folks, but only a bit over half the size that he could build on the lot, according to Palo Alto Online, the website for Palo Alto Weekly, which uncovered the plans.

The home will also reportedly have solar panals, “paving that lets the rain [...]

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google believes that newspaper executives should create a “new format” for online journalism, including delivery methods that give consumers personalized content they want to read.

Google only announced its PowerMeter smart-meter platform in February (see our posts on the announcement here, here and here). But some startups are already chomping at the bit to access the platform.

In fact, two of the startups that presented at Earth2Tech’s Green:Net conference last week specifically said they are interested in using PowerMeter when it becomes available.

Editor’s note: This post was written by Rachel Barge, and originally published on Tuesday, March 31, at SolveClimate.

We all know young people have a handle on the Internet like no other demographic. My generation grew up playing computer games, had PC literacy classes in elementary school, and secretly hijacked the internet for music pirating before we were teens. We have an intuitive sense of the web – its uses, its limitations, and its future.

The nation’s young people are now harnessing that power for climate action, and we’re beating coal’s dirty PR in ways that have industry front groups shaking.

The coal industry’s American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity has poured millions of dollars into online advertising to convince Americans that “clean coal” is the solution to global warming, and it’s planning a $20 million online push this year. But type “clean coal” into Google, and up pop progressive climate blogs, spoofs and news articles.

In my own search for “clean coal,” eight out of the top 10 organic results were web sites that completely debunked the idea – only Wikipedia and an AP news article held both “sides” up. Not a single site in the top 10 was a pro-clean-coal industry page. Industry front group have had to buy their way onto Google’s front page, thanks in large part to young bloggers.