Green Options

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.

After years of railing against special interests, I find myself presented with a quandary. Special interests are lining up behind the Smart Grid technology I love and, in doing so, risk saddling this cool program with the baggage intrinsic to special interests.

Knowledge is power, right? We’ve written before about our belief (from our own personal experiences) that one of the best motivators for going green is simply knowing what your impact is. Knowing how much energy you use, carbon you spew, or trash you generate inevitably leads to the desire to cut back (unless you’re one of those carbon-neutral zero-energy composting machines who’s already pegged out at zero. Or a Hummer driver and you just don’t care).

Well, the folks at Google announced a potentially important step on the path to real-time insight recently: development of the Google Powermeter.

What is it? Well, it’s another example of Google doing what Google does best: compiling information from a multitude of sources and displaying it in an easy-to-use, intuitive format on the web. For free. In this case, it’s your electricity usage. Before you get online and try to add the Powermeter to your iGoogle page, there’s a catch. You’ll need a Google-compatible smart meter or electricity monitoring device at your home in order to collect your energy usage information the Powermeter needs. Because it is still in testing, Google hasn’t announced yet who the device partners will be. Most of us don’t have the right devices yet, but we will soon, either courtesy of our local utilities or because we’ve gone out and purchased some of the inexpensive DIY devices that are popping up.

Google wants to help folks use less power by empowering them with real time information about their energy usage.

[Remix of a Creative Commons photo by John Wilson]

There’s a famous quote from Lord Kelvin: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” When it comes to lowering your energy consumption, Google says, “You CAN measure it, you CAN improve it.” Folks who monitor their home energy usage are, on average, able to reduce their consumption by 5-15%. That adds up! For every six households that save the median amount of energy through monitoring, it’s the equivalent of taking one car off the road. Imagine if, instead of just six, there were millions of households! That’s Google’s plan.

President Obama’s stated desire to invest in smart-grid and broadband infrastructure syncs nicely with Google’s desire to improve the nation’s broadband infrastructure and build a smarter grid.

Are you like millions of others who assume that an online business, just by virtue of being online, translates to having a lower carbon footprint? If so, then you are in for a shock. Although this is a fairly common assumption, the truth is that internet powered businesses often have a higher energy consumption requirements than offline businesses and so might have a long way to go before they can become green.