Waterpebble gets water-wasters out of the shower

by Leslie Katz:

It’s easy to lose track of how long your shower’s getting–especially when it’s 10 degrees out and the only thing that roused you from bed was the vision of a steamy cascade of water. Well, Waterpebble is here to guilt you out of your wasteful ways.

The little round device monitors water going down the drain. It records the length of your first Waterpebble shower and uses that as a benchmark, then indicating via a series of gently flashing “traffic lights” when you need to get out of the shower already! Green tells you to start showering, amber means you’re halfway through, and red means you should get ready to brave the icy air. (Wait, where’s the light that tells you to stop singing before everyone in the house suffers permanent hearing loss?)

Anyway, each time you shower, Waterpebble automatically reduces your bathing time by a fraction, helping you to save water–and hopefully money.

Paul Priestman, director of U.K. design firm Priestmangoode, got the idea for Watterpebble from a hotel bathroom sign encouraging guests to use water sparingly.

The battery will last for four to six months with average use and cannot be reused, but Waterpebble can be broken apart once it’s washed up and the plastics and electronics separated and recycled. The gadget costs about $5, plus shipping.

Most posters to Waterpebble’s site like the idea: “The guilt trip works, already saving five minutes;” “It’s like a little disco each time I have a shower! Looking forward to my next water bill…”

But at least one poster thinks Watterpebble works against its green aims: “First of all, natural resources are wasted for the production of it, secondly you don’t need it, and last but not least, recycling it is also bad for the environment. Instead, take your water-resistant watch with you and check how much time you need under the shower, then the next time just use half of the time.”

Tuning the energy innovation engine at MIT

by Martin LaMonica:

BOSTON–The MIT Energy Conference here on Saturday covered a little bit of everything–”China speed,” climate change, financing gaps, government policy, nuclear and natural gas, and, of course, science experiments–as entrepreneurs, business people, and academics tried to get their arms around big-picture energy challenges.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has become a hotbed for clean-energy innovation over the past four years, attracting students and faculty to the field, some of whom have spun out promising companies.

At a showcase there, local companies and researchers working in wind, solar, biofuels, storage, and efficiency displayed some of their ongoing work. But at the conference, discussion focused more on conventional energy sources, policy, and financing.

Science fiction?
The nature of global energy picture is well understood: growing demand in coming years, particularly from developing countries, is expected to result in more fossil fuel consumption and continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Governments around the world are expected to devise policies that improve national security by cutting imports of oil and other fuels.

But Nobuo Tanaka, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, gave a lunchtime talk that cast those general trends into actual numbers. And the outlook, to put it gently, is sobering. The IEA, which was established after the oil shocks of the 1970s to manage the strategic oil reserves for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries, compiles statistics on energy and future projections for supply and demand.

Stabilizing carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million in the atmosphere–a level that is projected to result in an average global temperature rise of about two degrees Celsius–would require an “energy and environment revolution” with investment in the trillions of dollars, Tanaka said.

Among the technology assumptions in that scenario are a cost on carbon emissions, energy efficiency measures at large scale, and a massive build-out of low-polluting energy generation. That includes the construction of 18 nuclear power plants, 17,000 wind turbines, two or three huge hydroelectric dam projects, and 94 concentrating solar power plants every year between now and 2030.

“This is the scale and magnitude of the infrastructure investment…Can we do that? he said. Without large-scale deployment, the target of 450 parts per million is “science fiction,” Tanaka said.

Eco-friendly garage opens in Boulder

BOULDER, Colo. - They’ll change your oil, but the guys behind Boulder-based Green Garage are trying to change a lot more.

For starters, they want to make auto services eco-friendly. ”

We recycle everything; the tires, the oil, the fuel,” technician and self-professed ‘car-hugger’ Ernie Lavigne told us.

They’re trying to change the whole of idea of customer service in auto repair by coming to their customers’ offices and homes to diagnose cars, and repair them while their customers are at work.

And they want to completely overhaul what it means to get your car tunes up. The company will match your vehicle to new technologies that will make the vehicle more gas and energy efficient.

And (gasp) they want to keep your car away from the mechanic as long as possible.

“The traditional auto service policy is that we want to see you as often as possible, and we don’t think that’s environmentally smart or what customers want at all,” Green Garage founder Ryan Ferrero said.

“We’ve advanced, technologies have advanced.”

At a launch party this week hosted by the Boulder Advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Lavigne showed off the kind of technologies that Green Garage will be selling.

High tech spark plugs, for starters.

“It actually lowers your emissions, raises your fuel economy, it’s a great thing,” Lavigne pointed out.

You can fill your tires with nitrogen instead of compressed air.

“With nitrogen, it’s a larger molecule. It doesn’t leak out. You keep your pressure,” Lavigne said.

There’s also an oil filter that could go almost two years between oil changes.

“(With) our filter…you will not need your oil changed from 24 to 30 thousand miles,” Lavigne said. “But you will need to change the filter.”

The Green Garage is a strong enough sell that advertising guru Alex Bogusky has invested in the project.

“I was excited to figure out how I could be involved,” Bogusky said.

The key, he says, is that many people want to be “green” with their cars but can’t afford a Hybrid. And no one likes going to the mechanic anyway.

“No one looks forward to going to the garage,” Bogusky told us. “Someone’s going to come in and revolutionize it. You can draw parallels between what Green Garage could do for automotive and what Whole Foods did for organic”

Green Garage is now open in Boulder. Their tune up, or “intervention” packages start at $69 and go up to $299. But, they say, drivers will make the money back in better gas mileage in a little over a year.

You can visit their web site at http://www.greengarage.com/

Green tech seeks its ‘Netscape moment’

by Martin LaMonica:

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–If you’re wondering what the next big thing in green tech will be, this is a good place to look.

The ARPA-E Summit, a conference designed to showcase potential breakthrough clean-energy technologies, started on Monday, attracting some 1,700 investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers all vying to reinvent the energy infrastructure to be cleaner and more efficient.

Given the makeup of the group, the mood is optimistic that new technologies can shake up even the slow-moving energy business. At the conference, scientists and entrepreneurs showed off early-stage ideas, such as kinetic energy storage systems or methods for low-cost solar power.

At the same time, there’s an undercurrent of concern. Attendees here appear convinced that clean energy industries–everything from algae fuels to efficient LED lighting–will be the engine of economic growth in the future. But they also know that it will be a competitive global race. And few of the experts here, it seems, believe that the U.S. is firing on all cylinders when it comes to converting to a cleaner energy system.

In addition to technology breakthroughs, the other key pieces to the puzzle–financing and a cohesive energy policy–need work before green tech can move from niche to mainstream, according to some of the speakers.

“We need to have a Netscape-like moment when a company goes public and its potential and success infects the average American, so that there’s a change in attitude toward this essential product–energy,” said John Doerr, the famed venture capitalist from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, during a panel on Tuesday. “When that happens, pardon the pun, it will be electrifying.”

Right now, Doerr said the U.S. simply isn’t matching the speed of transition in energy in other countries. China’s cars are already 30 percent more efficient, the government spent 10 times as much stimulus money as the U.S. on energy technologies, and its leaders, most of whom are engineers, have a five-year plan. In another panel, Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta said that China is spending $12 million a minute on clean-energy research and development.

By contrast, Doerr said that the U.S. energy policy could be called the “sum of all lobbyists,” a process that yields an inconsistent set of rules and chronic underfunding of research and development. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt said during a talk that U.S. policies in many energy areas, including coal and nuclear, are unclear.

In general, green-technology investors and entrepreneurs argue that putting a price on carbon emissions will act as an incentive to businesses to develop low-carbon energy. Also, many argue that utility regulations need to change so that all utilities have an incentive to use energy more efficiently.

Financing, meanwhile, remains a challenge for many budding green-tech companies because many businesses require hundreds of millions of dollars to produce their products at scale. During a panel, Andy Karsner, the CEO of Manifest Energy and a former Department of Energy official, said that renewable energy is starting to scale up but not in the U.S., in part because of the financial environment.

Tech showcase
The technology side of the picture is more optimistic. On Tuesday, a handful of companies and researchers, who are vying for or have received research grants from ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), presented results of their ongoing work.

For example, MIT Professor Daniel Nocera described the solar-power hydrogen storage system that his company Sun Catalytix is developing. Meanwhile, FloDesign Wind Turbine CEO Lars Anderson said his company is making progress in bringing the company’s jet-engine-like wind turbine to market.

There was also a showcase of dozens of companies working on wide range of energy-related technologies, including solid state batteries, LED lighting, efficient car engines, and magnesium plates that can store hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles.

The ARPA-E agency was first funded last year with a $400 million budget with a goal of nurturing breakthrough energy technologies. ARPA-E Director Arun Majumdar said that the agency is structured to yield “home runs” by focusing research in different areas, such as grid storage or carbon capture and storage, which can be developed within the next three to five years.

On Tuesday, it opened additional grant solicitations in grid storage to complement wind and solar power, energy efficient air conditioning, and efficient power electronics for wind turbines or LED lighting.

While entrepreneurs and scientist toil away on these early-stage ideas, many of the attendees are closely watching the development of green-tech companies now reaching the point of commercialization. Lithium ion battery company A123 Systems went public last year, and this year a few more companies, including electric carmaker Tesla Motors and solar company Solyndra, are hoping to raise money on the stock market.

The success of these early companies, although still not global powerhouses, shows that new technologies are penetrating the market faster than many would have predicted five to eight years ago, said Stephan Dolezalek, who heads the clean tech practice at VantagePoint Ventures.

But to make a large-scale impact, the industry still needs a handful of enduring success stories, said Don Paul, the executive director of the University of Southern California Energy Institute. “It will be a complex ecology with different players,” he said. “But ultimately for us to compete in the world, we must have global players because that is what is out there.”

SunPower sets 32 MW supply deal with Toshiba

NEW YORK (Reuters) - SunPower Corp said on Monday it has signed a supply agreement with Toshiba Corp to supply the Japanese company with 32 megawatts of solar panels this year.

The deal, for which no financial details were released, will “form the cornerstone” of Toshiba’s new residential solar offering in Japan, SunPower said in a release.

SunPower is one of the world’s largest producers of the solar photovoltaic equipment that turns sunlight into electricity, and its modules are among the most efficient in the industry.

The Japanese solar market is expected to grow sharply in coming years because of the government’s aggressive targets to increase the growth of renewable energy sources by 2020.

SunPower nearly doubled production of its high-efficiency solar cells and panels from 2008 to 2009, with 2009 cell production of approximately 400 megawatts.

In 2010, the company intends to expand production further with new manufacturing operations in Malaysia, the United States and Europe.

Google develops prototype mirror for solar energy

Google has developed a prototype for a new mirror technology that could cut by half the cost of building a solar thermal plant, the company’s green energy czar said on Friday.

Bill Weihl said that if development and testing go well, he could see the product being ready in one to three years.

“Things have progressed,” Weihl said in an interview. “We have an internal prototype.”

Google has been looking at unusual materials for the mirror’s reflective surface and the substrate on which the mirror is mounted.

In solar thermal technology, the sun’s energy is used to heat a substance that produces steam to run a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun’s rays on the heated substance.

The Internet search engine company, which has been investing in companies and doing research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy, wants to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that track the sun.

“There is a decent chance that in a small number of years, we could have a 2-X reduction in cost,” he said.

Global companies are increasingly investing in green technology as the world grapples with global warming and governments strive to implement regulations that could limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Google has invested in two solar thermal companies, eSolar and BrightSource, with which it has discussed the new mirror technology, Weihl said.

He said the technology was not at a stage where it could be tested externally, but he added that both eSolar and BrightSource were interested in it.

“If it works, it would absolutely be something they would use,” he said.

Your local park: Actually not that bad for the planet

by Candace Lombardi:

A report asserting that well-maintained parks in the Irvine, Calif., area were technically polluting the environment has been amended and its official results have been re-released.

The study led by Amy Townsend-Small, an Earth system science postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Irvine, originally reported last month that the amount of carbon emissions emitted from lawn-related maintenance was roughly four times the amount of carbon naturally collected and stored by the lawn itself.

But that is not true.

Due to an error in data in the study, the amount of emissions given off by the plethora of park maintenance has actually been found to be similar to or greater than the amount of carbon naturally collected and store by the lawn itself.

CNET News was contacted Friday by the media relations department of UC Irvine and made aware of the amended study.

“The original version of this news release, distributed January 19, has been updated here to reflect the correction of a spreadsheet error in the scientific paper regarding carbon dioxide emissions during lawn maintenance. Please update your stories accordingly,” the e-mailed statement said.

The rest of Townsend-Small’s data, which can be found in the original CNET News article (also corrected to reflect the new data) is still accurate.

UC Irvine did not respond to a request for further information regarding the new carbon-emissions statistics.

E-waste to hit developing world hard

Waste from discarded electronics will rise dramatically in the developing world within a decade, with computer waste in India alone to grow by 500 percent from 2007 levels by 2020, a U.N. study released Monday said.

E-waste–a term describing electronics including phones, printers, televisions, refrigerators and other appliances–grows globally by 40 million metric tones a year. Toxins are emitted when it is improperly burned by scavengers looking for valuable components, such as copper and gold.

A report released in Bali on Monday (PDF) by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) predicted that by 2020, e-waste from computers would grow by up to 400 percent from 2007 levels in China and South Africa.

“This report gives new urgency to establishing ambitious, formal and regulated processes for collecting and managing e-waste via the setting up of large, efficient facilities in China,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP.

“China is not alone in facing a serious challenge. India, Brazil, Mexico and others may also face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling is left to the vagaries of the informal sector,” he said in the report.

The report, co-authored by EMPA of Switzerland, specialty materials group Umicore and the United Nations University, said that the United States is the biggest producer of e-waste, creating around 3 million metric tons a year.

Close behind is China, which produces around 2.3 million metric tons domestically and is where a lot of the developed world’s e-waste is sent, EMPA said.

EMPA is the research institute for material science and technology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

The study predicted that mobile phone waste in China would be about seven times higher than 2007 levels by 2020, while in India it would be about 18 times higher.

The report advocated transporting some e-waste, such as circuit boards and batteries, from poorer countries to OECD-level countries better equipped to dispose of them properly.

Indonesian environment minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said in a speech on Monday that Indonesia was vulnerable to illegal trafficking in hazardous waste.

Jim Puckett from the U.S.-based NGO Basel Action Network, which tracks illegal trafficking in e-waste, said Indonesian authorities recently discovered a shipment of nine 40-foot shipping containers of e-waste that had been sent from the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

“They were full of hand-stacked cathode ray tubes, computer monitors, basically. It was old junk that people wanted to get rid of because everyone wants flat-screens now,” he said.

He said Indonesian authorities sent the shipment back.

If properly managed, though, e-waste represented a business opportunity, said Konrad Osterwalder, rector of the United Nations University.

“This report outlines smart new technologies and mechanisms which, combined with national and international policies, can transform waste into assets, creating new businesses with decent green jobs.

“In the process, countries can help cut pollution linked with mining and manufacturing, and with the disposal of old devices,” he said.

New York Fashion Week tries on “green”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Fashion Week is the place to spot new trends and, if this season’s event is any indication, going green is definitely in style.

Sponsor Mercedes-Benz aimed for the semi-annual event to be carbon neutral for the first time, and several of the designers unveiling fall and winter 2010 collections emphasized organic materials and sustainable designs.

Mercedes-Benz said it bought enough carbon offsets to have net zero carbon emissions at the huge tents erected in Manhattan’s Bryant Park, where many of the shows are staged and require power and heat.

“Fashion is using a lot of fuel and heat. It’s a win-win all around,” said Fern Mallis, senior vice president of IMG Fashion which organizes the event.

Some observers noted a greener Fashion Week is a sign that ecological consciousness is no longer a fringe interest.

“This whole issue of sustainability has become very mainstream now,” said Patti Pao, founder of the New York City-based market research firm Pao Principle.

“It’s become something that is sort of chic and OK to talk about, and so the fashion industry has embraced that and has really taken that cause … under their wing,” she said.

SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CLOTHING

Green chic was evident on the runways, where designers showcased sustainable design from the recycled metal jewelry of Native American Maria Samora to c. marchuska’s ecologically and socially conscious clothing line.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection partnered with Aveda, maker of skin and hair products, to help reduce consumption of bottled water by setting up tap water stations for Fashion Week attendees.

The green effort was not without its critics.

Dahlia Algunaim, visiting Fashion Week from her home in California, said she was puzzled by most of the tap water stations that were located several blocks from the shows and posed a painful walk for someone like her, clad in tall boots.

“I wouldn’t walk six blocks to have tap water… not in these shoes,” she said.

RUM, COOKIES, DRY SHAMPOO

Others suggested designers send invitations via email, rather than paper, and noted many of the goodies given free to attendees probably end up as trash.

This season, the Mercedes-Benz goodie bag contained a keychain, tiny bottles of rum, cookies, dry shampoo, an iron, a suitbag, earbuds, a bottle of nasal sanitizer and a stain remover kit, among other things.

“I just don’t pick them up because I just know that it’s going to go to waste,” said Erica Allen, an assistant at BCBG.

(Additional reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)

Houston aims to be electric car capital

Houston, nicknamed the Petro Metro for the profusion of oil and gas companies that dot its skyline, is an unlikely host for an electric-car revolution.

But the fourth-biggest U.S. city, which claims the title of the “Energy Capital of the World,” is competing with cities like San Francisco to be the nation’s electric car capital.

“We are the Petro Metro but we are also a car city,” said newly elected Mayor Annise Parker, speaking at an event on February 5 to promote the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric, five-passenger vehicle that can travel 100 miles on a single charge. “To have an electric vehicle that appeals to a car culture will make the real difference for market penetration.”

Cities like Houston and San Francisco are forging partnerships with automakers and power companies to make the vision a reality.

In Houston, for instance, Japanese-based Nissan Motor has signed a deal where the city and power provider Reliant, a unit of NRG Energy, will build a handful of public-charging stations to allow electric car drivers to recharge their cars.

Nissan has signed agreements with other cities like San Diego, Seattle, and Orlando and states like Tennessee and Oregon to ensure that public-charging stations are built.

Such agreements are key to easing skeptical consumers’ fears of running out of juice if their car batteries run low before they can reach their garage charging stations.

For beleaguered U.S. automakers like General Motors and Ford Motor, electric cars could be a way to boost shrinking market share.

“Detroit needs something to be exciting and new,” said William Hederman, a senior vice president at Concept Capital’s Washington Research Group.

General Motors’ highly-anticipated battery-powered Chevy Volt hits showrooms in November, about the same time that Nissan begins U.S. sales of the Leaf.

Next Page »