Boulder Xcel’s with smart grid city

When Greenbang heard that the city of Boulder was getting smart, she wasn’t sure what Colorado had other bits of America were somewhat lacking in, notably the area around Paris Hilton. Still, it turns out that it’s not an injection of brain food is not what’s on the menu for Boulder, it’s a smart electricity system.

Courtesy of Xcel Energy, the smart grid system will help the city’s citizens cut down their power consumption and even switch off energy-hogging devices remotely.

The system will also see the “integration of infrastructure to support easily dispatched distributed generation technologies (such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with vehicle-to-grid technology; battery systems; wind turbines; and solar panels).”

According to Xcel, the system will go live over the coming years and will be partly funded by itself and partly through government grants. The whole thing should come in around $100 million.

Here’s why Boulder is the lucky city:

In addition to its geographic concentration, ideal size and access to all grid components, Boulder was selected as the Smart Grid City because it is home to the University of Colorado and several federal institutions, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which already is involved in smart grid efforts for the federal government.

Brown begs EU to cut taxes on green goods

Is Brown the new green? Aside from his nominal green efforts on this week’s budget, PM Gordon Brown, texture like sun, has promised to have a good old chat with the EU Council and put on his very best thumbscrews to get them to lower taxes on green products.

“I have submitted a proposal.. that we look at how we can give new incentives for people to use environmentally-friendly products and processes. There is a debate about how we price products that are making advances in being environmentally-friendly with low carbon emissions. There are many items that are on sale at the moment that if the VAT rate were reduced could encourage the environmentally-friendly product and the environmentally-friendly process.”

And just what are these products and processes? They include, but aren’t restricted to light bulbs, household materials and fridges.

Apparently, says our Gord, the EU is leading the world on carbon capture, clean coal and changes in people’s behaviour to the good of the environment. If Europe had a national anthem, Greenbang would be humming it and saluting. If anyone fancies submitting suggestions for that anthem, you’re very welcome. Greenbang’s money’s on anything by the Venga Boys.

Oh XXXX - Fosters has launched eco-lager

My word. That took guts. Smack in the faces of those people who love that term “greenwash”, Fosters has launched its own carbon neutral beer.

Now hang on a minute, you might be thinking - if the beer is carbonated, surely it can’t be carbon neutral.

But you would be told to shut up by those marketing gurus who came up with the campaign.

The beer, Cascade Green, is apparently backed by a $1m (Aus) advertising campaign, the magazine BandT tells us:

“According to Foster’s Cascade Green is 100% carbon neutral from the picking of the hops to the recycling of the bottle. The bottle’s packaging includes the use of the lightest weight, highest recycled content glass bottle currently available in Australia, while the 100% recycled carton is printed with two colour biodegradable vegetable inks.”

Women no longer want flowers for Valentine’s Day

Greenbang went for a swim this morning. He did about 30 lengths and called it a day.

When he left the pool to get dressed, he realised he’d forgotten his towel.

Bugger.

Suddenly he felt like he was back at school in PE class, as there was only one thing to do – go and ask for a towel from the trog box (lost property).

The only towel left, to the manager’s amusement, was a skanky, filth-ridden cloth. There was no choice but to ‘damp pat’ with the towel, get dressed and leave quickly.

He felt dirty. Very dirty. And embarrassed.

And then he remembered he had forgotten to buy flowers for Valentine’s Day. Dammit. It was turning out to be a bad day.

But when he got home, Greenbang’s China writer, Yan Yan, emailed saying that women no longer want flowers for Valentine’s – they just ain’t green. They want their men to spend time with them.

What a great excuse. Superb in fact. That will do nicely. Greenbang started planning the sneaky talk and a nice evening in.

And here is what Yan Yan writes:

Gentlemen, you might think ladies would like flowers on Valentine’s Day. Well, the ladies’ answer may surprise you. According to a survey conducted by an environmental group based in Hong Kong, among 255 female respondents, more than 23% of them say they would rather not to have flowers on Valentine’s, and 52% don’t care about receiving flowers at all, simply because most ladies think flowers are impractical and overpriced.

See more in Chinanews.com

Green Sense, the eco group who conducted this survey, aims to tell couples in Hong Kong that sending flowers is not a green way to show your love. Most flowers sold in Hong Kong are imported by air from Holland or New Zealand, and the carbon emission of a single flight from Holland to Hong Kong is 1.35 tonnes.

Besides, a bouquet can only last for a few days, and the old flowers cannot be turned into organic manure because Hong Kong lacks the right disposal system.

Instead, gentlemen should spend more time with the ones they love or a potted plant would be a good idea, says Green Sense.

In this case, that’s ideal. Well maybe not a night in with a potted plant - but thanks Green Sense, you bunch of killjoys.

Wal-Mart: Greener products don’t cause higher prices

If you want greener goods, do you have to flash the cash? Not necessarily, Wal-Mart’s director of sustainability reckons. Says the fella on Reuters:

“Bad quality products create waste, and so having tighter standards on the social side, on the environmental side and on the quality side will reduce waste,” Matt Kistler, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of sustainability, said in an interview.[...]

“We are looking at a very small amount of dollars and the savings in the supply chain that we are finding because of sustainability in some cases will more than offset the incremental costs of what we are paying for a better quality item.”

Being the behemoth that it is, Wal-Mart has to do very little to have a big impact. It’s mandating its suppliers cut back packaging by five percent by 2013 and saved itself a shedload of cash in the process. Let’s hope some of that gets passed onto consumers - what better way to stoke enthusiasm for sustainability?

Borders makes your software CD at the till

We’ve just had word that Borders - the book shop on Oxford Street, anyway - has launched a software on demand service.

Basically, customers walking into the bookstore can choose a title they wish to purchase, go to the till and the software (games, learning, pc software etc. etc.) is then burnt on demand at the time of purchase, the paper (for use as DVD cover) is also printed there and then and when required.

They reckon, “it is not only cuts the supply chain but is very eco-friendly as there is no wasted stock, no deliveries of products, no wasted paper.

Cartoon - the ease of carbon trading

Insurance industry cashes in on alternative energy

GCube is an independent insurance agency that works in the renewable energy space.

The business underwrites contracts worth up to $600m associated with the generation of renewable energy.

A spokesman for the company said: “Traditionally the big boys in insurance would underwrite these sorts of renewable projects but because they don’t understand the intricacies of the sector - they’d simply pay out to the customer when something went wrong – a frequent occurrence when dealing with new technology operating in extreme weather locations.

“However, while this meant that the project wasn’t out of pocket in the short term, it did nothing to actually help encourage the initiatives to develop. Indeed for the customer, the end result was a further headache of higher premiums as the insurance company looked to recover some of its costs further down the line…

“So instead of simply throwing money at a project when it goes wrong, GCube offers something new. It employs people who know how the industry actually works. This means that if, for instance, a blade on a wind turbine breaks, the automatic response is not simply to replace the entire unit but instead the team will advise on whether the blade can be repaired, offer advice on who can carry out the work and ultimately get the job done quickly.”

Bottom line is that instead of buying a replacement unit (£200k plus) repairs can be carried out and some serious money can be saved…

The company will be based in London and Newport Beach, California, USA with plans to open offices in the Mid-West and East Coast USA.
It will work in several energy sectors – wind, biofuels, hydroelectric, solar, and wave/tidal energy.

“In the UK, only three percent of our total energy output comes from renewable energy sources,” commented Fraser McLachlan, Chief Executive Officer, GCube. “However this is likely to undergo dramatic development in order to meet the government’s ambitious 2020 target in which 20 percent of the country’s energy comes from renewable sources.“

Solar power stored in melted salt

And you thought salt was just for putting on chips or annoying slugs with. That’s so salt 1.0. Pah. Salt has far more in its future. Salt could one day capture and store the sun’s energy and, who knows, start its own religion. (Greenbang may be guessing about the last bit.)

Aerospace manufacturer Hamilton Sundstrand, with some help from its VC friends, is developing a system to use molten salt to retain solar energy. Here comes the science bit (courtesy of Newsday), concentrate:

Hamilton Sundstrand and US Renewables Group, which will handle financing and project management, say the plan’s use of molten salt overcomes the problem of storing solar power collected on sunny days, but is needed at night or during cloudy days.
Molten salt, a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate, circulates through a central receiver, is heated by sunlight to more than 1,000 degrees, stored in a tank and dispatched into a steam generator. The steam drives a turbine that generates electricity. The cooled salt re-circulates and the process begins again.

While Hamilton Sundstrand is keeping quiet on how much developing the spiffy new technology will cost, the firm reckons on making $1 billion over 10 to 15 years. It’s enough to make a VC’s eyes water.

Every Toyota to sell with hybrid option

It is assumed by many that hybrid cars are the puppy’s privates when it comes to eco-friendly cars.

Not so, according to a Scandanavian study we’re about to blog about.

But first - this gem from AutoBlogGreen - a very good resource on eco-cars.

During his New Year’s Speech, Toyota’s CEO Katsuaki Watanabe announced some highlights about the future plans of his company. The most spectacular is the one we used as a headline: Each Toyota model will have a hybrid powertrain available so that Toyota can reach the goal of selling a million hybrids per year. Watanabe stated that since 1997, Toyota has saved 5 million CO2 tons from the atmosphere thanks to the marque’s 1.25 million hybrids already on the road.

Greenbang tracks the explosion of the environmental industry, reporting on news of green innovation and thought leadership.

We blog on this rather than the environmental problems of the world because we are interested in the answers to climate change.