Brussels goes for green procurement

What would Christmas be without a mention of the Brussels? Greenbang doesn’t like to disappoint, so let’s wade on in there with some news from the European Commission, the world’s favourite executive body and Daily Mail irritant.

The EC has this week adopted a resolution that goes a little like this:

This Regulation requires EU institutions and central Member State government authorities to use energy efficiency criteria no less demanding than those defined in the Energy Star programme when purchasing office equipment.

So that means no more power hungry computers for the good folk of the EC.

From now on, Brussels must be greener than ever before. Which is handy - it’ll make a nice complement to the turkey then.

Environment Agency hunts for green IT

What do you get if you multiply green by green? Double plus green? Maxi green? Uber greenness? Some sort of technological overlord of green?

Well, looks like we’re about to find out for the Environment Agency is on the hunt for a green IT supplier — to the tune of £700m.

Paul Leinster, Director of Operations at the Environment Agency, said: “As a fast-changing organisation that is responding to the threat of climate change, we need the very best, innovative Information Technology (IT) services to help us.

“Our IT services need to help us face the increasing future demands of our organisation. Although our IT supports us well now, we need more flexible and adaptable systems that will allow future development. We’re looking to work with a partner who can step up to this challenge, ensuring this is the most environmentally sustainable government IT contract ever.”

How do you know you’re buying green energy?

Last week at Cisco’s C-Scape conference, one of the execs was asked a tricky question after he boasted that the company (in the UK) gets 100 per cent of its energy from renewable (wind) sources.

Chris Dedicoat, president of European markets for Cisco, said he did not know how you ensure the green electricity you buy is 100 per cent green, as it still comes through the electricity grid.

“We will pay a premium for that. We think it’s the right thing to do.”

That’s a tough one to measure. BT goes out of its way to buy green energy. But it’s not like you can see measure that it comes directly from wind turbines. You wouldn’t see any difference in the result - electricty is electricty.

Greenbang thinks there is massive potential to con the public here. Of course, there’s trust and there must be compliance regulations to make these things legit and transparent etc - but who would look at that? Who would ensure that the green energy you buy is made from renewable sources?

Answers on a postcard.

Are you Greenbanging from San Francisco?

Well not any more. But last week was amazing.

San Francisco is a wonderful city, but what Greenbang found even better was the amount of investment people are putting into green innovation.

Whereas over here in cold, dark UK land, businesses are very concerned about ‘doing their bit’ and meeting green compliance , there certainly isn’t the same level of investment in R&D and green technology there is around Silicon Valley.

What’s interesting though is that the green policies of those green companies are in many cases non-existent.

Tesla, the electric car company we went to visit, made really brought this home. There’s more coming up on that, but the guys there told us they don’t really have any green initiatives.

But you can almost forgive them for that because what they’re engineering is such a big leap forward in eco-friendly movement design.

Anyway - we’ve got interviews with Tesla, VantagePoint, BrightSource, HP and Cisco coming up. It’s been a mental few days, so sorry it’s a bit late.

GB

Solar demand outstrips silicon supply

If you’re after some get-rich-quick action, it looks like silicon production could be on the money - why, Greenbang hasn’t been so excited since she bought those magic beans! - with the news that the demand for solar panels is pushing silicon prices higher than Amy Winehouse at a Christmas party.

Says The Times:

Green demands for more solar power, which relies on silicon for the manfacture of photovoltaic cells, have pushed up the price for the element by 40 per cent this year to $1,600 (£790) per tonne.

The result is a global shortage of the highly refined crystalline polysilicon, even though it is produced from raw materials as common as sand. This is pushing up prices and forcing the world’s biggest producers to invest heavily in new refining and production capacity.

Commerical wave power now a shore thing

Tis the season to be jolly fa la la la la la la la la. And to sign a great big fat deal for commercial wave power fa la la la la la la la la.

Oh yes, it’s not all about decking boughs and donning gay apparel, some folk are using the tail end of December to strike some interesting deals, not least with the news that Finavera Renewables has concluded an agreement with a utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, to supply electricity generated from wave power.

Finavera’s grid feeding will start in 2012 and if all goes well, Finavera will up its energy creation from 2 megawatts to 100 megawatts. That’s some uppage.

News.com had a chat with company’s head guy, who gave this little nugget:

“With PG&E behind us, we will be able to go to a bank, if we can show there is no technology risk, to get financing,” said Jason Bak, Finavera’s CEO.

Quiet year ahead for green VCs

While VCs are planning a quiet year for 2008 - spending $1bn less than last year. If that’s what you call a quiet year, Greenbang will be having a practically silent one. Anyway, needless to say, green tech is still on top of the spending agenda, according to a survey of VC types on accountability-central.com.

In the survey, respondents showed growing enthusiasm for clean technologies in 2008, with 80% saying they will increase investments in this sector.

In 2007, VCs invested about $2.5 billion in cleantech companies, or 9% of all funds invested. That percentage has risen steadily from 2% in 2003. Among the largest VC investments in 2007 was the $100 million pumped into GreatPoint Energy, a Massachusetts-based company that converts coal and biological material into natural gas.

The survey goes onto say that around a quarter of those polled reckoned they will spend up to 39 billion - almost as much as was spent during the bubble. Is green tech going to the next bubble since the internet boom? Greenbang would like to know your opinion. VC funds to the winner!

Grand Prix to use 30% biofuel mix

Greenbang is wondering if there’s a word shortage this morning. Why else would you name something ‘Hiperflob’?

In anycase, Hiperflob E30 is going to be used in the grand prix next month, according to the New Zealand based new site ‘Stuff‘, and Greenbang is hoping it will become a regular thing.

“The number one priority is to produce a leading edge series, but we firmly believe we can deliver exciting racing while minimising the impact of our operations on the environment” said A1GP chief executive Pete da Silva

The cars will use a 30% biofuel mix, which is not a bad start at all.

Oil eating microbes make natural gas

Greenbang has eaten her fair share of grease but never thought there could be an environmental benefit in it. In fact, Greenbang would swear kebabs never had a positive effect on emissions, but then again, she’s not a microbe.

Scientists have apparently managed to persuade the tiny blighters to eat heavy oil and produce methane within a couple of years, and not over the thousands the process takes out in the wild..

National Geographic tells it like this:

“You’re talking a very substantial amount of energy,” said study co-author Steve Larter, a University of Calgary petroleum geologist. “It’s potentially a game-changer if it can be demonstrated.” […]

Larter said it was hard to come up with just how much energy they could produce, but he speculated it could be near the equivalent of the world’s conventional oil reserves.

Hydrogen fuel cell mystery cracked

There are many great things in life that don’t need to be fully understood to appreciated. David Lynch films, American football and how the proton exchange membrane in hydrogen fuel cells works are prominent examples.

But at least scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have gone someway to solving the latter, according to Science Daily.

“From nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), we know that Nafion® molecules have a rigid backbone structure with hair-like ‘defects’ along the chain,” [Ames Laboratory scientist] Schmidt-Rohr said, “but we didn’t know just how these molecule were arranged. Some have proposed spheroidal water clusters, others a web-like network of water channels.”

“Our theory is that these hydrophobic [water-hating] backbone structures cluster together,” he continued, “to form long rigid cylinders about 2.5 nanometers in diameter with the hydrophilic ‘hairs’ to the inside of the water-filled tubes.”

Though the cylinders in different parts of the sample may not align perfectly, they do connect to create water channels passing through the membrane material, which can be 10’s of microns thick. It’s this structure of relatively wide diameter channels, densely packed and running mostly parallel through the material that helps explain how water and protons can so easily diffuse through Nafion®, “almost as easily as water passing through water,” Schmidt-Rohr said.

So now you know.

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.