Nokia unveils super eco-phone

Greenbang likes gadgets - what right minded human being doesn’t? - and Nokia has just unveiled some gadget porn of the highest order.

The environmentally friendly badboy can be found over here, where Nokia says:

Our visionary design concept is a mobile phone and compatible sensing device that will help you stay connected to your friends and loved ones, as well as to your health and local environment. You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, thereby increasing your global environmental awareness.

Despite its rather does-what-it-says-on-the-tin approach to naming, there’s some good stuff in the Eco.

Printed electronics, reclaimed materials, alternative energy sources, sensor networks to keep you in touch with your environment. The only thing is doesn’t do is take the rubbish out for you and tuck you up at night.

Alas, like all of Greenbang’s favourite things - unicorns and MacGuyver among them - the Eco doesn’t exist yet. It’s just a concept.

Surely the boffins at Nokia could take time off from contributing 80 percent of Finland’s economy to get on with making the Eco a reality? Greenbang will even help out and make the tea.

New York mandates hybrid cabs

Joe le taxi, sung Vanessa Paradis, He doesn’t go everywhere. He doesn’t work on soda, His yellow sax knows all of the streets by heart. Quite, Vanessa, quite.

But the lovely gap-toothed better half of Johnny Depp neglected to mention Joe will soon be driving a green vehicle now New York taxis will be obliged to get 25 miles to the gallon before hitting the city’s impatient streets.

All this efficiency means, according to those in the know - and they wouldn’t be called those in the know if they didn’t know stuff - more hybrid cars. NY1 News has more:

When fully phased in, cab owners will save between $4,000 and $11,000 a year in gas costs.

The TLC’s new regulations are part of Mayor Bloomberg’s environmental plan to have an all-hybrid taxi fleet by 2012.

Runner up for quote of the day

“We call it global warming, not America warming. So let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by without having to participate in this effort. It’s a global effort.”

Mitt Romney, Republican, obviously has a clear grasp on what’s going on.

More here from AFP.

Five cleantech predictions for 2008

Greenbang is in Silicon Valley this week on a mission to meet some people in the green innovation space.

Here are some predictions from Andrew Chung of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm.

1. Solar will sustain its torrid growth, as costs continue to fall.
2. Emerging startups that benefit from the polysilicon supply shortage will face increased pressure, as the poly-Si crunch begins to ease.
3. Entrepreneurs will increasingly look beyond cell and module production.
4. China and India will begin to emerge as strong domestic markets for solar.
5. More IT entrepreneurs will continue to start or join solar ventures.

Quote of the day - John Chambers, CEO Cisco

“I think I will double the number of customers I touch in the next year.”

John Chambers talking at Cisco’s C-Scape conference in San Jose. Chambers was explaining how he would cut his travel but virtually ‘meet’ more customers through video conferencing.

Cisco CEO plugs video-conferencing for productivity

Well he would say that, wouldn’t he? The company happens to sell video conferencing kit.

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, told delegates at the C-Scape conference in San Jose that video is the way forward for business and this is what Cisco will be trying to sell.

Video has its benefits for business - it can save money on flights and mean that people can have more meetings.

But it can also be a bit boring if you were planning a dirty weekend on the back of your business trip.

Anyway - Chambers told the crowd how he went on a big business  round-the-world trip. He visited China, India, Europe and quite a few cities on the way.

A few weeks later, he then did the same virtual trip, but over video conferencing - or TelePresence as the firm calls it - which he reckons saved him a lot of time.

“Everyone says you need to need to know people before you do telepresence. I met with the head of the board of directors for Fujitsu Siemens. I’d never met him before and that was a more productive meeting than if I’d have gone to meet him.”

Quite what was said in that meeting isn’t clear. It could have been, “Hello, many thanks for my Christmas presents, John.” In which case, you’re damned right it was more productive than a flight out there.

In any case - Cisco is heavily pushing video technology onto business. TelePresence is actually a very funky bit of kit, but it does make people look a bit orange. And at $300,000 per bit of kit, that’s quite a lot of money to come out looking like Dale Winton…

Nokia starts internal carbon offsetting plan

CHINA WATCH An insider told Greenbang China that Nokia has started a new green initiative: a voluntary carbon-offsetting scheme for all flights taken on Nokia business.
As the internal email tells employees:

“Carbon offsetting a flight at Nokia is now part of the travel process. After a trip, the traveller can go to the dedicated Climate Care website for Nokia employees. When entering the flight details, its CO2 emissions are shown along with the cost of carbon offsetting the flight(s).

Carbon offsetting flights at Nokia is initially voluntary. This means that the cost to offset a flight(s) needs to be approved by cost center managers. The offset is purchased with the traveller’s credit card and a receipt printed for submission just as with any other travel expense claim.

Sounds rosy, but look again at the procedures - Nokia employees are apparentlty skeptical about it.
And does carbon offsetting really work? Not all people are convinced by carbon offsetting, and some think offsetting is more about guilt reduction than emissions reduction.

Besides, how can this small contribution actually offset the emission? As one employee learned, his next business trip between Beijing and Copenhagen (14,382 KM) produces 2.02 Tonnes of CO2, and only costs €22.05 to offset the CO2.

Offsetting as a last resort is fine. But only as a last resort - not as an optional guilt remover…

New industry guidelines make it easier and cheaper to recycle

The Environment Agency and WRAP might be trashing the rules
surrounding recycling non-packaging plastic waste by making it cheaper for companies to find alternatives to sending it to landfills, according to PRW.com

Martin Brocklehurst, head of external programmes at the EA, said: “A quality protocol saves business the time and costs associated with meeting waste regulations by clearly defining the standards required to collect, transport, store, recycle and re-use non-packaging plastic, without risking human health and the environment.”

Bush Administration edited reports on climate change

Regarding the discovery that the Bush Administration have edited scientific reports on in order to minimise the dangers of climate change (from Live News):

“It’s a thinly veiled attempt to distract attention from the administration’s efforts at the Bali summit,” said White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore.

AFP:

Bush reiterated that his administration was opposed to any international constraints on curbing carbon emissions if it undermined economic growth.

Efforts?

Energy tower could potentially produce more green energy than we need

Scientists in Israel reckon they’ve come up with the answer to our global warming problem with an energy tower full of water. Seriously.

Technion have been working on this for 25 years and it’s all based around heat rising, or rather the lower temperatures falling. Some call it convection.

InventorSpot has this to say:

Any kind of water - from a sea or drainage ditch - would be added to the top of the tower. The water would cool the hot air at the top, and the heavy cooled air would sink downwards, gathering speed as it falls, and would be used to power turbines at the tower’s base. The turbines would be connected to a generator, which produces electricity.

The researchers predict that the project would be cheap - electricity generated from this method would cost just 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is less than a third of the cost of electricity in Israel today. It’s also cheaper than solar, hydro-electric, and wind power.

The researchers are still looking for funding to continue, and Greenbang thinks that games-console manufacturers should stump up some cash. It could be in their best interests.

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.