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Dublin taps into real-time data to ease traffic congestion

admin — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:12:16 +0000

Officials in Dublin are hoping to solve the Irish city’s traffic problems by making smarter use of data.

Using systems built with the help of IBM, the city is now streaming in masses of data from multiple sources to build a digital map of traffic, especially the location of public buses, in real time.

This stream of “big data” — from bus timetables, closed-circuit television cameras, traffic detectors and GPS devices on board 1,000 city buses — is being used build a digital, real-time map of which vehicles are where on Dublin’s roadways. Coupled with improved reporting procedures, this information is designed to help city officials find the best ways to reduce transport congestion.

“Until recently we had a fragmented view of the overall health and real-time status of Dublin’s transport network, making it very difficult to identify traffic congestion in its early stages because the causes of a delay had often moved on,” said Brendan O’Brien, head of technical services for the city’s Roads and Traffic Department. “As a result of the research collaboration we now have a better idea of how multiple data can be merged from across different sources … ”

By watching traffic data in real time, for example, city officials have discovered that, during rush hour, some buses were being passed by other buses that had left the same spot at a later time. Working with IBM researchers, the city is now trying to pinpoint why “headways” — the distance or time between buses — are crossing like this, and what can be done to fix the problem.

Dublin is home to IBM’s first Smarter Cities Technology Center, established in 2010 with the goal of helping cities around the world better understand and manage systems like transport, water, communication and energy.

“Constantly in motion, cities generate enormous amounts of data that can help officials deliver a better quality of life for … citizens and build competitive advantage with the right tools,” said Francesco Calabrese, an IBM “Smarter Urban Dynamics” researcher in Dublin. “Dublin is becoming a smarter city by harnessing Big Data, extracting actionable insights from its transport data and delivering these instantly to decision makers so they can improve traffic flow and awareness of how to prepare for their future transportation need.”

Next month, Dublin is also scheduled to host the ninth ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) Congress. Attendees at the gathering are expected to discuss such issues as how cloud computing can help with transport planning and how intelligent transport systems can help cut fuel use and carbon emissions.

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Cheap soy catalyst produces hydrogen fuel

admin — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:07:38 +0000

A US research team inspired by the work of twin sisters from a New York high school has identified a low-cost but effective catalyst that could replace expensive platinum for hydrogen production.

Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean-burning, efficient fuel that could power cars and fuel cells for energy storage. However, the process of splitting hydrogen from water can be costly, especially when using a platinum catalyst.

A new catalyst tested by a research team at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is not only cheaper than platinum, but performs better in hydrogen production. The team’s work is based on a research project by twin high-school seniors Shilpa and Shweta Iyer, who enrolled in a mentorship program at Brookhaven to study environmentally friendly catalysts that could be used to produce hydrogen.

Their research led them to settle on a catalyst made with soybean proteins and ammonium molybdate. Their findings with the Brookhaven team have been published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

“This paper reports the ‘hard science’ from what started as the Iyer twins’ research project and has resulted in the best-performing, non-noble-metal-containing hydrogen evolution catalyst yet known — even better than bulk platinum metal,” said Brookhaven researcher James Muckerman.

To make the catalyst, the team ground soybeans into a powder, mixed the powder with ammonium molybdate in water, then dried and heated the samples in the presence of inert argon gas.

“A subsequent high temperature treatment (carburization) induced a reaction between molybdenum and the carbon and nitrogen components of the soybeans to produce molybdenum carbides and molybdenum nitrides,” said Brookhaven chemist Wei-Fu Chen, who helped supervise the Iyer twins’ research. “The process is simple, economical, and environmentally friendly.”

“We used electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction to see the interaction between soybeans and molybdenum on a molecular level,” Shweta said. “These advanced imaging technologies helped us understand why the catalyst is so effective.”

Shilpa and Shweta continue to experiment with their molybdenum-soy-based catalyst — dubbed MoSoy — including combining the hydrogen-producing setup with a solar cell. They hope such an arrangement could be used anywhere that has access to sunlight, even in hard-to-reach locations such as small villages in countries without an extensive power grid.

The sisters are also studying other biomass materials and metals to see if they can improve the durability of their model.

“The hard work pays off a million times over,” Shilpa said. “This has been the most rewarding experience, and I hope our technology has an impact on the future of renewable energy. Getting to share this accomplishment with my sister, through all the new ideas and breakthroughs and competitions, makes the experience even more amazing.”

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Meet the ‘best for the world’ businesses

admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:04:01 +0000

Businesses that have won B Corporation certification for their social and environmental impact aren’t necessarily the best in the world, but they are among the best for the world, the organization asserts.

The B Corporation, which assesses companies on social and environmental performance, has come out with its 2013 list of Best for the World Honorees. Categorized by size — mid-size, small or micro — this year’s “best-for” businesses include:

Echale a Tu Casa, a social housing production company based in Mexico City, which earned a top overall B score of 167 in the mid-size business (50-plus employees) category;
Impact Makers, a Virginia-based IT and management consulting service focused on the healthcare industry, with a top overall B score of 159 in the small business (10 to 49 employees); and
One Earth Designs, a company based in Hong Kong that develops and markets technologies like solar ovens and generators for people without access to clean and affordable energy. It earned a top overall B score of 165 in the micro business (0 to nine employees) category.

“All B Corps strive to be the best for the world,” notes the B Corporation’s website. “They set the bar for businesses seeking to have a positive social and environmental impact, scoring 25% higher than nearly 2,000 other sustainable businesses on the B Impact Assessment. By scoring in the top 10% of all B Corps, the (honorees) truly are the Best of the Best.”

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Big data: It isn’t just for big business anymore

admin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:08:33 +0000

There’s a reason we call today’s plethora of information “big data.” With almost every action and transaction we engage in leaving a digital trail, we’re generating an unprecedented amount of data – 2.5 quintillion bytes’ worth – every day.

If that doesn’t compute, think about it this way: a full 90 percent of the data out there today has been created in just the past two years.

While the amount of information available today is mind-bogglingly big, insights from that information are available to more than just big corporations with global IT resources. Thanks especially to ever-more-affordable cloud computing, small- and medium-sized companies can also mine mounds of data for new sources of business intelligence.

“All companies have big data whether they realize it or not,” noted Stefan Groschupf, CEO of a data analytics company, in Forbes.

Small businesses in particular are “starving for the insights,” added another analytics exec.

So where does a small company’s big data lie? One key locale is online: any business with a website automatically generates megabytes and gigabytes of information: who’s visiting the site, where they’re coming from, how long they stay, which pages they browse. And all this is before even a single visitor sends you an email, downloads a brochure or orders a product from your catalog.

As soon as a browser becomes a customer – online or off – you gather even more valuable data that can be analyzed to fine-tune your marketing and business strategies. What time do most people tend to buy? Which price points are most popular? How many first-time customers become repeat buyers? How frequently do they buy?

A farm-to-table restaurant near Boston, for example, uses an online service to analyze payment data. This helps it identify when to send customers personalized messages ahead of special occasions, or when a favorite food item becomes available.

“Say it’s one of our best customers and they come every Saturday night and they love the salmon dish,” Farmstead Table owner Chad Burns tells Reuters. “If I get salmon in, I can send them a note and let them know I have their favorite dish.”

And then there’s the additional data available to small- and medium-sized businesses through their social media activities. In this Forbes article, data scientist Seshu Edala gives the example of a bakery that one day notices a major spike in traffic to its web page for strawberry shortcake. Checking the Facebook insights report, the bakery owner traces the traffic jump to a customer post that says, “Love the strawberry shortcake and the tiramisu but the tiramisu is pricey.” Using those insights, the owner can then do more to promote the bakery’s shortcake online, as well as offer a coupon for a discounted price on tiramisu.

Consolidating data from multiple sources can help a business generate even better insights.

For instance, the Cincinnati Zoo once used four separate point-of-sale systems to handle admissions, membership, retail sales and food sales. By bringing these onto a single platform with the help of IBM and BrightStar Partners, and then analyzing the resulting data, it was able to identify a number of ways to increase sales and cut expenses. One strategy – targeting potential visitors in specific zip codes – led to a 4.2-percent increase in ticket sales. Another change – optimizing the choice of available food items and planning better for peak purchase times – generated even greater revenues through a 25-percent hike in food sales.

“(W)e were able to increase our in-park spending by as much as 25 percent by utilizing 360 degree customer views,” said John Lucas, the zoo’s director of park operations. “It was instant payback.”

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

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How is a social business a better business?

admin — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 04:26:09 +0000

We’ve all heard the stats about the explosion of social media users. One-billion-plus on Facebook. One hundred seventy-five million Tweets a day. An expected 5 billion professional searches on LinkedIn in 2012.

But that’s all mostly for Justin Bieber fans, politics junkies, people who like to exchange snark or professionals looking for new jobs or business contacts, right?

Wrong. Increasingly, businesses – rather than individual fans or job-hunters – are finding value in social media-like applications. Done right, these so-called “enterprise social networks” can help organizations operate more efficiently, come up with better ideas faster, improve communication with customers and stakeholders and make their efforts in corporate social responsibility and sustainability more transparent. They can provide an especially powerful edge for small- and medium-sized companies that don’t have the global enterprise advantages of large, complex IT infrastructures.

“Social media success is no longer a defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world,” states the Taiga Company in its “Guide to Green Business: Social Media Success.” “It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line.”

Besides, if you haven’t noticed yet, your employees and customers are already viewing you through a social network lens, even if your company itself hasn’t taken the leap. Workers are increasingly bypassing “official” IT by using their smartphones and tablets on the job. Customers, partners and suppliers are sharing information about you online whether you know it or not.

“The new normal is that customers are leading the conversations that define your brand, competitors are crowd-sourcing ideas to bring new offerings to market and employees are using social media in all facets of their lives, including work,” IBM notes in a datasheet on “Becoming a Social Business.”

For companies that want to become a part of these conversations, the most important thing to keep in mind is that foundation of social business rests on people, not IT.

“Most companies approach enterprise social networks as a technology deployment and fail to understand that the new relationships created by enterprise social networks are the source for value creation,” states a report from the Altimeter Group, “Making the Business Case for Enterprise Social Networks.” “Yesteryear, internal technology departments could force software on business units, but in today’s consumerized world, business units can adopt enterprise software, often without IT ever knowing.”

Enterprise social networks, though, “are not simply Facebook behind a firewall,” the report continues. Unlike Facebook, enterprise social networks – which can include cloud-based options like Google+ or Salesforce.com’s Chatter, platforms built using Drupal or collaborative software like IBM’s Connections – profile employees’ work-related skills and projects, have activity streams for things like business documents and client accounts, and can be divided into smaller groups where users share relevant information just with one another rather than with everyone in the company.

So what real benefits can an enterprise social network deliver?

By making it easier for employees across three states to share ideas and keep up to date, Russell’s Convenience – a high-end food supplier to office buildings – was able to reduce its travel expenses by 33 percent and cut its postage costs in half. George P. Johnson, the Japanese branch of an events marketing agency, found its enterprise social network not only boosted productivity, but enabled employee teams to continue working and communicating from home in the days following the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

In the near future, enterprise social networks might be able to help businesses get even smarter. One IBM research initiative, for example, has developed a way to apply analytics to questions asked by network-connected employees … and route their inquiries to the best-qualified person in the company to answer those questions.

As an IBM whitepaper points out, “(T)he emergence of social analytics means not only are individual people intelligent, but networks of people have become intelligent as well and are able to learn from interactions and associations to deliver recommendations and take action.”

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Five ‘out-there’ energy technologies

admin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:34:21 +0000

Modern society would grind to a very unpleasant halt without energy … we all know that. Outside of the “usual suspects,” though — oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind and hydro — are there any other energy sources we can turn to?

It turns out there are options. Whether they’re practical, affordable and enough to meet our future needs is questionable … but we do have other potential energy alternatives.

What sort of out-there energy sources are we talking about? Read on:

1. Methane hydrates — Also known as methane clathrates, these are deposits of methane (natural gas) contained within crystalline structures of water. Typically found under ocean sediments along the margins of continents or buried in or below permafrost in polar regions, methane hydrates are sometimes described as “burning ice.”

The US Geological Survey estimates the world might have “more than 4,000 times the amount of natural gas consumed in the USA in 2010″ … although only a fraction “is likely to be concentrated enough and accessible enough to ever be considered a potential target for energy resource studies.”

But it’s potential enough for Japan, which has few home-grown fossil fuel resources and is desperately searching for alternatives to nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima earthquake/tsunami/meltdown. Just this month, Japan announced it had successfully extracted natural gas from methane hydrates deposited offshore — a first in the annals of energy exploration. In light of the fact that methane is a greenhouse gas at least 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide, any slipups in future large-scale methane hydrate production could mean “game over” for the climate.

2. Nuclear fusion — Nuclear fusion, the type of power that keeps our sun burning, is 20 years away from becoming a viable energy source … and always will be. So goes the joke, anyway. There’s a reason that the punchline works, though. Because — for many decades now — it has actually reflected reality perfectly.

The endless optimism is understandable, because making fusion finally work in real life would end our energy problems once and for all. The most recent report card on those efforts, though — a Dec. 2012 report to the US Congress on fusion research at the National Ignition Facility — did not raise hopes that we’re anywhere closer yet:

“At present, it is too early to assess whether or not ignition can be achieved at the National Ignition Facility (NIF),” the introductory note to the report begins. “The disagreement between NIF experimental data and codes and models reflects an inadequate understanding of key physics issues required to make this determination … Once the codes and models are improved to the point at which agreement is reached, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will be able to determine whether and by what approach ignition can be achieved at the NIF.”

In other words, “We don’t know enough about the physics yet. Once we know enough, we might — or might not — be able to make fusion work here.”

3. Cold fusion — If the idea of harnessing fusion is appealing, the ability to do so at room temperature (instead of at the millions of degrees required to make it work for the sun) — cold fusion — is appealing beyond imagination. Unfortunately, that’s about the only place cold fusion has been shown to work: in the imagination.

Now rebranded as LENR (for “low-energy nuclear reactions”), cold fusion remains a holy grail for some researchers. NASA scientist Joseph Zawodny, for example, envisions a process that isn’t cold fusion as Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann envisioned it. Instead, his approach involves directing a slow-moving neutron into the nucleus of an atom to create an unstable isotope. As a result, another neutron in the nucleus splits into pieces, sending out an electron that can be captured to produce energy.

The concept behind the process relies on weak interactions among subatomic particles. In reality? Well, it hasn’t gone there yet.

4. Plastics-to-oil — We use oil to make plastic. So, in theory, we should be able to take plastic and convert it back into oil, right?

The theory works. It’s based on pyrolysis, which heats up carbon-based materials into the absence of oxygen to break them into their component materials. A small number of facilities in the US are already using that process to squeeze oil out of plastic waste, and companies elsewhere in the world have developed similar technologies.

So it works … that’s the good news. The bad news is that the technology will come nowhere close to meeting all our energy needs. By one estimate, 100 plastics-to-oil plants could produce anywhere from 6,000 to 18,000 barrels of oil a day — a very small drop in the very big bucket of oil (just under 19 million barrels) that the US consumes every day.

5. Human energy — You mean a la “The Matrix,” where machines enslaved humans to tap their electrical energy?

We don’t have to plug people into a virtual world and raise them in pods to get some energy out of them. All the little movements each of us makes every day — from walking to tapping our fingers — results in a loss of energy that could potentially be tapped without trapping us in a dystopia. And as warm-blooded mammals, we also generate ample heat energy, much of which is wasted … although Fujifilm recently demonstrated a new film that can convert heat into electricity.

Thermoelectric (heat-to-electricity) and piezoelectric (motion-to-electricity) generators offer real potential for reducing waste energy and powering small devices like sensors or personal electronics. On the other hand, using blood to power lamps — a concept explored by designer Mike Thompson to illustrate the steep cost of energy and energy waste — is probably an energy innovation we’d rather do without.

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Solar energy for 1bn people?

admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:56:13 +0000

Grand solar energy plans — such as turning the Sahara or the Mojave into giant, clean power plants — are good at grabbing big headlines and big investments. But, for hundreds of millions of people around the world, the energy revolution lies with small-scale solar.

Affordable, off-the-grid, renewable energy could help deliver what some 1.3 billion people on the planet currently lack: electricity for lighting their homes, workplaces and schools.

Sustainable energy for all — which is actually the name of a UN initiative launched in late 2010 — could help reduce poverty and improve lives, especially in remote and rural parts of the developing world. Simple solar-powered lighting lets children study at home at night, allows craftspeople and small business owners to keep working after dark, improves safety and security, and makes it possible to provide critical medical care around the clock.

Getting solar-powered lighting into the hands of people who could benefit from it most can involve a tangle of financial, logistical and regulatory challenges. Through its Programme of Activities, the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has provided one way for many small solar companies — among them, ToughStuff and Barefoot Power — to navigate that maze.

Solar lights can also be invaluable for anyone, on the grid or off, during and after a disaster.

LuminAID Lab founders Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta unexpectedly gained first-hand experience with that. The two, who met as architecture and design students, already shared an interest in solving global problems and began developing their inflatable, waterproof and solar-powered LED light after the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Ironically, a year later, the two were on a school trip to Japan when they found themselves in the midst of the deadly Tōhoku quake there.

Now a finalist in the 2013 US Clean Energy Challenge, LuminAID lights have since been shipped to disaster areas following last year’s Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy.

The good news is that bringing renewable energy to those without isn’t, relatively speaking, all that expensive. The International Energy Agency estimates that providing universal access to energy could cost less than $50 billion a year — that’s one-third less than what the US spends on soft drinks every year.

In fact, two technology trends are helping to make better, affordable energy access increasingly possible: advances in ever-more-efficient (especially LED) lighting and dramatically falling costs for photovoltaics (a 65 percent drop in price over just the past two years, according to the World Economic Forum).

A new organization launched just last June aims to build on the momentum of those two trends. The Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, or GOGLA, says part of its mission is to position off-grid lighting “outside the philanthropic arena as a fully recognized industry in an important and growing market.”

In addition to companies like Philips and Osram that are already household names in lighting, GOGLA’s membership includes small solar lighting businesses like Barefoot Power, Bright Products, BrightBeam, d.light design, Fosera, Greenlight Planet, Niwa Solar, Nokero (as in, “no kerosene”), One Degree, Prakruthi Power, Sinoware, SunTransfer and WakaWaka Light.

WakaWaka (the name means “shine-shine” or “shine bright” in Swahili, “do it, do it” in Bantu or “look, look” in Papiamento) notes on its website that a solar-powered lamp can do much more than simply provide household lighting for study and work. It immediately reduced carbon emissions, helps prevent fires and reduces a family’s spending on kerosene, the lighting fuel of choice for many people who live off the grid.

“When a family normally spends 10% to 20% of their scarce income on lighting fuels, they immediately save this when they switch to solar light,” says WakaWaka’s site. “It can be spent on food, clothing, tuition and other basic necessities, making life at the Base of the Pyramid slightly better instantly.”

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Peak water worries energy experts

admin — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:13:29 +0000

What are the key takeaways from the World Economic Forum’s latest report on energy?

One, global energy demand is showing no signs of slowing down, despite “peak driving” having arrived already in the US and Europe. Two, if we’re going to ease energy poverty for the large chunk of the world population that still goes without modern supplies, demand is likely to keep going much higher.

And, three, buried deep toward the end of the report — “Energy Vision 2013 – Energy Transitions: Past and Future” — with little further elaboration is that, well before we begin running out of fuel, water might become a serious problem. And less water could mean less energy, because so many types of energy production are highly dependent on water. In fact, water plays a critical role in energy production from coal, nuclear, oil and natural gas … which together supply 92 percent of the world’s energy.

So what else does the World Economic Forum report tell us about the state of global energy, both now and in years ahead? Among the more daunting facts:

1.3 billion of the world’s 7 billion people — nearly one out of five — have little or no access to modern energy.
Despite our best efforts to make energy greener, use of coal has far outstripped renewables. Compared to clean energy, the demand for coal has grown 10 times more since the year 2000.
One-fourth of the world’s human-caused carbon emissions come from burning coal.
Not including hydropower, just 1.6 percent of the world’s energy today comes from clean sources.
Since 2000, worldwide demand for energy has increased by 27 percent.
Over the course of just two years — from the beginning of 2010 and the end of 2012 — the average cost for solar panels dropped from about $2.25 per watt to around $0.75 per watt — a decline of 65 percent.
Between now and 2035, the number of cars in the world is expected to double to 1.9 billion. In other words, in a little over 20 years, we’ll have more cars than the number of people today without access to energy.
Many of the additional cars coming onto roads over the next two decades will likely still depend upon oil for fuel, despite efforts to fast-track the adoption of electric and alternative-fuel vehicles. For example, while China has projected that five million electric cars will be sold domestically by 2020, just 12,000 were sold in 2012. Adoption of EVs (electric vehicles) in the US has also proceeded more slowly than officials had hoped.
It took 60 years (1840 to 1900) for coal to go from 5 percent of the world’s primary energy market to 50 percent. It took the same number of years (1915 to 1975) for oil to increase from 5 percent to 40 percent of primary energy supply.
While parts of Europe and Japan are pulling the plug on nuclear power, other regions will more than make up for that reduction. From now until 2035, nuclear power capacity in China alone is expected to grow by 109 gigawatts. India (41 gigawatts of new capacity) and Russia (28 gigawatts) will also contribute to that growth.

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Resilience: It’s more than ‘green’ or ‘smart’

admin — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:55:27 +0000

For some cities, the issue of going “green” is becoming less important than going “resilient.”

Officials in New York City – a municipality already well known for many green initiatives – are putting a new emphasis on becoming more storm-resistant since Hurricane Sandy caused billions in damage this past October. New strategies are also clearly needed in a city like Beijing, where major investments in clean-energy transport, renewables and increased green space haven’t offered much protection from deadly record floods or extreme pollution over the past year.

“Eco” programs, after all, might be good for a city’s public image … but there’s nothing like a climate-related or environmental disaster to provide motivation for deeper, wider-ranging action.

There’s a growing recognition that improving overall resilience is probably a better strategy than simply planting more trees, adding more solar to the local energy mix or encouraging commuters to take the train instead of driving to work.

The Post Carbon Institute, for example, recently renamed its long-time online publication – formerly The Energy Bulletin – to Resilience. Over time, the Post Carbon team says, articles about energy evolved to cover “other resource depletion-related issues, and articles which describe, encourage or educate on meaningful responses – in essence, the task of building resilience.” It seemed like a natural progression to move from worrying about one major societal problem to trying to find solutions for multiple problems coming down on us all at once.

The good news is, myriad solutions can be found … even if they create other challenges along the way. How, for example, to answer the post-Sandy question raised for many devastated waterfront areas: Rebuild or retreat? (Similar questions were asked about New Orleans after the failure of the levees during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Many residents, willingly or not, did end up retreating, while some have rebuilt with the support of organizations like Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in more sustainable, resilient ways.)

Ultimately, the biggest problem with making resilient-city solutions work tends to come down to two issues: money and will.

Justifying the expense

Resilience, by definition, suggests long-term planning and preparation rather than short-term payoffs. In a global economy where investors are looking for quarterly returns, that can make it difficult to find funding for resilience-focused improvements. And it’s getting harder year by year, because – as Sir Nicholas Stern warned out in his pivotal 2006 report on the economics of climate change – the longer we wait, the more expensive such improvements become.

“Successive editions of this report have shown that the climate goal of limiting warming to 2°C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes,” the International Energy Agency noted, once again, in its 2012 World Energy Outlook.

Still, some projects offer, if not immediate, definite short-term rewards, such as Mozambique’s $100 million vision for improving climate resilience. For the port city of Beira – a town of over a half-million that already experiences frequent flooding as well as periodic outbreaks of cholera – that vision includes engineering to reduce beach erosion, upgrading the drainage system and strengthening the sanitation agency. Improvements like these promise clear life-saving, as well as bottom-line, benefits in a country that’s lost more than 100,000 people in 68 natural disasters over the past 50 years. (In 2000 alone, flooding killed some 800 people in Mozambique and cost the country 20 percent of its GDP.)

The improvements in Beira and other parts of the country are being funded through the Climate Investment Funds’ (CIF) Pilot Program for Climate Resilience. Approved by the World Bank in 2008 as a way to provide stop-gap funding for improvements ahead of the next global agreement on climate change, the Climate Investment Funds focus on helping countries achieve the United Nations’ Millenium Development Goals.

Finding the will

When you look at a city with open sewers where cholera is still a problem, it’s easy to conclude that any improvement – if it improves lives – is well worth the effort and expense. But sometimes, even when money is made available, the will to build resilience is lacking.

How resilient, for example, is Port-au-Prince … which remains packed with thousands of poor people living in temporary shelters or dangerous housing three years after the massive 2010 Haiti Earthquake?

One reason is that, while much relief money was pledged after the deadly disaster, some didn’t reach the ground where it was needed at all while lots more was spent in unaccountable, uncoordinated ways. Forget relocating the nation’s capital to a safer, more sustainable location, as some advised – Port-au-Prince hasn’t come anywhere close yet to returning to the less-than-ideal circumstances of pre-quake times.

Building resilience takes not just determination but new ways of thinking, says Andrew Zolli, co-author with Ann Marie Healy of the new book, “Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back.” Changing from a business-as-usual mindset isn’t easy … but when we view the future from the perspective of the many challenges headed our way, it’s clearly anything but a business-as-usual picture.

“There’s a deepening appreciation that we’re living in a time of increased, intrinsic volatility,” Zolli recently told Forbes. And, perhaps surprisingly, the relentless push for efficiency these days is leading to more – not fewer – risks in volatile times.

“There is a correlation between efficiency and fragility,” Zolli said. “We love efficient systems, but for many systems, peak efficiency brings with it peak fragility. Things like carrying insurance, and having redundant systems impose carrying costs on an organization. They make the system less than perfectly efficient, but safer when things go wrong. The tradeoffs are inevitable – it’s just a matter of making the right ones.”

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Decarbon helps businesses cash in on ‘fifth fuel’

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 07:00:27 +0000

Energy efficiency is a strange “fuel.” You don’t get a monthly efficiency bill like you would for, say, heating oil or natural gas. But efficiency — or the lack of it — can have as big an impact on your bottom line as what you shell out for every kilowatt-hour or BTU you consume.

The trouble is, most people who use energy don’t think of efficiency that way. (Efficiency is often called the “fifth fuel” — the other fuels being oil, coal, nuclear and renewables.) Decarbon is on a mission to change that.

The London-based company’s goal is to help businesses boost their profits and cash flows by funding energy efficiency.

In other words, it wants to help big energy consumers view an investment in energy efficiency as a plus, rather than as a liability, on their balance sheets. How? By making it possible for energy-hungry companies to access an external budget without any upfront costs, in return for a share in the savings achieved.

“We’re trying to make it simple for businesses to benefit,” said Dan Saunders, founder and managing director of Decarbon. “Traditionally, financing, for a customer, is a liability.”

No-risk, external funding for an efficiency project, on the other hand, is a no-brainer for the energy consumer … and that’s what Decarbon’s model offers.

Here’s how it works:

A company that thinks it could save a significant amount of money by becoming more energy-efficient settles on a project or solution that could help. (Companies that have already invested in efficiency improvements can also use Decarbon to refinance those projects and free up cash for other expenses.)
That company turns to Decarbon, which performs due diligence to ensure the proposed project will deliver worthwhile energy savings.
If the energy savings potential looks good, Decarbon then matches capital from its investor pool to the project, supplying funding using Decarbon’s Energy Performance Investments (EPIs).
After the project is installed, measurements are taken regularly — through metering or independent auditing, for example — to assess the project’s impact on energy consumption, energy costs and carbon emissions.
The savings that are generated are shared beween the investor and the company for the lifetime of the contract at an agreed rate.
At the end of the contract, whether or not the investors have been repaid, full ownership of the new energy efficiency solution is transferred to the company, which can continue to reap all the savings benefits from those improvements.

Saunders says the model is similar to the power purchase agreements offered by some solar panel companies. Under such agreements, the solar company installs panels on a customer’s roof for little or no upfront cost. The company’s investment is repaid through the customer’s monthly savings on electricity bills over time.

“It’s the same principle,” he said. “The difference is we don’t need government subsidies to make it work, and we’re not restricted to any particular technology.”

In the case of Decarbon’s customers, however, the appeal goes beyond simple cost savings. As energy costs keep going up, big power users — especially manufacturing firms and other industrial companies — need to find every way they can to control expenses and stay competitive in a global market.

In the UK, such businesses are now taxed on their carbon emissions under the government’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. That program mandates the purchase of allowances based on a user’s carbon emissions. The lower the emissions, the fewer allowances a company will need to buy.

While most of Decarbon’s customers want to keep their involvement confidential, Saunders said his company — incorporated in 2010 — now has about £10 million (around $15.5 million) in approved projects, with a further £20 million (around $31 million) under discussion. He’d like to see that number grow, not only because it’s good for Decarbon’s credibility but because it benefits both the economy and the environment.

In fact, Decarbon has also taken on some projects helping companies switch from carbon-intensive energy like heavy fuel to lower-impact sources like natural gas. It’s also looking at moving into water conservation as well. That’s because increasing demand for this limited natural resource will inevitably drive up prices, Saunders said.

And what about Decarbon’s funders? What’s in it for them?

Typically, there’s a good return on investment. Efficiency projects vary, but they can deliver savings of anywhere from 20 percent and up, depending on the specifics of the project. This attracts funders who are looking to diversify their existing investments, as well as gain some green bona fides.

Up until now, Decarbon’s funders have generally been institutional, but the company is looking to broaden its offering.

“We would like for retail and high net-worth investors to know we’re here and that we can put their money to work where they can see it actually doing good,” Saunders said.

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