Everyone generally knows that data centers are the big energy hogs in the building universe. In some data centers, nearly half of the power goes to air conditioning (which counts toward power consumed by a building and its operations). Put another way, that means that the air conditioners use as much power as the computer systems (which can be counted under another energy budget). But what are the second worse types of facilities? Probably scientific labs, says Lynn Olechnowicz, a senior associate at Perkins + Will, an architectural firm known for LEED and energy efficient designs. Labs typically need to be equipped with fume hoods, which suck away chemicals or loose biological material. "All of the air is conditioned air" as a result, she said. To reduce power, building owner or lab managers need to adopt control systems that will only condition air when necessary, rather than all of the time. Air conditioning accounts for a substantial portion of the outrageous amount of energy consumed in running buildings. It ranks up there with heating and lighting. And, like heating and lighting, large gains in efficiency can likely be made over the next few years by replacing old technology with new, efficient products. Air conditioning, in fact, has knocked out waste heat as my favorite topic. If anything, it makes me a fascinating conversationalist. Olechnowicz, by the way, will be one of the speakers at our Green Building Summit coming in June.

Digital activism has never been easier. And now social Websites wants their visitors to make changes to benefit the environment in real life. It's easy to create a Facebook group, but how can social media be used for real activism? The theme for one of the last panels of the day at Green:Net09 conference was "The Green Web Effect" and among the panel members were people involved in different environmental projects, all using the social tools of the Web in doing them. But the transition from online engagement to physical change isn't the easiest one to make. "The bottom line is to deliver information that can make people do better decision. There's a big science challenge, but the second half is the consumer piece. How do you give people information that resonates? We're up to billions of marketing money everyday. It is a key challenge," said Dara O'Rourke, CEO of startup Website GoodGuide. One problem is making environmental issues a personal thing for the general audience. Health and money are important issues for most of us, and by connecting environmental issues to those topics it can be done, according to the panel. "You have to see examples. We're working in Canada around mothers, the environment and kids. Moms are more caring about the environment than dads. You find that there are touch points," said Ron Dembo, Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint. Erin Carlson is Director of Yahoo for Good. She discussed how different target audiences need different strategies and that you need to find "the dessert and the broccoli" to get the message through. "Information is not enough. It needs to be in the right tone. What's in it for me? Surprises work very well for the trendy people. Saving money and saving time are also pieces people responded to. People are not responding to gloom and doom and they don't respond to celebrities talking about green. Serve up the dessert and then sneak some broccoli on the plate," she said. Peer pressure is also one big driver when changing people behavior. "Rather than driving traffic to your site it could be better to let them spread your software between each other," said Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google. Members of the panel included Erin Carlson, Director of Yahoo for Good,Yahoo, Dara O'Rourke, CEO, GoodGuide, Jason Karas, Founder and President, Carbonrally.com, Ron Dembo, Founder and CEO, Zerofootprint and Kevin Marks Developer Advocate for OpenSocial, Google. Moderating the discussion was Alexis Madrigal, Staff Writer, Wired.com.

Soon electric cars will be connected to the smart grid, managing and monitoring our energy consumption. "We want cold beer and hot showers, please let's have cars talking to each other." Those were the words of Sven Thesen from electric car battery network company Better Place, during a panel debate about the networked car at Green:Net 09 conference in San Francisco. The range and the prices of batteries are two main hurdles introducing the electric car according to the panel. "We need to make a charging infrastructure. It starts with the interface. We want the ability to do roaming. The primary goal is a simple system for the driver" said Richard Lowenthal CEO, Coulomb Technologies. As in almost any panel debate today, the need for standards was also addressed. "It's boring, but it has to be done. But the good news is that the technology is there, we just need to do it," said Thesen. The panel also discussed what sort of incentive structures could be put in place so that people would want to take part in the program in order to take the networked car and connect it to the grid. Incentive bills from the utility companies to make the transition from gas to electric power in consumer economy was one of the suggestions. And of course charging stations is a big issue. "You want to be able to choose an electric car next time you buy a car, without being worried about where to charge it," said Richard Lowenthal. "We need federal guarantees and loans for batteries. Batteries are expensive," said Sven Thesen, stressing the importance of policies and governmental interference with the market. In just a few years we're going to see much more smart technology in our electric cars, suggested Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Engineer, Google. "In five years we're going to have vehicles pretty well connected to the grid. The user will be able to pick a charger profile. The cars will also be smart about how we manage the energy. What you will see is much more user choices and interactivity in the car." he said.

Here is how hot geothermal energy has become: Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy requested no money for geothermal technology and research and development, and its Geothermal Technologies Program office had a staff of four, said Ed Wall, the geothermal program manager, at a conference Tuesday.

The office has doubled in size since last July, and the federal stimulus plan signed by President Obama last month has set aside $400 million for geothermal energy development. That’s on top of the $45 million Congress has allocated for this fiscal year for the DOE’s geothermal program (DOE asked for $35 million), Wall said.

“Looking at the renewable energy program, geothermal is the least understood,� said Wall at the Geothermal Innovation & Investment conference in San Francisco. “The fact that it’s underground source is at least part of that, and it requires the understanding of geology and engineering to access it.�

Wall told me he hopes the new federal funding will encourage more new entrants into the industry. Oil and gas companies, for example, would be a nice fit because they already have some drilling and production technologies that can be modified for generating geothermal power, Wall said.

But the promise of geothermal energy as an important source of baseload energy -- power generation that can take place around the clock -- has started to attract more investments and not just from the government. Google.org poured in $10.25 million into AltaRock Energy and Potter Drilling last year.

AltaRock is developing a technology to create engineered steam reservoirs so that geothermal energy can be harvested in areas without large, naturally forming steam fields. This approach, called enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), refers to the drilling of a deep well to crack hot rocks miles underneath the earth. An additional well is drilled nearby. Water is injected into the first well to generate the steam and hot water, which are then reclaimed and extracted by second well. The water and heat are then piped to a turbine for generating electricity.

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers also became interested in geothermal after making big bucks investing in Internet technologies. At the conference, Trae Vassallo, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said she toured geothermal power plants in Iceland and Australia to learn about the sector and then took a risk on AltaRock.

AltaRock is carrying out a pilot project at The Geysers north of San Francisco. The Geysers is a naturally occurring steam field that has been producing geothermal power for decades. But some of its wells have dried up, making them good places for AltaRock to test its technology, Vassallo said.

Fisker Automotive announced its dealer network today. And not a moment too soon. I've been wondering how I can spent the $87,900 I've saved up for a luxury four-door plug-in hybrid later this year. The 32 outlets are spread around the country and some are owned by the same dealership. None seem to be the kind of place where the owner might ride a bull on late night TV ads or offer balloons and hot dogs for the kids. Palm Beach Motor Cars, for instance, is one of them. Fisker hopes to have 40 locations by June. The Fisker Karma will come out later this year, which could make Fisker one of the first known companies to release a plug-in hybrid. Toyota will come out with plug-ins later this year as well. Volume for plug-ins and electric cars, though, will kick in in 2010 when Toyota ramps up production, General Motors releases the Volt and Nissan begins to sell its electric commuter cars. Plug-in and electric cars are coming -- make no mistake. The big questions now is whose cars will sell. Can Toyota, Nissan and GM make a dent in the mass market? Will high-end cars like the Karma, or the Model S from Tesla take off? Can startups like Tesla and Fisker survive? The dealership strategy marks yet another bone of contention between Tesla and Fisker. Tesla will sell direct. Fisker looks to dealers. Tesla is full electric and killed plans for a plug-in hybrid. Fisker is plug-in hybrid focused.

Regen Energy wants to bring the swarm logic it is applying to managing building energy usage to measuring solar power and carbon footprints as well. The Toronto-based maker of wireless energy monitoring and control devices announced Monday that it has inked deals with renewable energy monitoring software developer Fat Spaniel and carbon emission monitoring startup Zerofootprint. Mark Kerbel, president and CEO, says Regen can install its devices in a typical building in one day for about $10,000. That's a lower cost and a fraction of the time it would take to install a typical building energy management system, he said. "Swarm logic is our differentiator," Kerbel said Tuesday at the Green:Net 09 conference in San Francisco. "That's what allows us to do it so cheaply, so fast." Regen's devices contain micriprocessors with only 128 kilobytes of memory, he noted. But using swarm logic in a wireless mesh network that is aimed at setting overall power consumption levels, they can automatically reduce individual appliances' power demands with a minimal impact on the building's operations, he said. The company has installed its devices in buildings of customers including Toronto's Centennial College and the headquarters of utility Toronto Hydro. It's looking to announce some larger-scale deployments soon, Kerbel said. Those could include heating, ventilation and air conditioning companies as well as building owners themselves, he said. Regen also wants to apply its EnviroGrid devices and software to so-called "smart" appliances, electric vehicle charging networks, and other applications, he said. As for the Fat Spaniel and Zerofootprint deals, the goal in both is similar — use Regen's devices to lower a building's energy use when solar and other renewable power resources aren't pumping out their maximum output. That allows owners of solar systems to get the most money out of programs that reward them for generating power, Kerbel said. As for carbon emissions, lowering energy use is tantamount to reducing emissions from various emission-producing electricity generation sources like coal power — something that will be important as emissions start carrying a price, he said. Building energy management has been attracting the interest of startups and huge IT companies alike (see Sentilla Raises $3.75M to Enter Data Center Power Fray and Cisco Jumps Into Energy Management for Computers, Buildings). Whether building managers will choose to leave the operation of their air conditioning systems up to the logic of the swarm, versus a operator-controlled system, remains to be seen.

The city of San Francisco is copying Berkeley's first-of-its-kind program to finance solar rooftop projects via property taxes — but it wants to go a lot bigger than the pioneer city across the Bay. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said the city plans to disburse $20 million to $30 million in loans to home and business owners by the end of 2009, in a program modeled after the one Berkeley launched last year (see Berkeley to Launch Solar Financing Program). But San Francisco's program will provide a lot more money than Berkeley's initial $1.5 million — and it will extend to a wider range of home renewable power and energy efficiency projects, Newsom said Tuesday at the Green:Net 09 conference in San Francisco. "We're going to take Berkeley's idea to a whole 'nother level," Newsom said. "And we're going to extend it beyond solar energy" to include things like replacing old boilers with more energy efficient models and installing geothermal heating pumps or co-generation systems, he said. That's a substantial widening of the net for loan applications, one that could tie into the city's recently announced plan to set up incentives for retrofitting existing buildings for energy efficiency. San Francisco is seeking proposals from banks that will structure the loans to be backed by property tax revenues, and expects to have those proposals in by April 5, Newsom added. Berkeley initially had some trouble getting banks to back the concept, which allows home and business owners to pay the city back through property taxes over 20 years, including interest at rates locked in through a special tax district created for the program. That led Berkeley to start out with a $1.5 million pilot program, with finance provided by Oakland, Calif-based Renewable Funding. A state law passed in July gave other California cities the ability to provide low-interest solar-panel loans to homeowners and small businesses (see California Cities to Offer Solar Loan Program). San Francisco's loan program would work alongside its solar incentive program, Newsom said. The city has set aside between $2 million and $5 million annually for 10 years to provide incentives of $3,000 to $6,000 for a home solar power system and up to $10,000 for one on a commercial property (see San Francisco Solar Incentives Become Official). Newsom said Tuesday that the program had led to a 300-percent increase in the number of applications to install rooftop solar systems in the eight months it had been in effect (see SF Solar Incentives Boost New Installations). In other green news, Newsom said the city was looking at a project by Cisco Systems that is aimed at providing an online map that can show an individual's greenhouse gas emission contributions throughout the day. Newsom didn't offer many other details on the so-called "eco-map," except to plug it as the next big thing in providing people information to help them take personal responsibility to tackle climate change at home. "I don’t want to over-promise it, but I’ve never seen anything like it," he said. According to minutes from an October meeting of the city and county's commission on the environment, the project is a collaboration of the cities of San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul that will map the cities by rooftop and measure factors such as how many cars — and bicycles — are owned by each household, which homes have solar panels, which homes recycle, and other factors.