Michael Kanellos 04 08 09, 9:26 PM

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The Case for Ditching PCs

$4,500 a month.

That’s the amount that Trent Ratcliff, the IT Infrastructure Manager for the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver, says he will be able to cut his power bills once his agency replaces 800 desktop PCs with 800 thin clients and back-end servers.

“It’s over $50,000 a year,� he says.

The agency has already installed 400 of the machines and the rest will go in in a few weeks. On top of that he expects to save close to $600,000 in hardware and maintenance costs over the next eight years. The overall network he oversees has about 1,000 notebooks and desktops on it.

Thin clients — which are essentially terminals that scrape data and information from servers in a computing room — have historically been the girlie man option in the corporate workplace. Nobody requested one. In many places, getting one was a sign that you were probably destined for a long career on the help desk.

Contracting budgets and rising power prices, along with improved performance of these devices, however, has begun to change the picture. And the thin or PC debate could become one of the big corporate computing issues in 2010. While you can argue whether or not the switch makes sense -- PC advocates will point out things like application compatibility and productivity -- the thin client advocates will probably be able to put up at least some kind of hard numbers to prove their case for lower operating costs. Either way, it will be discussed.

“It is something everyone has to consider,� Ratcliff said, who has also been evangelizing the concept to co-workers in other departments.

Another factor that will push adoption: Utilities like Xcel Energy are offering (or planning to offer) subsides to companies to switch.

If this becomes a trend, it’s good news for a wide variety of companies. VMware will sell more virtualization software, which effectively allows the server to act as the brains for multiple desktops simultaneously. Hewlett-Packard sells servers as well as software for optimizing thin clients. Then of course there are the terminal companies themselves like Wyse (which sells boxes to RTD) and NComputing (which has installed over a million thin of its roughly $100 thin clients worldwide in the last two years). See perhaps the finest thin client movie ever made here.

But it could make like a little more difficult for sales people hawking notebooks.

Michael Kanellos 04 08 09, 12:53 PM

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Shiver Me Timbers 2.0: DOE Giving $12M to Marine Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement that will seek to award up to $12 million to marine energy research projects.

This follows $7.3 million issued for marine power last year.

The projects can run the gamut, from conventional hydropower to wave machines and beyond. You’ve heard of the usual ones—underwater tidal turbines, wave bobbers, etc. Now here are some of the more unusual concepts:

• Small hydroelectric power stations that harvest electricity from the excess pressure inside municipal water systems. Call it microhydro.

• Electricity from osmotic pressure gradients, i.e., the pressure differences that can be created when fresh water meets sea water. Aquaporin in Denmark, among others looking at it.

2009 has not been the best year for marine energy. Pelamis hid, but eventually had to confess, that the three wave devices it put off the coast of Portugal last year are actually no longer at sea. Aquamarine scrapped tidal power, but kept wave.

Still, if standards get developed, it could take off. Although much of the tidal work takes place in Ireland and the U.K., startups and researchers are also clustered around California, Florida, Australia and South Africa.

Jeff St. John 04 08 09, 11:34 AM

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Atlantis Plans 1MW Tidal Power Project off Australian Coast

Fresh on the heels of landing a $14 million investment, Atlantis Resources now has a deal to install a 1-megawatt tidal power turbine off the Australian coast, according to The Australian.

Singapore-based Atlantis plans to provide the power to iron ore producer Mount Gibson Iron (no relation to Australia's most famous Hollywood export) for its operations on Koolan Island in western Australia.

Just last month, Atlantis got a $14 million boost from Norwegian renewable energy provider Statkraft, which said it would work with Atlantis to install tidal power devices in Scotland's Pentland Firth (see Ocean-Power-Meets-Bike-Chain Company Gets $14M).  That £300 million ($697 million) project is aimed at producing 150 megawatts of power for a Scottish data center.

Atlantis also has a memorandum of understanding to build projects with China Light & Power, which brings its total pipeline of projects to 800 megawatts.

Atlantis offers a deep-water tidal turbine called the Solon, as well as a shallow-water device called the Nereus. The company's other big investor is Morgan Stanley, which became its largest shareholder in September when Atlantis acquired Morgan Stanley-owned tidal power company Current Resources. 

One interesting note about tidal power is that, unlike wind and solar power, the ebb and flow of the tides is eminently predictable. That can make it useful for providing baseload power for industrial uses that can be scheduled in advance.

It and its cousin, wave power, could grow from less than 10 megawatts last year to a $500 million, 1 gigawatt market by 2014, according to an October report by Greentech Media and the Prometheus Institute (see Trawling for $500M in Ocean Power and Tide Turning for Ocean Power?)

Still, both forms of ocean power have seen their ups and downs. Many trial tidal projects have seen the power of the tides mangle the turbines meant to capture it. And several prominent wave power projects have been sunk in the last year, either literally or financially speaking (see this Green Light post).

Tidal power players include U.K.-based Lunar Power, which wants to provide 300 megawatts of energy for Korean Midland Power Co. by 2015, and Marine Current Turbines, whose $20 million tidal power project off the coast of Northern Ireland called SeaGen is now generating 1.2 megawatts.

New York City-based tidal power company Verdant Power has a $2.2 million deal with the government of Ontario for a 15-megawatt project in the St. Lawrence River. It also has a turbine in New York's East River, though two previous attempts failed (see Time magazine article).

 

 

 

 

Eric Lane 04 08 09, 8:40 AM

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Class Action Accuses Classic Cleaner of Greenwashing

I’m starting to see a slight uptick in lawsuits alleging greenwashing, i.e., making false or deceptive environmental claims (see previous greenwash suit post here).  The latest target is that classic household cleaner, Windex.

Last month Wayne Koh filed a class action suit in federal court in San Jose, Calif. against SC Johnson & Son, Inc. (�SC Johnson�), accusing the maker of Windex of misleading consumers about the “environmental safety and soundness� of the cleaning product (koh_complaint.pdf).

At issue is SC Johnson’s use of its GREENLIST trademark (below), and in particular, its placement of the mark on the Windex product labels.

According to the complaint, the reverse side of the product label states:

Greenlist is a rating system that promotes the use of environmentally responsible ingredients.

The complaint alleges that the GREENLIST mark and accompanying statement falsely imply that the Greenlist designation is administered by a neutral third party when, in fact, it is owned by SC Johnson.

Moreover, SC Johnson is representing that Windex is made with natural and environmentally safe ingredients, the complaint states. but the company has not changed the ingredients of the cleaning product.  According to the complaint, these ingredients include ethylene glycol n-hexyl ether, which is “not naturally derived and poses serious danger, including death, if ingested by wildlife and small children.�

The complaint further alleges that products bearing the GREENLIST mark contain some of the same “non-natural toxic chemicals harmful to the environment and animals� as SC Johnson products without the label.

The complaint states several California state law claims relating to unfair competition, false advertising, unlawful business practices and consumer protection violations.

SC Johnson owns two U.S. trademark registrations and two pending applications, one each for the word mark GREENLIST and the GREENLIST design mark for various cleaning products.  They are Registration Nos. 3,518,048 and 3,522,370 and Application Serial Nos. 77/039,858 and 77/142,889.  None of the registrations or applications is for a certification mark.

Whether SC Johnson is truly greening its cleaning products I can’t say, but I don’t see any outright falsehoods here.  The brief explanation of Greenlist on the product label seems to be literally true.

Also SC Johnson’s Greenlist Webpages (see here and here) state that SC Johnson developed the ratings system and that the company itself is screening its ingredients because “we plan to measure ourselves against a much higher internal standard.�

Eric Lane is a patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego, where he is in the Intellectual Property and Climate Change & Clean Technology practices.  Eric is the founder and author of Green Patent Blog, which provides discussion and analysis of intellectual property law issues in clean technology.

Michael Kanellos 04 08 09, 8:24 AM

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Exaggerated Claims in Algae? 250,000 Gallons an Acre?

Algae fuel is more susceptible to dreamy speculation than a lot of other greentech fields. Why? It looks so easy. Snowflake and John, or two goldfish, grow algae. They are the Saudi Arabia of eight gallon aquariums. It promises cheap and easy fuel. The reality is far different. While some companies (such as Solazyme) say they will be capable of producing algae oil at competitive prices in two to three years, only a little algae oil has been produced to date, very few of the fifty plus companies have received funding, and it will be a long way off before the infrastructure exists to actually get it into the fuel distribution system. It is also currently very expensive to make. So it is important to squint at claims which seem a little too good to be true. And today's comes from Russell Industries, which announced today it is getting into the algae feedstock business. Here is the press release:

A one acre, horizontal photo Bio reactor style Algae Farm can yield 50,000 gallons of Bio Feedstock compared to 700 gallons using Corn or Soy, but when set up using a vertical system it could yield 5 times as much or 250,000 gallons a year at the going rate of $2.00 per gallon.

50,000 gallons of feedstock? The general consensus is that someday we could get to 5,000 to 10,000 gallons of oil per acre. That's still far better than anything else (Jatropha is worth only 175 gallons an acre), but waaaaay less than 50,000. (Not everything in algae is oil. It's about one-third. Russell, like everyone else, is looking at selling protein and biomass as well.) Bryan Wilson, a Colorado State professor and co-founder of algae specialist Solix, said earlier this year that claims beyond 14,000 gallons of oil an acre seem to be "unsupportable." Valcent has claimed it might be possible to get into the 150,000 gallon an acre range, but it is on the extreme end of the issue. We called Russell. The company referred us the National Algae Association. We are waiting to hear back from them. The mainstream might be wrong. The costs for solar are dropping faster than ever and there were probably several reasons why electric sports cars were dumb ideas in 2002. But it's good to keep the consensus in mind.

Ucilia Wang 04 08 09, 8:04 AM

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Solar Subsidies Not So Popular in Japan

Japan brought back national solar subsidies in January and, so far, the response has been a bit underwhelming.

The government is providing 70,000 yen ($700) per kilowatt for installing a solar energy system, or roughly 10 percent of a 3.5-kilowatt system. It thought the program would attract 35,000 applications for the first three months of this year.

The Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said the program drew 21,653 applications instead, reported Reuters. Consumers apparently don’t want to spend money on a solar energy system when the economy is bad.

The government brought back the subsidies after discontinuing it several years ago. Cutting the program led to a decline of solar power installations. When Japan was looking at resurrecting the subsidies last year, government officials said they believed the decision to end the incentive program had hurt Japanese solar energy equipment makers.

Countries that have enacted generous solar incentives, such as Germany and Spain, have seen a growth of homegrown solar cell and panel makers. The government programs don’t require project developers to buy equipment from only domestic manufactures. But those local companies could enjoy some home-territory advantage.

U.S. manufacturers are hoping that the federal subsidies that are in place will boost their business as well. There is a 30 percent tax credit for offsetting the cost of installing a solar energy system at home. Owners of the commercial systems could take either a 30 percent tax credit or the equivalent in cash.