Behind The Green

As much as we need a smart grid, it is not the be-all, end-all of energy conservation. In a lot of ways it's the middle-all. For a smart grid to give us the benefits it promises, it needs to be connected to a smarter generator on one end and a smarter user on the other.

Johnson Controls global energy and sustainability vice president Clay G. Nesler told ConstructionWeekOnline that the smart grid “is simply an upgraded electrical distribution system allowing it to accommodate more renewable energy and intermittent sources of energy. The grid has to be ‘smart’ enough to be able to accommodate more variable sources of energy, such as when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow."

Of course that was on one end of smart grid on the other: “It also superimposes information over the electrical grid, so it is kind of like a meshing of the Internet with the electrical grid, so the utilities and providers of energy can send information to buildings, and buildings can send information back," Nesler explained. "The idea is that buildings will then be able to use less energy, and the system as a whole will be more efficient."

Johnson Controls is at the forefront of the effort to make buildings more efficient. Its pioneering refurbishment of the Empire State Building is something that everyone can learn from.

“Every floor is going to be sub-metered for electricity; in fact, individual tenants can opt for an energy meter for their own use, and every tenant is going to get their own Web site," he said.

The empire state building is at one end of the ICT-enabled smart grid. There's a lot of work on the other end too. Wind generators are being raised and solar arrays are getting deployed. It's going to take time, but people aren't just sitting on their hands.

This year Florida Power and Light plans to fire up the first hybrid solar facility in the world that combin es a solar-thermal field with a traditional natural gas power plant. The Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center will use less fossil fuel when heat from the sun is available to help produce the steam needed to generate electricity. This innovative technology will help protect customers from volatile fossil fuel costs as it reduces Florida’s carbon footprint.

“Florida’s future growth and economic strength depends on how we address climate change, and we know we can reduce greenhouse gases by using fewer fossil fuels and more natural energy sources like solar,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said at the ground breaking ceremony. “This solar facility is a significant step in that direction.”

While this is all pretty cool stuff, it won't work from the beginning to the end without information and communications technology. Without ICT there is no beginning, much less an end for the smart grid.

They say a picture is worth a thousands words. I say bull hockey, but then again I'm a word guy. My own prejudices aside, if you want to know what the information and communications technologies can do to make the world a greener place, then check out the Smart 2020.org. It's got both pictures and words.

Smart 2020 is a project developed by The Climate Group on behalf of the Global eSustainability initiative. We at DESC are a supporting partner. Not only is the Smart 2020 report one of the definitive studies on ICTs impact on global sustainability, but you can cruise the website and get information on dozens of projects across the globe where ICT is making a difference.

From Johnson Controls reworking of the Empire State Building in New York City to Cisco's Smart Transformation Pricing solution in Seoul, Korea. The Smart 2020 case studies are some examples of how ICT can keep nearly eight gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the air. That a 15% reduction in global emissions by 2020. Words and pictures, what more could a guy want?

As the wind howls around my house gusting up to 60 mph or so, it brings to mind a few thoughts. Will my roof stay on? Will my trees stay up? How much power could I generate with a 60 mph wind?

So far the roof is on, the trees are up, but I'm not smart enough to figure out how much power that wind will generate. It depends on the height of the turbine, it's size, efficiency and too many factors for my mat-challenged mind to compute.

I can't figure out what power I can generate at my house, but according to recent Department of Energy estimates, wind energy in Maryland has the potential to produce 33.7 thousand gigawatts per hour of electricity. We're on the lower end of the scale. Texas can do something like 6.5 million gigawatts per hour Nationally the wind has the potential to generate nearly 37 million, and that doesn't count Alaska and Hawaii.

Of course all this "potential" power is just that. It's out there, but the wind generators have to be built and installed, places have to be found to put them, and then we have to get that power to the people. Transmission issues are difficult ones to solve because the best places to put wind turbines are places where the people aren't.

None of these problems is insurmountable, but to turn the "potential" into the possible will take the information and communications technologies. ICT is the backbone of the Smart Grid, and it'll take that Smart Grid to harness all that  "potential" and get it to the places where it can become reality.

It may just be "potential," but it's a thinking about it is a good way to keep my mind off the potential that my roof will fly off or my trees will blow down as the wind howls.

As climate cognoscenti undoubtedly know, Europe has pledged itself to meet a goal of reducing both EU climate emissions and energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020.  Certainly the European Union has set itself more ambitious targets in the carbon and energy efficiency realm than any other country or region that has affiliated itself with the so-called Copenhagen Accord.

Achieving this target will require progress on many fronts.  Clearly, information and communications technology (ICT) can contribute a lot to the effort.  As the “Smart 2020” study http://www.smart2020.org/ completed in 2008 by The Climate Group and GeSI made clear, ICT can enable greater energy efficiency in other sectors of economy and society, with energy efficiency being the most cost-effective means of making quick climate progress.  The Smart 2020 report put the potential saving of 7.8 Gt CO2e in 2020, in other words, 15% of global emissions.

But potential is just that, it isn’t actuality.  What clearly is required – in the European Union and elsewhere – to turn potential into actuality is good public policies that encourage and drive the adoption of energy efficiency-enabling technologies.

The European Commission has realized this for some time and has been taking steps to deliver on the policy front. Dating back to a formal Communications in 2008, the Commission has been pressing the case both for the ICT industry to do more to reduce its own energy and carbon footprint and to increase its contribution to reducing the overall footprint of Europe.

Perhaps the biggest step was taken last week as the leading European ICT trade associations DIGITALEUROPE, TechAmerica Europe, the Japan Business Council in Europe and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) launched the ICT For Energy Efficiency (ICT4EE) Forum with the endorsement of the European Commission. My Intel colleague, Kirsty Macdonald, the leader on this issue in DIGITALEUROPE, worked with others in our industry to get the ICT4EE Forum off the ground and make this event a big success. After a successful launch, the work is only just beginning. The work elements in the Forum’s 2010-12 Roadmap include 1) improving the energy & carbon footprint of ICT processes ahead of the EU’s 2020 timeframe 2) fostering future investment and regulatory frameworks to support the deployment of low carbon enabling technologies in the energy, buildings and transport sectors and 3) working with policy makers to encourage more energy efficient behavior. More information can be found at ict4ee.eu.

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This new initiative is promising, to be sure. Commission officials speaking at the launch event in Brussels emphasized the need for the European ICT industry to have a sense of “urgency” in both reducing its own energy and carbon footprint as well as using its technology to help other sectors do the same. There were calls for the ICT industry to collaborate with other sectors to this end, cooperative effort that no doubt will ensue.  But the reality is that companies and individuals as a rule do not invest in new technologies unless (a) they have to, as a result of a government mandate, or (b) there is a clear economic motivation to invest due to cost savings, either because of prices in the market or government financial incentives.  This is where the government – in this case the European Union – comes in.

The ultimate test of the success of the ICT4EE Forum will come down the road a bit and will largely depend on whether the European Commission will develop policy ideas and support projects coming out of the Forum’s activities.  This will be particularly important regarding the Forum’s work element #2, given all the evidence that ICT’s contribution to the efficiency of other sectors is a large multiple of the impact it can have in improving the efficiency of its own processes and products.

Stay tuned, we will report out periodically on the activities of the Forum over the next several years…

It's a simple message. Green is good for the economy, and the information and communications technologies are good for the green. Maybe that message is starting to sink in.

ICT's value to the economy was laid out for lawmakers on Tuesday during a hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Commerce

Committee's communications subcommittee. Whether it comes from a big telecommunications firm like Sprint; a technology equipment maker like EMC; a chip maker like Intel or a small start-up home energy management company like Tendril, ICT can green the economy.

"It is estimated that ICT accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But what about the other 98%? Studies have shown that by 2020, ICT could abate as much as five times the emissions as it generates," EMC chief sustainability officer Kathrin Winkler told the lawmakers. "This phenomenon is already apparent in our home state of Massachusetts, historically a leader in information technology, and now a state whose energy productivity is one of the highest in the nation."

That's not to say there aren't problems. While there has been a lot of movement on the smart grid, it is still more in the head than on the ground. As Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., points out, there is a "gaping hole in the center of America" where alternative energy produced in the West and Midwest can't make it to the east.

"We believe the thermostat is in the same place where the VCR was. Nobody can program it," Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck told the panel.. "If we can do for the thermostat what TiVo did for the VCR -- make it very understandable and intuitive -- we can see dramatic savings."

But to do that have to get access to their power usage profiles.

"I don't need a check from the government," Tuck said. "I need a marketplace, and really regulation to provide me access to consumers' information, with their permission, so I can provide consumption information to them."

Lorie Wigle, Intel Corporation eco-technology program general manager, told the lawmakers that it was important to ensure that consumers were included or any effort would fall flat.

It's really important to engage consumers as it evolves," she said. "It might start with just understanding it, but then being able to take action. To do comparisons. To set goals for themselves. It would be really cool to have utility programs that assign points when you are hitting your targets, to introduce an element of achievement."

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra said the government was ready to listen. He announced a new "smart grid forum" where consumers and other stake holders can tell the government what data they need.

"Today marks the opening of a new program to help us understand the role of standards int he topic of energy efficiency," Chopra said. "We are today launching a Smart Grid Forum -- an online vehicle hosted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology the goal of sag forum is to engage all Americans in a conversation on how energy consumers can participate in the effort spur innovation both in smart grid products and services."

It's simple, really. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. The technology is out there. It's called ICT.

As Intel's Wigle said:  “Technology and best practices already exist and are in use today; they could have an even greater impact if we conquer the implementation barriers."

The current state of American broadband is pretty depressing. According to a new Commerce Department report nearly 40% of American households don't have it; the Swedes now lead us in connectivity and 27 countries now have speedier Internet connections than the US. Broadband may not seem like a "green" idea, but modern energy use and the information an communications technologies are inextricably linked.

Not only does the Smart Grid depend on ICT, but faster Internet speeds also contribute to a greener and more robust economy in other ways. A speedier Internet makes it easier to telecommute and teleconference allowing people to do more things and travel less. Not only does a faster Internet save energy by keeping people off the road and out of the air, but it also allows companies to save energy as demand for office space gets lower.

The Federal Communications Commission may be taking steps to make a faster Internet a reality. Reuters reports that the FCC unveiled a plan on Tuesday that would require service providers to offer home Internet data transmission speeds of 100 megabits per second to 100 million homes in the next ten years. Industry estimates generally put average U.S. Internet speeds at below 4 Mbps.

The world is interconnected, and making those connections faster and more efficient will help drive waste out of the economy. In this case haste doesn't make waste, it makes sense.

I'm not really an I-told-you-so kind of guy. I'm really not, but since I wrote the previous post at the height of the Snowmageddon 2010, it was nice that my prescience on that occasion was rewarded. As I listened to Potomac Electric Power Company regional President Tom Graham field questions WTOP's "The Politics Program with Mark Plotkin" on Friday, I heard him say:

"We're working on a huge project right now. We call it AMI -- advanced metering infrastructure -- you may have heard of it as smart meter, smart grid," Graham said. "In this case, it's two way communication device. We'd have an opportunity to ping our system. We could make a determination to tell whether a customer is in service or out of service.Today, there's no board with 767,000 lights. People have to call in."

With more than 1,000 dead wires and 108,000 out of 767,000 customers without electricity at some point during a blizzard, power can't be restored instantaneously, but minimizing the time spent in the cold and dark can be a life-saving benefit. This isn't the one most often extolled for an ICT-enabled Smart Grid, but when the snow is falling in record amounts, the lights go out and the heater stops, knowing exactly where the power lines are down tends to rise up that list of priorities.

It's not that I'm an I-told-you-so kind of guy, but I did.

The Blizzard(s) of 2010 make another good argument for the Smart Grid. It's not the one about how global warming contributes to wild swings in the weather, where snow can show up where it usually doesn't like the mid-Atlantic, or doesn't show up where it usually does like Vancouver, Canada.That's a pretty good one, but this one is doesn't touch on global warming.

Aside from saving power during transmission, saving energy during consumption and allowing alternative energy sources to tie into the grid, an ICT-enabled Smart Grid also allows power companies to more efficiently find outages. That means that the power company can more quickly find where a tree limb has broken a power line and get repair crews on the scene. It's not something we usually talk about during the our energy debates, but it's something we should consider when in the aftermath of Snowmageddon 2010.

People want to go green. All over the country people are taking steps to go green,and that's reflected in actions in statehouses across the country.

•    In Indianapolis, the House of Representatives approved legislation to allow Hoosiers who produce electricity through alternative sources to earn credits from utility companies for the kilowatts they pump into the electrical grid;
•    In New Jersey recently enacted the Solar Energy Advancement and Fair Competition Act, which establishes a 16-year solar renewable energy portfolio standard. The renewable energy standard requires New Jersey to obtain a portion of its electricity from solar power generating facilities.
•    In Pennsylvania, where the first oil well in America was drilled, the legislature is considering Clean Energy and Green Jobs legislation which increases our clean energy requirements.

While federal action is still needed, the movement at the state level is a strong indicator that people all over the country want to get off the carbon train. Lawmakers across the country understand that going green not only will lower energy costs, but will make the world a better place to live.

All of this effort will come to naught, without information and communications technology. A solar cell is really a silicone chip, and it takes ICT to hook it up to the grid. And, of course, that grid has to get smarter and that takes ICT too.

There's a lot of green going on in the budget request President Obama sent to congress this week. The White House is determined to keep rolling out efforts to cool the world and reduce our dependence on energy that too often comes from unstable areas of the world.

"That's why we build on the largest investment in clean energy in history, as well as increase investment in scientific research, so that we are fostering the industries and jobs of the future right here in America," Obama said when he released the document.

In it there is:

•    An additional $500 million in credit subsidy to support $3 to $5 billion in loan guarantees for innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy projects;
•    A 4.6%,n, increase in funding at the Office of Science for basic research and world-leading laboratories to support transformational scientific discoveries and accelerate solutions to our Nation’s most pressing challenges;
•    And there's $2.3 billion recommendation for applied energy research and development aimed at positioning the United States as the world leader in energy technology that will address climate change, develop new industries, and create new jobs;
•    The budget includes a $31 million boost to the DOE’s Building Technologies Program, which develops building codes, equipment standards and energy efficient commercial buildings.

“The administration’s FY 2011 budget request evidences that President Obama remains steadfast in his march to quickly and widely deploy energy efficiency, even as he has proposed to scale back or end many other programs across the federal government to address mounting deficits,” said Alliance to Save Energy President Kateri Callahan. “We are encouraged that the president and his team recognize that significant and sustained federal funding for energy efficiency is particularly important in today’s economy, because such investments have a proven track record of strong returns for the nation in the form of new jobs, increased private sector investment and lower monthly energy costs for consumers and businesses alike.”

All of that seems like a good thing, but amid all the sexy, big-ticket items, it would have been nice to see a little more attention paid to how things measure up. Everyone recognizes that the amount of energy that we waste is equivalent to a vast, new energy find, but no one seems to have decent ruler to figure out how much.

Information and communications technologies make us more efficient, but it's hard to say how much more energy is saved when someone telecommutes instead of driving to the office. ITC can make buildings and factories more efficient, but that efficiency often doesn't get counted.

American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy analyst Skip Laitner likes to say: "How do you make visible the invisible."

It's difficult to measure a potential change in behavior, it's something that needs to get done so government officials, industry executives and average Joes can make informed decisions.  Conservation just feels like the right policy, but "feel" is a tough sell.

The White House does include $2.6 billion to "deepen our understanding of cli- mate change and its impact," and by doing that we may be able to measure what we save. It may not be sexy to measure, but it can tell us how big our ticket is.