IBM on Wednesday said it has developed a two-year associates degree in “green data center management” in collaboration with the Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Neb.

Existing technologies like virtualization can improve data center efficiently significantly. Emerging technologies such as this wireless sensor promise better control over equipment and facilities.

(Credit: Arch Rock)

Starting in December, students will learn how to design and manage data centers to run efficiently in what IBM says is the first college degree in the subject. Classes will be offered online to remote students as well.

The Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 estimated that data centers alone use about 1.5 percent of all electricity in the U.S. and are on a pace to double consumption in the coming years. With existing technologies, energy use could be cut by 25 percent, representing up to $4 billion in savings, the EPA found.

Because of financial and environmental concerns, more data center operators are taking steps to cut energy use, such as consolidating server workloads and upgrading cooling systems. Companies such as IBM, HP, and IT consulting companies have practices in designing facilities to be more efficient.

The green IT degree from IBM and Metropolitan Community College covers technologies for consolidating computing work loads, including virtualization, as well as security and disaster recovery. The course work also addresses the nuts and bolts of building and managing a facility, such as cabling and monitoring.

The data center where the class will be taught, which will be stocked with IBM servers, was funded by a $1.8 million Department of Labor grant.

Originally Posted at news.cnet.com

Solar and wind-power companies, energy-efficient light bulb makers, environmental engineering firms and others expanded their work force by 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007, the latest year available, according to Pew.

The average job growth in all industries was 3.7 percent during the same period.

The entire energy sector has experienced growth in recent years as well, according to the Bureau of Labor. Bureau data shows coal mining jobs jumped 16 percent from 2003 to 2009. Oil and gas extraction jobs jumped 28 percent.

The Pew study does not include employment data from the past 18 months, a volatile period for the energy industry.

Since the data was collected, the government has said it would pump billions into renewable energy and effiency programs. The banking meltdown made it nearly impossible to raise cash and oil prices have collapsed.

Alternative energy companies have been hit hard by the recession, with a string of bankruptcies in the ethanol industry and layoffs in the wind-power industry.

Lori Grange, Pew’s interim deputy director, said that while green industries will certainly benefit from the influx of billions in stimulus dollars, the report shows that the clean energy sector has proven itself sustainable.

States like California, Texas, Florida, and New York continue to employ the most people in the industry. However, states experiencing the largest growth rates were Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to the report.

Michigan, which has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, saw a 10.7 percent increase in clean energy jobs from 1998 to 2007.

That is not to say that clean energy jobs have kept pace with overall job losses.

Pew counted 22,674 clean energy jobs in Michigan in 2007. To put that into perspective, Michigan lost 38,400 jobs in April alone.

Many of the new manufacturing jobs do not pay as well as traditional union jobs, either, yet workers who have made the shift say the industries are moving in different directions.

One cast off from the auto industry is Bob Mamo, 50, who was director of business development for a Dearborn, Mich., auto parts supplier until he was laid off in November. He was in the industry for 20 years.

Last month, he landed a job as vice president of manufacturing for Free Flow Power, a hydropower company based in Gloucester, Mass.

The auto industry “just looked like it was going in the wrong direction,” he said. “Green energy is definitely on the upswing. Green energy was what I was really after.”

Liesl Clark, deputy director for Michigan’s Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, said the state is doing what it can to help manufacturers shift operations to supply parts for wind turbines, such as gear boxes and drive trains.

For its study, Pew used private jobs data that included information about employers, and Pew researchers spent nearly a year determining which ones could be considered part of the clean energy economy.

“Our numbers are probably conservative,” said Kil Huh, who directed the study. “If we couldn’t identify as part of green energy, it wasn’t part of our count.”

The Pew jobs data was dominated by environmental engineering firms and other pollution cleanup specialists that have been around for years. But the report showed that the fastest growing areas include companies that make hybrid diesel buses, traffic monitoring software, liquid biofuels, and jobs related to solar and wind energy.

“The explosive growth is really in clean energy,” Huh said.

If you’re looking to bankroll a green-business revolution, boring old banks and the government are looking just as effective as flashy venture capitalists.

Tech investors from Silicon Valley to Shanghai are betting billions of dollars on breakthrough green technologies, with many hoping to repeat the success of Google or Amazon in the energy industry. It’s a shift that has helped create the buzz around clean energy among entrepreneurs, politicians, and in industry.

But despite a lot of attention on high-risk ventures, experts say the financing engine for the clean-energy economy needs to be a hybrid, drawing on both venture capital and on more staid funding sources, many of which are hamstrung by the global capital crunch.

“Venture capitalists are critically important for starting new innovations and getting businesses incubated. But what hasn’t happened to date is getting large-scale capital to help bring those businesses to commercial scale,” said Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think tank and expert on green jobs. “We need the policies and financial mechanisms to turn early start-up companies into global powerhouses.”

Using a baseball analogy, venture capital is all about hitting home runs–one company could deliver 10 or 20 times the initial investment within five or seven years. To get that, venture capitalists traditionally seek out companies that have a proprietary technology that sets them apart from the pack.

But many businesses that create green collar jobs are not a clean fit with that high-risk, high-reward model. Although they still require financing, companies that manufacture wind turbines or do home energy audits, for example, don’t require technology breakthroughs.

“If you care about investing in clean energy for job growth, venture capital may not be the way to go,” said one investor who requested anonymity. “Government spending should be doing more to support service industries.”

Government funding could, for example, be used to retrain tradesmen to retrofit commercial buildings to be more efficient, he said. Meanwhile, large-scale energy projects, such as a solar power plant, rely largely on bank-issued debt and, increasingly, government loan programs.

Running the numbers
There are signs that entrepreneurs and investors in the green-tech field are getting a better grip on how to finance their ideas. The key is to pull money from different sources at different stages, say investors.

Whereas four years ago, venture capital firms–many of which were new to energy–would have put $100 million into a biofuels or solar manufacturing facility, many now realize those types of investments are better suited for institutional investors and banks.

Venture capital company Accel Partners sees a “second wave” of tech-oriented investors focusing on less capital-intensive businesses in energy efficiency, energy storage, smart grid, and consumer-oriented green companies.

“The concept of figuring out what is the best capital for entrepreneurs is still getting sorted out and is not extremely well understood, frankly, even by venture capitalists,” said Rich Wong, a partner at Accel.

One thing that has become clear is that there needs to be coordination among the different types of financiers out there, said Bilal Zuberi, an investor at General Catalyst Partners. “The financing aspect for clean-tech companies is being better considered and thought through,” he said.

For example, a group of entrepreneurs that has invented a great new way to produce biofuels could use venture money to develop the technology. Then it needs debt and equity, most likely from another source, to demonstrate that it works at the forecast cost. Once it has been proven, it needs funding to build more factories and start delivering product.

“Before it was ‘Build it and they will come.’ Now, it’s ‘Build it and find the right investment partners,’” said Zuberi. “VC funds like us now have a Rolodex of project finance players, large banks, and large debt institutions. Four of five years ago, we didn’t know any of them.”

A green bank?
To date, many green start-ups are struggling to break into that commercialization phase, in part because over-extended financial institutions have scaled back lending. Making matters harder, banks and private equity funds are wary of risk introduced from unproven technologies or new business models.

Consider the case of Geoff Chapin, the CEO of home weatherization company Next Step Living in Boston. When Chapin was looking to raise money earlier this year to grow the business–which is hiring–he discovered venture capital was a poor match because investors would end up owning most of the company. Instead, he went with angel investors, which generally invest smaller amounts.

“Our business is lower risk but the returns aren’t ten-fold, they’re four or five fold–in that ballpark,” he said. “In the past, small companies have been able to go to banks, but they were not willing to finance anything that didn’t have long track records.”

At the opposite extreme of a small service-oriented business in the clean-energy economy are large renewable energy projects, such as wind, solar, or biomass plants. These, too, are typically structured to deliver lower but more predictable returns than a tech-oriented start-up.

Since the financial turmoil has slowed those types of projects, government funding is a vital source, say entrepreneurs and investors. Hundreds of auto, battery, smart grid, and renewable energy companies have applied for Department of Energy loans or grants. Some DOE projects have been awarded, such as the $2.4 billion investment in plug-in electric vehicles which will be matched by private funding, but much of the money has not yet been disbursed.

“You’re looking at a new industrial revolution, whether it’s in solar, wind, transportation, auto, aerospace–these are huge mega economies within our economy. It will take a different model than venture capital, where you hire a few software engineers and you start a Google,” said John Waters, the CEO of plug-in electric vehicle company Bright Automotive, which has applied for auto manufacturing loans.

Because capital is so tight, solar companies that don’t succeed in finding sources for project finance will struggle, said Mike Hall, CEO of Borrego Solar, which sold a stake in the company to a Taiwanese manufacturer to finance its expansion. “The limiting factor now is really access to capital. Everybody that wants to be successful over the next 18 months needs an alternative strategy,” he said.

One of the most important provisions being considered in the energy bill is the Green Bank, argued Hendricks. The House version of the bill would take money from auctioning carbon permits in a cap-and-trade system and create a revolving loan program for clean-energy businesses. A $10 billion fund would unleash hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment, Hendricks predicted.

Policies that mandate renewable energy and efficiency at utilities and put a price on carbon emissions are important, too, because they create a market signal that the country values low-carbon energy, he said. “(Policy) helps create certainty for companies trying to build a business model around clean-energy technology,” Hendricks said.

Originally posted at news.cnet.com/greentech ]]> http://gotham360.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=80 http://gotham360.com/blog/?p=78 http://gotham360.com/blog/?p=78#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:02:10 +0000 admin http://gotham360.com/blog/?p=78 Increasing domestic natural gas production and retrofitting buildings to be more efficient should form the basis of a low-carbon U.S. energy policy, according to a statement put out Monday during the Clean Energy Summit.

The summit, held for the second year in Las Vegas, brought together some of the most recognized political figures shaping energy policy, including Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and businessman T. Boone Pickens. Other speakers included Bill Clinton, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Al Gore, and green jobs advocate Van Jones.

The event was organized by the Center for American Progress and the Energy Future Coalition, which jointly put out a memo touting the benefits of natural gas and building efficiency.

The memo says that there is now technology to tap natural gas in so-called nonconventional sources, namely trapped in shale deposits in the U.S. “This creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a 21st-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources, and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas,” according to the memo. (Click for PDF of full text.)

Natural gas can be used to make electricity and as a transportation fuel. The memo recommends investing in natural gas filling stations for large trucks and buses, which are much harder to run from electric batteries than passenger cars. In addition to reducing imports of oil, natural gas burns cleaner than coal, emitting half as much carbon

Efficiency, considered the most cost-effective way to reduce fossil fuel use, was a consistent topic of discussion at the summit as well.

The Center for American Progress and Energy Future Coalition estimated that retrofitting 40 percent of U.S. homes and buildings would save consumers $1,200 a month on energy bills and create 625,000 jobs.

“Energy efficiency should be the first source we turn toward to meet energy demand and reduce consumers’ bills” said Reid, who is a key figure in the energy and climate bill being considered by Congress. “It creates more jobs than nearly every other energy investment and the cheapest, cleanest, safest energy is the energy we never have to use.”

Originally posted at news.cnet.com/greentech

So the NAHB decided to do their own thing, and cornerstone to the show and their own announcement was the first certiifed home under the Green Building Program, right in Orlando and open to attendees of the show.

  The home combines “smart home” high-tech gadgetry, such as programmable lighting with built-in presets and backlit control panels for easy access, and low-tech design elements such as a solar chimney, cleverly designed as a soaring cupola, that draws up hot air in the house and helps ease the burden on the Florida home’s cooling system.  Of course, at over 6000 square feet the home is far larger than practical for most people, and greater savings could certainly be achieved in a smaller footprint.

But the home is most critical as a demonstration model.  Coined the New American Home, just about every conceivable feature is jammed into this futuristic home with the traditional look as a way of making a point about the Green Building Program, and that is that builders and designers need not sacrifice aesthetic or modern features for a green ethic.  Much of it is in fact impractical, as the Orlando Sentinel reporter points out.  The tub is conceivably too large to use regularly, for instance.
The value comes through in its visibility and utility as a test bed.  As the first home certified under the NAHB’s new program, it’s going to stand as a kind of flagship for the program, and to do that it needs to be highly visible and heavy on the wow factor.  It couldn’t have been the tenth or fifth or even the first home in an average development in a random suburb; the home had to make a statement.

And this new home certainly did.  Is it the New American Home for real?  Only time will tell, but it’s to be hoped that it will at least influence new home construction in the coming years.  

Originally posted at cleantech

Jim Wilson/The New York Times“Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas,” Ms. Palin wrote in an op-ed piece Tuesday. (Originally posted at greeninc.blogs.nytimes)

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who recently caught political observers by surprise with her decision to resign as governor at the end of the month, slammed President Obama’s support of a cap-and-trade program to combat climate change, in a Washington Post op-ed piece Tuesday morning.

Ms. Palin called it a “cap-and-tax” system that would “undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.” Job losses, higher food prices and skyrocketing electric bills would result from such a system, she argued.

Cap-and-trade legislation is currently being considered by Congress.

Ms. Palin instead urged domestic solutions, such as the building of a pipeline to help tap Alaska’s abundant natural gas resources.

She added:

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.

The Wall Street Journal recently opined that “the inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of CO2,” causing a greater number of scientists to question the science behind global warming. Whatever your opinion in the matter, it’s certainly true that the world would be better off if we wasted less energy, which is what makes open-source Ecobot so useful.

While programs like Amee help businesses measure their carbon footprints, Ecobot offers a personal “carbon trainer” for Mac users.

Designed by Taxi, a Canadian corporation, Ecobot is derived from Taxi’s participation in the “Green for Green” competition. The program “calculates your carbon footprint by measuring the fuel, power, and paper you use,” and, importantly, does a lot of this data aggregation automatically. (”Automatically” is good - heck, if we weren’t so lazy, we probably wouldn’t need all these vehicles to power us from Point A to Point B.)

Not only does Ecobot keep track of how many pages you print from your laptop, but it also tracks the wireless networks to which you connect and works with you to figure out how you got from one to the other, and calculates the carbon emissions required to make the journey.

Pretty slick.

Even if you’re not a tree-hugging, carbon-footprint-obsessed member of the Greenimati, Ecobot is an easy-to-use, unobtrusive way to monitor how much carbon your lifestyle requires. Of course, it only works if you’re a Mac user.

Even so, despite Dell’s insistence that Apple’s Macs aren’t as green as Apple claims, Ecobot lets you be as green as you want to be…and brag about it to anyone patient enough to listen to you.

Originally posted at The Open Road

Vote Friday? Saturday?