Recycled Green Tech News
Sorting truly sustainable tech from greenwash
Wednesday 30 April 2008, 4:52 PM
Lord Stern: Downturn won't affect climate change efforts
Being green is all well and good but how long will companies continue to worry about the environment if the financial downturn affecting the US bites harder and really impacts the UK?
That was one of the questions posed to Lord Nicholas Stern, of Stern Review fame, at a business conference this week held at Wembley Stadium in London. Stern's response was in line with the remit given to him under the terms of the Stern Review, published in 2006, which set out to look at exactly what impact climate change would have on the UK economy.
(photo credit: Nigel Stead/LSE)
Rather than agreeing that companies would indeed cast their high-minded environmental ideals to the wind, if times get harder, Stern claimed that being green is the only economically sound policy in the long run.
"I think that difficult times should not derail this. There will be some ups and downs over the next fifty years but we have to push through that," he said.
Stern's 2050 forecast refers to a time-line he presented earlier on his speech to around 1000 business leaders at the event organised by US software-maker SAS. The Lord and London School of Economics professor claims that rich counties will need to commit to around an 80 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050 to avoid the 5 degree rise in temperatures that scientists have forecast for the end of the century if we continue to produce carbon at the present rates of growth.
When economies being to shrink, sensible companies look to do two things according to Stern – look hard costs and protect their assets. Reputation is a big asset for many firms and abandoning environmental commitments can have a big impact on how a company is perceived – not something that any firm wants to attract when facing financial pressures.
For its part, business intelligence vendor SAS is hoping to that it will be able to sell its analytics tools to companies who want clearer metrics on how energy efficient there businesses actually are - so is firmly on-side with Stern's message that green doesn't have to be mean when it comes to making money.
Stern's speech at software conference came on the same day that he published a set of proposals for a global deal on climate change at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The report, Key Elements of a Global Deal, includes input from HSBC, IdeaCarbon, Cambridge University, Lehman Brothers and consultants McKinsey and suggests a set of proposals to "advance the climate change debate" ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.
According a statement issues by the LSE, the report examines the implications of the commitment to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 (taken at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June 2007).
Tackling climate change is the only sensible course open for businesses, Stern claimed in his conference speech. Doing nothing would have far more impact on the global economy than spending to tackle climate change, he argued.
"It is not doing anything about climate change that will affect growth. I don't think that this has a negative story, it can be a very positive strategy," he said.
And rather than being the fault of rapacious corporations who have bled the world dry in an extricable drive for shareholder returns, the beast of commerce and financial markets actually hold the key to tackling climate change, says Stern.
"The right reaction is not to abandon markets but fix the problems," he said. The problem is that markets have not been working properly up until now – the underlying economics of business have directly contributed to climate change and global warming by not making polluters pay. "People do not pay for the damage that they do," said Stern.
The other contributing factor is that the last 10 to 15 years have been a period of unparalleled growth. However during this prosperous period, companies have got sloppy when it comes to managing risk. This can be seen in the recent sub-prime mortgage collapse, which was basically built on financial institutions ignoring risk. The same goes for climate change. Just like selling mortgages to people who can't pay them back, businesses and individuals have been generating carbons with no thought about how it might impact them in the long term.
"During periods of growth people get careless. What is happening now is that people are taking risk much more seriously," said Stern.
Stern also couldn't help but use the forum to take a swipe at some of the figures that he wasn't able to comment on when acting on behalf of the government – having discharged his duties to the government and returned to his role as a professor at the London School of Economics. Top of the list was ex-Australian Prime Minister John Howard who Stern described as "appalling" during a panel debate following on from his keynote at the conference. "It's really nice to be outside of politics so you can refer to people like John Howard as appalling."
Stern's views on Howard no doubt stem from the former Australian PM's poor record on the environment – including joining the US in not signing up to Kyoto - which many claim played a big part in his Conservative governments party losing an election last November after 11 years in power.
Thursday 24 April 2008, 3:46 PM
Microsoft saves digitally excluded from not being Microsoft customers
There are some stories that you have to write because you are going to burst otherwise through sheer exasperation. I have just returned from an event that ate two hours of my life which I will never get back. To be fair, it was a Microsoft event so I should have known better – what was I expecting?
The event in question was the launch of a government backed IT literacy scheme which all sounds great. David Lammy MP, minister for skills was on hand to talk about how much the government is committed to closing the so-called digital divide in the UK. Apparently some 17 million people are excluded from the benefits which the computer-literate take for granted.
So how to address this problem I hear you ask – a concerted grass-roots push involving schools, higher education authorities, using PC terminals in libraries to reach people who can't afford their own machine? Pushing the rise of open source software and the numerous free online productivity apps which won't cost the digitally excluded a cent to interact with aside from bandwidth costs?
Unfortunately not. The answer it seems to how to bring the existing digitally excluded up to speed and ensure that future generations are tech-savvy enough to compete in a world that demands IT literacy is…drum-roll…Microsoft! Or more specifically the Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum.
Yes, the key to unlocking the potential of millions of people who can't get there heads around IT is to teach them how to use Microsoft products. Yep – good old Microsoft has decided to donate around £3 to 6 million (that's a big range - which is it Microsoft?) worth of its software to another commercial operation Learndirect so that the £17 million digitally excluded can all become Microsoft customers, sorry, I mean computer literate.
Following a series of speeches by Lammy, who claimed that Microsoft's "involvement was essential and that government can't do things like this on its own", and others including Microsoft UK MD Gordon Frazer, I made a bee-line for the demos at the back of the room showing-off Microsoft's Digital Curriculum to find out whether there was any attempt to teach students, say about a broad range of applications?
I was told by a Microsoft marketing person the curriculum is online and thus doesn't require anyone to buy any Microsoft products to make it work – which is nice of them. However, as far as I could find out, this panacea to the collective shortcomings of the UK IT education system only references and includes examples of Microsoft products. What a surprise.
I realise that Microsoft is a commercial company and that it would not get involved in this kind of scheme if it didn't have something to gain – but does the UK government really need to be involved in such a blatant piece of commercialism as this? Funding is good but most of the open source alternatives to Microsoft products are available free and wouldn't require the government to mortgage educational projects in this manner to commercial companies who are only interested in guaranteeing they have a healthy stock of future customers.
Thursday 10 April 2008, 7:18 PM
Will Greenwash survive a recession?
I have just come back from this week's green IT event - I have been to four already this year I think. The latest was the FinExpo Green City event in Liverpool Street, London. As the name suggests, the conference looked at all things financial and City with a green spin. Speakers included HSBC and Citi, owners of CitiBank and other brands.
There was a lot of talk about how being green was also good for the "back pocket" and other stuff you would expect to hear from banking types coming over all green and environmental.
I popped a question during a panel debate around whether green strategies would survive a real financial crunch? Environmentally sustainable efforts do often end up being financially beneficial in the long term but often come with high up-front capital costs – and capital and credit is not exactly plentiful at the moment. The panel included representatives from HSBC and Citi, as well as Cisco.
No one really rose to the question apart from Cisco's Neil Harris, who admitted that it's a "testing time for green commitments across all organisations" but that "green is just a fabulous driver for change in an organisation. Previously you might have been caught between IT and HR and it helps us get difficult projects underway in the business".
Tuesday 8 April 2008, 6:25 PM
Light and dark with Luxim and Ceravision: Round two!
Our colleagues at the recently launched Smart Planet have picked up an interesting story about energy efficient lighting technology.
Smart Planet is a mainly consumer focused site with helpful buying advice and reviews for anyone looking to be a bit more ethical with their cash.
But SP also has a business section which looks at what companies are doing to improve their green-standing or to make money from the interest in this area.
SP has just followed a story originally tracked by ZDNet.co.uk' s own Rupert Goodwins on the spat between two energy efficient lighting makers. Ceravision, based at Bletchley Park of Enigma fame, has alleged that California's LUXIM stole technology secrets when doing consulting work with one of Ceravision's former partners, Digital Reflection Inc (DRI).
Tuesday 8 April 2008, 12:41 PM
Epson celebrates 40th…no 66th…no 33rd birthday
Epson has launched a competition to celebrate its 40th Birthday with the lucky winner due a holiday of a lifetime worth about £4000. (Does £4000 really buy you truly momentous trip these days – surely that's just about enough to cover a couple of economy class train tickets to Manchester?) But before we get too excited and start slapping old Epson on the back and breaking out the party streamers, jelly and limp sausage rolls, a bit of fact checking is always worth-while when it comes to companies celebrating anniversaries. Ah the fine line between journalism and pedantry ;-)
7th April 2008 – Epson, the inventor of the first ever electronic micro-printer in 1968 has today launched a pan European competition to celebrate its 40th birthday.
It might shock you to know, that sometimes marketing and PR types will massage dates in order to say find an event to hang a bit of spare end of the quarter budget around for example.
Now for its part Epson's press release slightly fudges the issue by claiming that it's celebrating 40 years of innovation and not the creation of the company – but then the release does go onto say the competition is designed to "celebrate its 40th birthday". To further confuse things, the actual web site for the competition says that the competition is actually only about the launch of the first printer but then also goes on to also talk about a "birthday". Surely, the launch of a printer is an anniversary and has got nothing to do with creation or beginnings or birthdays?
When it comes to the creation of a company – when do you actually begin to start counting – when the founders first scribbled on the back of napkin, when the first sign got banged up outside the office?
When the company was formally registered is as good a date as any and checking out Epson's entry on Wikipedia we find that the company actually didn't come into being proper until 1975 when the term Epson was coined after the next generation of the Shinshu Seiki miniprinter, the EP-101 was launched - Epson is literally the "son of EP-101" – geddit?
But rather than going from the point that the Epson name came into being – Epson seems be counting its heritage from the invention of the EP-101 in September 1968 which doesn't seem wholly accurate. The company's corporate web-site claims that the Epson brand wasn't actually created until June 1975. What is more – this official time-line starts counting from May 1942 when Daiwa Kogyo – the predecessor of Seiko Espson Corporation) was established. So technically going by this the company is actually 66 years old.
Oh and if you want to be really picky then Epson Europe, which this competition comes from, wasn't set up till Jan 1990.
I have put a call into the PR to clear this up and waiting to hear back but all that aside the competition looks interesting and maybe if you ask nicely Epson will make up for their date-snafu by back-dating the £4000 to the true date of the company's creation on their website – 1942 – which should work out at – about £133,624.63 – if Measuringworth.com is correct.
