Green Blog

Listen to Michael Schelin share information about virtualization, virtual pbx, shopping cart systems, fax to email, and colocation on DIDX podcast.

Schelin is with the ShellTel. I met him the Asterisk community in 2005. After the interview was completed, he explained more about cloud computing and virtualization for marketing types like me. A host operating system is just a container. Place the install disk which is an image of a system on a host. It becomes a file. You define how large the directory should be in virtualization.

The host is running. The virtual PBX thinks it is a traditional server. It talks to the host, and the host gives it what it needs. Each within its own world! The virtual PBXs share the resources like memory and hard drive space. The key advantage is saving money, but it's also a green technology in that it uses space more efficiently. 

VM ware might be seen as the grand daddy, but open source has made virtualization easy. It was first available around 4-5 years ago, but since then, hardware has caught up. For example, AMD includes instructions for virtualization. As of 2007, it has became quite popular. 

In the podcast interview, you can find out more and how to contact Michael Schelin. His team is expert in Asterisk.

I recently moved cross country from the East to the Pacific Northwest. As polluting and contributing to congestion as driving is there is still nothing like it to give a full and complete picture of the landscape.

And for the most part it is a beautiful one that, still worth waxing poetic about, but which I will leave to more accomplished scribes except to say everyone should travel by land from coast to coast at least once in their lives.

The sights that one is familiar with only on screen come alive when you are surrounded it by them...the spectacular architecture of Chicago: its downtown and its neighborhoods, the rugged scenery amidst the charming-in-their-own-right tourist traps around the Wisconsin Dells...the Rhine-like setting of the Mississippi Valley...the wide open spaces in central South Dakota...the amazing transition from grasslands to lush forests west of Rapid City in the Black Hills...and how the Rockies loom above the barren mounds west of Gillette, Wyoming...

There are amidst this green shoots: downtown revitalization in Port Huron, an amazingly high quality South Shore Railroad electric commuter/former interurban line, and the endless fields of wind turbines fenced in by HV lines parallel to I-90 in southern Minnesota, though in the case of the latter on can understand the visual pollution concerns (though my wife calls them beautiful).

Yet there is also endless (and mindless) low-density car-friendly but walking/cycling/transit hostile sprawl stretching out west of Toronto, southern Michigan, and Chicago amidst huge swaths of already-serviced vacant industrial land and rundown cities and neighborhoods. There is sadly more greenwash than green.

Why would anyone in their right mind allow building on greenfields amidst a housing and commercial market glut, when homeowners are desperate to sell and businesses want to get out from under leases other than small-minded greed amongst local politicians and their developer campaign contributors, is beyond common sense.

There is nothing wrong per se in living in large homes on treeless lots and locating businesses in 'office parks' and 'power centers'. It is that this development has been getting free ride on the environment, land use, and transportation, which distorts the residential and commercial real estate marketplace and fosters waste and destruction whose pricetag that has to be paid by all of us.

 

Intercity and commuter/regional rail offers, when done right, a greener alternative to driving and flying not only in reduced energy consumption but also in enabling compact high-density and walkable development on existing brownfield lands as opposed to car-oriented low-density greenspace-munching sprawl.

The Pacific Northwest is an epicenter of rail transportation and land use initiatives, with hits and misses given the beauty and quality of life and the unchanneled growth that threatens to destroy it. Hits that all three of the major cities: Vancouver, B.C., Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Ore. have or will have commuter and urban rail transit systems, are linked by an albeit sluggishly-growing-and-improving intercity rail network, and especially in Portland's case (with some of those most advanced policies anywhere), are encouraging transit-oriented development. Misses in that the British Columbia and to a lesser extent Washington state government continues 1950s-styled sprawl-encouraging roadbuilding and widening policies (in B.C. case's despite its commitment to carbon taxes) and service cuts including in Portland to local transit.

The Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center is sponsoring a conference that is happening soon:  May 27, 2009 - May 29, 2009 and would be worth while to attend to learn about transportation alternatives and developments in the region that can be applied elsewhere: intercity, commuter/regional rail and rail/cycling integration.

The event, the Cascadia Rail Partnership Conference is subtitled Moving Beyond Oil - Connecting Communities - Rails & Trails. Among its agenda items are

* Federal High Speed Rail Legislation-Moving Passenger and Freight Rail Beyond Oil

* Cascades Rail and Interconnecting Bus Service, and the Connect Oregon Initiative

* New Rail Technology from High Speed Rail to Diesel Multiple Units

* Update on Stimulus Package and Rail Opportunities
* Moving Freight and Passengers on the Same Track

There will also be a special-invite launch in Snohomish (north of Seattle) with Sonoma/Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) John Nemeth, Rail Planning Manager for SMART, the builder of a 70-mile rail and trail line, and Andy Peri from Marin County Bicycle Coalition will meet with Snohomish County rail and trail advocates, and the Snohomish Chamber of Commerce to discuss lessons learned.

This last one is quite timely because there have been and continue to be conflicts between both green form of transportation: cycling/walking and rail transit on little-used or abandoned-but-being-brought-back-to-use rail lines. There has been a big battle on the Seattle area's growing, sprawling, and congested Eastside over such a rail corridor that some senior and powerful officials want for bicycles/pedestrians only while others want for a mixed-use commuter/regional rail and cycle corridor. This route is also the only feasible north-south rail transportation alternative should the principal rail line that hugs the earthquake/landslide/tsunami-vulnerable shoreline from Everett to Seattle gets knocked out: a strong possibility in 'shake-rattle-and-roll country'. Or there is a fire or explosion in the aging tunnel that brings the trains under the city center.

The event takes place in Seattle and Portland with an on-board presentation aboard the 'kickoff' train between both cities on May 27. There will also be a tour of Portland's WES suburb-to-suburb commuter rail; the group will take the MAX light rail to Beaverton, change to WES, ride to Wilsonville, and return. Following that attendees can ride back on MAX and get off near the Amtrak station or ride further directly to PDX for their flight back via Horizon (alas Sound Transit's LINK light rail from SeaTac to downtown Seattle isn't open yet but there are the King County Metro buses). There will be sessions on the 28th and the aforementioned luncheon on the 29th.

 

 President Obama states in his speech in Lansing, MI that the creation of 5 million green collar jobs will play an integral part in his New Energy for America. The IP communications industry is paying attention to the Greening of America. For example, the latest is TelcoBridges' TCOGreen Campaign.

The offer helps telecom service providers and operators learn how to significantly reduce the TCO and Carbon footprint of their network, while enhancing capacity and capabilities. The TCOGreen program consists of:
A detailed TCOGreen White Paper entitled: The Green Total Cost of Ownership
* A Webinar Series - scheduled for June 3-4, at convenient times for both the North American and Asian markets
* An extensive face-to-face campaign with partners and prospects at CommunicAsia 2009, June 16th -19th in Singapore (booth # 5D4-01)
* And two free, online tools to help organizations understand how energy and co-location costs impact their TCO.

These new online tools are also available at: www.telcobridges.com. Additional details on the TCOGreen program can be found at www.telcobridges/tcogreen.

I first met some of the Telcobridges team at Fall VON 2007... Marc St-Onge, Marketing Director and Michael Gelinas of http://www.telcobridges.com.


 

You would never hear a car maker say 'drive less' or a cookware firm recommend eating raw food to save the planet. Nor would one expect a printer manufacturer suggest that its customers print less or don't buy their goods if they don't need to.

Yet that is what Lexmark, in a remarkable display of corporate responsibility has done in via research and advice, reported on TMCnet.

Among its suggestions are:

* Use two-sided printing to save paper

* Use software like the Lexmark Toolbar to print only the Web pages you need

* Share printers in the home or office through wireless networking technology

* Look for the longest available printer warranty to extend its life cycle

* Improve printer efficiency by switching the device off after use

* Print in draft mode to reduce the amount of ink used

* Use Lexmark high-yield cartridges for a higher yield of ink or toner, resulting in fewer cartridges to manufacture and recycle

* Recycle your printed pages and use paper with recycled content

I do have one complaint with Lexmark and that is over its inkjet cartridges. I own an X2650 multifunction printer--a low-cost unit that is adequate for my needs--but the cartridges can't be commercially refilled such as by Island Inket franchisees and others, and refillable alternatives are next to impossible to find.

Yes, Lexmark does have a free cartridge recycling service and one can get replacements with this at a lower price, but that doesn't help me and other users who are running out of ink, can't wait for the lousy mail service, and who want to lower our TCO.  The last time my ink ran out I had to go to the local WalMart ASAP (where I had bought the printer) and pay full price.

Now I'm using an alternative strategy: sharing my wife's HP OfficeJet J6480, which is a more complex machine for what I need to do but which does have refillable cartridges.

That leads to another and serious issue: home inkjet printers have become so cheap that it is often less expensive to replace them--thereby creating more toxic e-waste--than in buying new cartridges.

Come on, Lexmark, you're almost there. Let your customers re-use rather than recycle the cartridges. 

 

The Earth is our home, folks, and there isn't exactly another piece of real estate like it in the galactic neighborhood, so let's not try to make in uninhabitable by our own hands.

Here are some meaningful steps we can take:

* Go hosted. Buying and accessing centrally managed solutions uses less hardware hence less e-waste and are more energy-efficient than purchasing and installing separate units on premises. If for some reason you need on-premises computing then make sure you virtualize them to maximize utilization and minimize waste

* Repair, remodel, not replace. That goes for almost any product: from computers to cars, and to buildings

* Make and buy products for adaptability, earth-friendliness, and longevity. Go for timeless design, durability, and modularity rather than the latest and greatest with long-term lowest TCO (total cost of ownership) and total environmental impacts (TEI)

Here is one example of this: Subaru's array of cars and mini-SUVs (Yes, I own one, a 2001 Forester). Subaru's vehicles are more expensive than similar models from other manufacturers, and they don't grab headlines or blab PR for their environmental friendliness (though the firm's U.S. plant has gained attention). 

Yet the longevity and reliability of the Subaru line is unsurpassed. Mine has 150K on the clock: a senior in most makes but middle aged for a Subaru and treated right it can well last another 150K.

What does that mean for the environment? A Subaru that goes 300K before being 'cremated' in electric furnaces, melted to scrap will have a lower TCO and TEI than more fuel-efficient than hybrids that less 2/3rds as long or less.

* Don't drive if you can walk or ride. That goes for the ludicrous practice of driving children to nearby schools. The safety risks from vehicle accidents--and the harm both from added pollution and obesity--outweighs any perceived security issues.

Sorry but I grew up in the suburbs of a midsized Midwestern city that was not exactly Mayberry, and I walked to school. So did my wife who lived in rough-and-tumble working class neighborhoods and housing projects in New York City. As much as you love your kids you can't moddlycoddle them. They've got to learn how to cope in the real world. Unfortunately many of them don't and have become real headaches for employers who hire and soon fire them. That's one reason why contact center turnover is so high...

* Be sparing in your travel. Conference rather than take business trips, take the train, bus, or in coastal areas, the ferry rather than fly for short-distances. If you must fly use mass transit, shuttle buses, and shared-ride vans rather than rental cars and taxis.

Speaking of which two new airport-to-downtown rail lines open this year, both in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle, Wash. and Vancouver, B.C., Canada.  Both services will be a welcome alternative to the notoriously crowded highways in the region. Taking them means less chance of missing one's flight...

* Work from home for you and your staff. No more commuting. 

AT&T found that a full-time teleworker who would have normally driven 15 miles round trip per day in a car getting 20 mpg would prevent the release of 3,680 lbs of carbon dioxide (CO2), a key source of greenhouse gases, per year. The Canadian Telework Association reports that if 1 million Canadians work from home 1 day each week, in a year, Canada would save some 550 million pounds of CO2, 26 million gallons of fuel, and 480 million miles--and wear and tear on publicly-funded highways and streets. 

Nortel is one of a growing number of firms that does just that, utilizing the firm's fine and proven technologies. As reported by TMC's Michaen Dinan, Nortel has about 11 percent of its own workforce teleworking, which the company estimates will save about $9,000 in real estate and associated energy costs per teleworking employee, and save an estimated 3.4 million gallons of fuel and 1.9 million hours in commute time per year.

* When you do go home reuse existing space to minimize the TEI. Don't add on to your house or buy a new-build unless it is on an existing pre-developed peace of land.

* If you need an office, locate in existing buildings, ones built on brownfield sites, and all with excellent mass transit access including sidewalks. And when selecting a home, do likewise. 

Don't locate your business or home in 'greenfield' i.e. sprawl developments no matter how 'green' the structures are...for the added damage in more people driving to work and more driving, period, plus the loss of open space far outweigh the 'green' or greenwash gains of being in such buildings.

Low-density urban sprawl is an environmental cancer. It destroys the health like pincers in two ways: by ruining life-renewing greenspace, including food supply and by propagating car dependency.

For example the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and Natural Resources Canada estimated that households living in low-density sprawl emit about 26,000 lbs of CO2 each year compared with just 7,700 lbs for those living in neo-traditional inner area compact development housing

There's a whole host of other ills--literally--connected with sprawl.

--A study in The American Journal of Health Promotion and the American Journal of Public Health reported that Americans living in sprawling developments are 6 lbs heavier and are at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

--A research review by the Ontario College of Family Physicians demonstrated that suburban areas have a higher incidence of cardiovascular and lung diseases including asthma in children, cancer, obesity, diabetes, traffic injuries and deaths. The report concluded that air pollution, gridlock, added traffic accidents, lack of physical activity, and negative social impacts such as road rage, lead to a variety of these health problems.

Don't believe the nonsense from the development community that sprawl is a matter of free market choice. It isn't. Not with taxpayer subsidies such as for highways and mortgages, and for environmental costs that distort the marketplace. Here is some evidence of the above:

-- "The Fiscal Cost of Sprawl: How Sprawl Contributes to Local Governments' Budget Woes" by the Environment Colorado Research and Policy Center, Colorado State University, published 2003 reports that $1 in revenues from sprawl is outweighed by $1.65 in additional service expenditures

--The C.D. Howe Institute in Canada calculated that sprawl would cost the Toronto area $55 billion, plus $14 billion in operating expenditures over the next 25 years, compared $42.8 billion (or 22%) less. The savings amount to $1 billion/year from capital, maintenance, and including $200 million related to air pollution, health care, and the policing associated with automobile accidents

--The David Suzuki Foundation has quantified the annual losses: in erosion control, wildlife habitat, water quality from sprawl. These range from $12,000 per hectare ($5,000 per acre) for farmland to as high as $30,000 per hectare ($12,300 per acre) for wetlands

Don't believe the whines from the construction/highway lobby about the need to repair infrastructure and relieve congestion with more roads. Those claims are a crock. There are an overwhelming number of studies demonstrating that more roads lead to more sprawl.

--The Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) 1999 reported that between 1982 and 1997, metro areas that were aggressive in expanding the amount of road space per person fared no better in terms of rush-hour congestion than those that did the least to add new road space; in fact, they did slightly worse. This, it said, is due in part to induced travel. 

STPP found that every 10% increase in the highway network results in a 5.3% increase in the amount of driving, over and above any increases caused by population growth or other factors. In addition, road-building has not been an effective congestion-fighting measure: the metro areas that added the most highway space per person have seen congestion levels rise at a slightly higher rate than areas that added few roads per resident.

--"Analysis of Metropolitan Highway Capacity and the Growth in Vehicle Miles of Travel", published in 2000 and authored by Robert Noland, University of London Center for Transport Studies and William A. Cowart, ICF Consulting in Fairfax, VA., concluded:

"In addition the impact of lane mile additions on VMT [vehicle-miles traveled] growth appears to be greater in urbanized areas with larger percent increases in total capacity. This may be evidence for a strong sprawl inducing impact of large increases in lane mile capacity relative to the existing infrastructure."

Jack Shafer in Slate wrote a great article on this titled 'Infrastructure Madness'. In it he said "The scary-sounding phrases structurally deficient and functionally obsolete combined with those big numbers are enough to make you bite your nails bloody every time you drive over a river or beneath an underpass. Yet if any of the cited pieces paused to define either inspection term, you'd come away from the alarmist stories with a yawn. 

As a 2006 report by U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration puts it, structural deficiencies are characterized by deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements and reduced load carrying capacity. Functional obsolescence is a function of the geometrics of the bridge not meeting current design standards. Neither type of deficiency indicates that the bridge is unsafe. [Emphasis added.]"

And yes don't believe the greenwash about 'green' vehicles. There's no such animal no matter how they are fueled. 'Green' cars and trucks demand and chew up asphalt that require construction and repair from, and which destroy open space: a 2-track rail line can carry 8 times as much goods and people as 2 lanes of highway on the same footprint.

Don't believe the claims that sprawls and roads are essential to create jobs in a tough economy. That's another load of hooey too. You can argue that you can create more and lasting economic impacts--with much fewer downsides--by investing in rural broadband, mass transit, high-speed rail, education, and healthcare. And by encouraging people and businesses to remodel, not replace, and build only on brownfields and by transit stations.

One wishes that the construction companies and developer get with the program because there is work available in a green environment. There is money to be made in rebuilding/remodeling and in building on brownfields and at transit stations, in cleanup, and in fixing up roads that truly need it, and in transportation alternatives. Money that is renewable too as these investments will decay, become obsolete, and need upgrading.

Finally: fight for your home, your planet. If a developer wants to turn your local swamp into a mall or a planner wants to rip out some trees for a widened road demand that they pay the total price for the destruction and for the added costs you and your offspring have to pay. If they 'greenwash' by promising 'green buildings' call them on it. No more free rides to our demise.

Also query candidates on environmental issues and hold them accountable. Look into and question where they get their campaign contributions from. Who are they working for: you or those who line their pockets?

Lastly consider joining or at least financially contributing to your local community association as well as established reputable organizations such as the Sierra Club and likeminded specialized groups such as the National Association of Railroad Passengers.

Think globally...act, well...

 

 

Kudos to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for its work in developing methodologies to examine the environmental impacts and the benefits of IT communications (ICT).
 
The ITU is developing tools to calculate energy usage and carbon impact arising from ICT lifecycles and to examine the decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can be achieved with ICTs. Examples of the latter include substituting ICT services and devices for intensive fossil-fueled activities for travel and transport and by replacing atoms with bits (buying an MP3 file instead of a CD), also known as 'dematerialization'. 

The organization also noted a trend towards 'always-on' devices that are a drain on power supplies. On the other hand a contribution to its focus group meeting showed that direct e-mail has the effect of a 98.5 per cent carbon dioxide emission reduction compared with paper. 

"A common methodology will help establish the business case to go green and can ultimately be beneficial to informed consumer choices and climate-friendly business procurement," say Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.

Now what's needed is for the ITU or another similar august body to tackle a real interesting and probably the next green issue: wired versus wireless, both in the actual energy to push X amount of data (including voice) from A to B, and in construction and lifecycle construction and maintenance impacts.

Answers to this matter can help decisionmakers, and green-and-energy-conscious businesses and individuals to make the right choices.

As Tesla discovered, air is a lousy conductor of electricity, not to mention the safety concerns. Energy is required to push ultra low-voltage signals through the medium.  Copper and fiber via landlines are much more efficient. Yet wireless networks require less infrastructure which demands energy to build and maintain.

To their credit, suppliers have taking steps to cut the energy required for wireless transmission. For example Nortel has released its Smart Power Management Software that helps reduce radio network power consumption in GSM networks and delivers significant energy and cost-savings for mobile operators. It enables network operators to switch off radio network equipment dynamically when there is no caller traffic being processed by the system. This can provide up to a 33 percent energy reduction by cutting base transceiver station power consumption. 

This feature, combined with other enhancements made to Nortel's GSM technology, makes Nortel's GSM portfolio up to 50 percent more energy efficient than it was five years ago says the firm.

Let's hear the arguments, and let me know of these and other solutions.

 

There have been plenty to the point of overload of competing green claims--that some times amount to greenwash--regarding the apparent and supposed environmental benefits of buildings, products, features, technologies, services, and practices: from LEED buildings to telework.

At the same time there have been points raised about the costs both direct and indirect i.e. lost productivity of going green: at what price to organizations especially in this tough economy with limited resources.

To help organizations, decisionmakers, and yes journalists and the public, could some reputable association develop with consensus from all parties: industry, academia, government, environmental groups devise an objective 'GreenDex' to evaluate products, services, applications and practices to help us reduce our environmental footprints?

This 'GreenDex' could be based on a basket of total environmental harm i.e.

--Emissions (CO (2) plus other and more noxious air pollutants: gases, particulate matter)
--Effluent
--Nonrecyclable solid waste
--Physical footprint, including impacts such as erosion, destruction of habitant, removal of carbon-converting plants, creation of heat islands, both for property and for workplace- supporting transportation systems
--Heat production
--Energy consumption, with two models: standard i.e. current mix of fossil-fueled, large-scale hydro, nuclear, and alternative (biomass, small-scale hydro, solar, and wind) and Green made up of alternative, such as that supplied by Bullfrog Power in Canada

--Indirect damage, such as emissions and physical footprint from transportation to/from workplaces (The Victoria Transport Policy Institute is one of the best sources of information on transportation and land use direct and indirect environmental impacts) and healthcare costs arising from pollution-borne illnesses such as asthma

The GreenDex could be then be quantified, based on best available information, with rough assigning of direct and indirect (i.e. personally responsible for but incurred on others i.e. transportation demand, health) costs. It can then be compared with straight line direct/indirect capital and operating costs and productivity gains or losses.

Once we have some idea of the harm that our actions can and are causing, versus what we stand to gain, then we can decide to make responsible and effective decisions on what we buy, what practices we use, and how we choose to accomplish our tasks.
 

Telus, which is one of Canada's largest communications companies, has taken an unusual--and correct--path in green marketing. It has gone green first through instituting a telework program for its internal contact center agents, which it calls at-home agents or AHAs and then decided to form and promote its AHA consulting/hosting program to other companies.

Telus has 750 AHAs who presently live within 150 km/95 miles from the firm's eight contact centers: in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec and come in for training. That number will expand to 1,050 by the end of 2009.  They will represent nearly 21 percent of its contact center workforce from 16 percent currently. The carrier is looking at broadening the network to include communities not in business travel distance and removing the trip-in requirements so it could tap more highly qualified potential agents in other labor markets.

Telus analyzed the impacts of its AHA program, which began in 2006. It has resulted--to date-- $144,500 in savings by team members in fuel and vehicle repairs 1.94 million kilometers/1.2 million miles not driven, 1,250 days of time saved, and 135,000 kg of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.

Telus, prompted by clients who were impressed by its internal AHA program, has parlayed that experience into Telus AgentAnywhere that can also help firms cut down on commuting, and emissions. It offers two different business models: contracted home agents and support for employee agents.
 
Telus's CallCenterAnywhere platform can host, route, and launch inbound and dialler-initiated outbound calls. It partners with LiveXchange to provide contracted home agents either on the Telus's CallCenterAnywhere or LiveXchange's similar platform from Oracle. This contract agent model helps organization supplement their core operations while keeping the operating expenses associated with full time employees down.
 
For companies looking to put their own agents into home office very much like Telus did, its employee agent support program features PSTN voice and DSL broadband connections integrated with CallCenterAnywhere or the customers existing platform, desktops and security virtual private networks along with consulting services to help the customer successfully deploy agents in home settings. The carrier places them together in a simple monthly bill.
 
The Telus home working solution is very flexible and becoming more so. For example it supports private LANs and managed solutions as opposed to conventional ISPs. The carrier will also offer to hire and manage the agents internally at home as its employees and then offer them on temporary outsourced basis to clients.

Yes, there are billions of dollars being pumped into new transit projects and services in Canada and the U.S. A new rapid transit line will open later this year from downtown Vancouver, B.C., where Telus has offices, to the fast-growing suburb of Richmond and to Vancouver International Airport, in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. More expansions are to come.

Yet even TransLink, the Metro Vancouver region's transportation authority indirectly acknowledges, transit upgrades, along with removing highway bottlenecks, are not the be-all and end-all to traffic congestion and related issues. It has several pages on its site devoted to telework.

Telus has long-running ad campaign featuring various creatures with the tagline 'The Future is Friendly'.

Telus and the firms who signed up its CallCenterAnywhere service, will help make it that way.

 

 

Electrical power has become of those necessities that are nasty and expensive to provide. We are now dependent on it, are uncomfortable and cannot perform tasks when it isn't there.

Yet we do not like the sight of power lines, substations, and generating facilities (including green ones like solar farms and wind turbines)--certainly not in our back yards, and we are worried about the emissions from fossil fuel plants, environmental damage from hydroelectric dams, and radiation from nuclear stations. The building, upgrading, and maintaining of these facilities are reasons behind the seemingly climbing electric bills.

Therefore it is exciting to see governments like the U.S. government and the province of Ontario to consider, promote and bring in measures to enable green electric energy conservation, development and management, the latter in the form of smart grids. The more efficient and greener the electricity supply the fewer the consequences of providing it.

Yet has any organization taking a look at telework: touted as a means to reduce traffic demand and resulting high energy consumption and emissions, in a method known as transportation demand management or TDM, to do the same for electric power?

Here's why telework could be part of the power solution:

1. Peak demand shaving, especially in summer

Electricity demand spikes when people return home from workplaces because they switch on the lights, and more importantly, kick on and crank up the ACs, or in winter, electric heat if they have it. The added draw pulls more output especially from backup fossil fuel-generating plants.

Too often though the demand overloads electrical circuits leading to brownouts and blackouts, both of which can fry computers and other sensitive equipment. There is also a smaller, but still occurring spike in the morning as people arrive at their workplaces, and kick on the HVACs, switch on the lights, and boot up the equipment.

In contrast, teleworkers keep their lights and AC and heating systems on a steady and low rate. Consumption does not change as much as compared to their commuter counterparts. They also do not use electric rail and bus transit systems for work trips in those metro areas that have them.

2.  Less facility-led consumption

Homes and offices require heating/AC, lighting, and power for equipment. There is electrical energy being consumed 24/7 in varying amounts regardless of occupancy. By shifting more workers home the lights can be extinguished and computer power draws diminished at no-longer-needed offices.

Also there are more alternative direct energy sources available at home, like oil and natural gas heat and modern efficient woodstoves. Temperatures can also be turned down to suit individual comfort and personal finances.

3. Business continuity

Teleworking can minimize the impacts of blackouts and brownouts and deliver business continuity by enabling organizations to spreading out their workforces. If the lights are out in Boston, Massachusetts chances are they will still be on in Boston Bar, British Columbia, Long Island.

If anyone has solid data and research on this we at TMC would be happy to see this.

 

A wirestory about the potential of green technology growth to revive California's sagging famed Silicon Valley--as desirable as green innovations and resulting employment and increased prosperity may be--contains a literal and equally toxic whiff of the proverbial 'jogger going to a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes.'

The story cites a report by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network that shows that employment in the region slipped 1.3 per cent in November and per capita income eroded, decreasing nearly one per cent. 

Overall venture capital investments in Silicon Valley dropped 7.7 per cent in 2008, breaking an upward trend started in 2005.

Yet at the same time green tech investments has climbed 94 per cent since 2005 and employment in the sector has risen 23 per cent during the same years. Some of this has been heading to the Valley already. 

The issue is that the Silicon Valley is not producing the skilled workers needed to fill green technology jobs as the industry grows.

"'We need a strong system of workforce development to support adult worker retraining and transition,'" said Silicon Valley Community Foundation president Emmett Carson.

Now here's where the smoke comes in. More employment locally at jobsites means more traffic, and more pollutants that offset the green benefits from what is being created. 

While Silicon Valley has long had a light rail, bus, and commuter rail system that has been slowly growing, work travel there, like in most metro areas, mostly means cars and roads, the building, operation, accommodation, and maintenance of which damages the environment.

So here's a solution: why not encourage green tech firms--along with every other employer--to institute aggressive telework programs? And not just in Silicon Valley but elsewhere too. That way the skilled people can be found without adding to the 'brown air' emanating from clogged freeways and roads. 

Telework can and does also bring in highly skilled people who would not have otherwise applied for such employment. Those ranks includes the mobility-impaired, like the sadly growing legion of disabled military veterans and individuals who are home-bound such as those who have childcare and eldercare responsibilities. And then there the boomer wave of highly skilled people who are retired/semi-retired who would enjoy working but can't be bothered anymore with the costly stressful hassle of commuting

With telework the green tech companies can save money--$10,000 to $20,000 per person per year--that can go into R&D and manufacturing to get their products to customers--rather than on subsidizing space for warm bodies. 

Walking the walk on green tech therefore puts green back in their pockets, and into the economy. It also saves tax dollars on transportation costs.

Much tech work--except where you need to get hands-on--can be done at home. Some of the physical tasks could be handled there too. After all, that's where much of the famed innovations from Silicon Valley came from: basements and garages.

Yes, this means that some of the people hired will not be from the Silicon Valley, or from other areas seeking such benefits, hence diminishing the local economic benefits.

So what? Who cares where the person is living and working from as long as they are working, which means that they will have money that they will be spending, which in turn creates benefits like employment and more income, and taxes to subsidize road and transit systems?

After all, cleaner air in the Silicon Valley--and elsewhere--helps everyone.
 

It is great to see that jurisdictions like the Canadian province of Ontario taking steps to encourage green practices and technology.

As reported on TMCnet, the province's government will be introducing a sure-to-pass (Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal party holds a majority in the legislature) Green Energy Act, which will:

* Encourage conservation side by creating an Expert Advisory Council that will offer advice to the government on any future energy efficiency changes to Ontario's building code

*  Modernize the province's electrical transmission system by employing 'smart grid' technology--two way communications, advanced sensors, and distributed computing--that enable power distributors to anticipate and address problems before they lead to outages

* Make it easier to get new wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels plants online and on to the grid while protecting the environment by addressing local bylaws and regulations that are used to delay or stop proposed renewable energy projects. Ontario has brought almost 1,000 megawatts of new renewable energy on-line since 2003

The measures are on top of efforts to end burning coal at four power plants by 2014 and plans to invest in new and upgraded mass transit systems in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Kitchener-Waterloo.

Ontario has other another good reason for these green measures: business continuity. Most of the province lost power during the infamous blackout of August 2003 and it was hit with the same ice storm that also paralyzed Quebec and New Brunswick in 1998.

As great as these steps and others are--and Premier McGuinty is to be commended for his leadership despite tough economic times that are facing his province, home to Canada's beleaguered automotive industry and facing plummeting real estate values--they are not exactly dramatic, ones that would truly put Ontario on the map.

The Telework Coalition (TelCoa) has suggested just that in its submission to Ontario's 2009 budget. Among its recommendations:

* A 'Comprehensive Trip Reduction' program aimed at incentivizing employers, both for-profit and non-profit, and post-secondary educational institutions to reduce employee and student commuting by car. The measures include and involve:

--Tax credits, or to nonprofits, institutions, and other governments grants-in-lieu of taxes for each employee or student who switches from driving to work to transit, walking, cycling, and telework. The credits/grants would be based on the direct and indirect costs of automobile commuting per person/km multiplied by the average commuting distance where the employer or college is located, as measured by Statistics Canada, minus the costs of the alternatives used

--The money granted would be used to pay for transit passes, accommodations for bikes, telework program setup, satellite locations, and relocating to areas with better transit access. A small portion could go as breaks and offsets to higher costs and reduced incomes. Compliance would be ensured by employers and schools asking and tabulating employee and student mode choice, through enrollment in formal telework and distance learning programs, and through monitoring of residents' complaints about employee/school parking

*  'The Ontario Government Telework Initiative', a new program that establishes working from home as standard practice for office-based civil service tasks, and that interpersonal contacts would be made through conferencing rather than travel for face-to-face meetings. Allocating formal offices and requiring staff to work from them, and face-to-face business travel would be the exception, rather than the rule. Here are several measures that could be contained in the Initiative

--Deploy an 'is this office necessary?' policy. The provincial government would examine employee functions to see which ones can be teleworked and create a telework policy with a dedicated manager and team. The acting assumption is that the positions can be teleworked full-time until demonstrated otherwise. The Government would open employment for teleworkable positions to all residents, regardless of where they live. The Ontario Realty Corporation, which manages the government's real estate would be charged with selling or subleasing office space either for offices or for conversions to other purposes, such as commercial, educational, medical/institutional, or residential

--Locate in "green" but not greenfield, sites. For non-teleworkable functions the government would be required to house them in facilities in downtowns and in other locations highly accessible by transit, cycling and walking. Leasing renting in greenfield developments and sites would be prohibited unless the government provides offsets such as buying development-threatened greenspace. Buildings would be chosen or retrofitted to minimize energy use

--Limit work travel. Policies should be set up to favor conferencing over travel and require staff to prove that conferencing is not feasible. Only if they are not, would employees be permitted to travel, but the rules would be set up to make driving the mode of last resort for short trips. Staff would be strongly encouraged to take trains and buses, and carpool. This policy can be applied in the same way as telework either by making travel including vehicles available only on an application-by-application basis or as part of departmental budgets that they reduce or use more cost-effectively

--Provide a service to other governments, institutions, and the private sector. The Ontario Government Telework Initiative, with a model telework policy, could be made as a model and resource for other organizations on a free or at-cost consultative basis

One of the challenges with formal telework programs as applied in government is that there has been no incentive at the managerial level to make them successful. That has proven to be the case of the U.S. federal government where savings from telework programs go to the Interior Department as opposed to the departments that achieved them. 

The Telework Coalition put forward two options to ensure departmental compliance with the Telework Initiative:

--Allocate to the Ontario Realty Corp less money (10-20 percent) less than it needs to cover Government facilities expenses. The ORC makes up the difference by requiring departments to demonstrate why they need offices and who then pay for them out of their program budgets

--Incorporate facilities costs as part of departmental program budgets, and giving managers the authority to cut them and use the savings for other purposes i.e. service delivery

The benefits of both recommendations are substantial. The Comprehensive Trip Reduction plan would deliver net savings to the Ontario Government. It achieves this by reducing commuting-purpose vehicular traffic, resulting in less need for highway spending and on related emergency services and healthcare costs.  The program would boost Ontario's economy by encouraging more spending in transit and in voice/data networks.

The Ontario Government Telework Initiative would enable the government to deliver the same, if not more services for less money by reducing facilities and travel costs, and employment expenses. The Initiative would boost productivity, cut illness-related healthcare costs, and improve work-life balance. The government could offer telework as an option to or as part of overall smaller employee compensation packages, thereby reducing labor costs. Specifically it would: 

* Permit the government to offer civil service employment to more Ontarians regardless of where they live, and at the same time widening the applicant pools to obtain the best, most productive workers available. This avoids relocation costs for employees 

* Shrink the government's environmental footprint through telework, locating needed facilities on transit routes, conferencing, and use of lower-impact transportation means

* Deliver a major boost to Ontario's economy by creating demand for voice/data network technology and services, home office furniture, and more functional and powerful home office computers, the latter three categories often supplied by local retailers 

"Encourage teleworking will help the Ontario Government achieve traffic congestion relief and reduced pollution in a far shorter timeframe than relying on mass transit improvements and HOV lanes alone, " says TelCoa." Telework strategies can achieve results in as less as six months as compared to 5 or more years for transportation projects."

TelCoa did acknowledge in its submission that there will be some need for transportation investments even with teleworking, if only to accommodate occasional travel to offices. It also accepted that teleworking could encourage sprawl with the expanded freedom to live outside of commuting distances.

In response TelCoa's presentation included measures to 'fix it first' on existing highways rather than to build new ones, modestly expand commuter rail and bus from Toronto and Ottawa into outlying areas, and to curb sprawl such as through fees tacked onto developers who build on or to the purchasers who buy commercial or residential property on greenfield (open space) sites.

The province is keeping its budget deliberation under tight wraps. With it being the home to and offices of leading comm/tech firms like Bell, Corel, Mitel, Nortel, Research in Motion, Rogers, and Telus, to name a few, one hopes that Premier McGuinty and his government would use the powerful tools of telework to step out of the box to build a greener, more productive, and prosperous future.

 

It will be possible, depending on how quickly and urgently the aviation industry acts to develop and roll out the technology, to fly and work on your laptop without worrying about the emissions-related harm being incurred and the life-enabling open space ruined by massive runways. 

The key environmental issue with flying is not so much the CO2 from the engines but from the water vapor emitted at higher altitudes, where jet aircraft operate, which turns into clouds.  Canadian journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer reports that these clouds reflect heat back to the surface "and contribute to global warming".

There is a solution, which he discussed in a recent column carried in a rural Ontario paper ,distributed free in communities located below what are arguably Canada's busiest commercial and military airways, and that is known as 'circulation control'. 

This is a technology whose function is, he quoted Dennis Bushnell, the chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, "'to bleed the engines and inject air backwards at the upper trailing edge of the wing, you can produce lift coefficients which are easily three or four times what we can get out of conventional wings.'"

With circulation control, aircraft can fly more comfortably and with less harm at lower altitudes, reports Dyer. Water vapor turns to rain and bumps i.e. turbulence is minimized.  

"That [also] means very short takeoffs and landings, so short that existing runways could accommodate several aircraft at once. And the same circulation control system, used in flight, has "such tremendous control authority" that it can counter the bumps that are normally part of flying down in the weather and produce a smooth ride."

Circulation control or circulation control wings according to Wikipedia can for the archetypical Boeing 737 airliner cut approach speeds by 35 percent to 45 percent and landing distances by 55 percent to 75 percent, adding that such advances in wing design "could allow for dramatic wing size reduction in large, wide body jets." It can also significantly reduce noise pollution, making aircraft and airports nicer neighbors.

The technology still needs to be perfected. "The main problem with the circulation control wing is the need for high energy air to be blown over the wing's surface," explains the Wikipedia entry. "Such air is often taken from the engine however this drastically reduces engine power production and consequently defies the purpose of the wing. Other options are taking the exhaust gases (which must first be cooled) or using multiple, lightweight gas generators, which are separate from the main aircraft engines."

Aircraft design and technology have taken amazing leaps in performance. Isn't it time for engineers, manufacturers, and airliner customers to aim for the sky in reducing emissions?

It is gratifying to see many countries, such as Australia, Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. plan to spend money on expanding their broadband networks.
 
The Canadian Parliament passed that country's 2009 budget on Tuesday with C$225 million to be spent over three years to develop and implement a strategy on extending broadband coverage to unserved rural and remote communities. 

Public assistance is needed, says the government, which is controlled by the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, because companies cannot turn a profit on the investments needed to reach out to these individuals and businesses owing to density and distance from major hubs.

Only with broadband can consumers and businesses effectively access information, goods and services, and yes work i.e. telework via the information highway by riding on the equivalent of paved roads to and from their homes, storefronts, and factories as compared with the dirt tracks of dial-up and plank roads of satellite.

Yet it would be nice for governments also to offer tax incentives, either tax deductions to corporations or grants-in-lieu of taxes to nonprofits, to nudge these organizations to provide teleworking i.e. 'GreenWorking'. The Telework Coalition has called for just that, pointing that there are parking and transit deductions but none for telework.

One of the factors holding telework back has been less-than-competent managers who are unable to supervise others without seeing them Victorian-style. Tax deductions/grants may be just what the C-suite needs to finally crack the whip on theses individuals: go home or go home, for good.

In fairness to office building landlords there should also be grants or deductions available to them to compensate for their losses. These can go to conversions to other uses, like apartments for the swelling numbers of people who can no longer afford owning single family homes, for schools, or to plowsharing: tearing down buildings and restoring the land to productive greenspace.

The money would be well-spent from a public policy perspective. It costs far less to transport a worker over broadband than over an expressway or in an express train, bus, or ferry from the direct i.e. infrastructure and indirect i.e. healthcare through accidents and illnesses perspectives. Telework also makes infrastructure investments last longer through reducing demand and congestion, which also avoids emissions incurred in maintenance and upgrades. 

Compared with the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into what is becoming obsolete modes of getting around, the actual amounts to be allocated in these incentives would be a clear, clean, drop in the bucket.