The financial markets are starting to realize that the “booked” reserves of the fossil fuel companies are based on a fallacy: these estimates assume that those fossil fuel resources can be burned and still maintain a stable climate. As I and others have written for years, we must keep a
Read moreCheryl Katz at Yale Environment 360 wrote a nice article on energy harvesting in which I’m quoted. Here are the two intro paragraphs: Computers feasting on their own exhaust heat. Super-efficient solar panels snaring lost thermal energy and recycling it into electricity. Personal electronics powered by stray microwaves or
Read moreThe Corporate Eco Forum (CEF) just posted a new essay of mine titled "Bringing Enterprise Computing into the 21st Century: A Management and Sustainability Challenge". Here are two key intro paragraphs: Most companies view IT as a cost center, but the most effective users of these new technologies
Read moreI gave a talk on energy and the information economy at the Physics of Sustainable Energy Conference on March 8th, 2014. The event was sponsored by the American Physical Society, which has been doing this conference for at least three cycles. It was a great event, and I got to
Read moreGreenBiz just posted video of my keynote interview with Joel Makower of Green Biz from last fall’s VERGE conference in San Francisco, which took place on October 16, 2013. The key message: Information technology is our “ace in the hole” when it comes to facing the climate challenge. In
Read moreJoel Achenbach at the Washington Post has posted today a must-read article about pseudo science and journalism. The final two paragraphs echo the findings in my recent post titled “Separating Fact From Fiction”: There’s nothing at stake here except the survival of credible journalism. For those who are trying
Read moreI was interviewed for the WNYC radio show New Tech City last week, and the story appeared today. It’s a fun piece, and worth listening to. My one quibble is that the report explicitly creates false balance, because it contrasted my data and analysis-based view of how much electricity
Read moreThis article is an abridged, re-edited, and amended version of an article that recently appeared as Koomey, Jonathan. 2014. “Separating Fact From Fiction: A Challenge For The Media.” In IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine. January. pp. 9-11. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’
Read moreLast week I moderated a panel at the Open Compute Summit V in San Jose that focused on bringing integrated design, mass production and learning by doing to the data center industry. The great irony is that information technology (IT) has had amazing success at transforming other industries, reducing costs
Read moreThe chemical spill that fouled West Virginia’s water supply provides yet another example (as if any more were needed) showing why unregulated markets will underinvest in environmental protection. The Wall Street Journal has a summary here (subscription required) Freedom Industries Inc., the company connected to a chemical spill that
Read moreThe National Journal (among others) is reporting that The $1 trillion federal spending bill that lawmakers unveiled Monday night would soften an Obama administration climate-change policy that greatly restricts U.S. support for coal-plant construction in developing nations… The bill also targets a policy to phase out inefficient light bulbs
Read moreMy invited perspective article, “Moving beyond benefit-cost analysis of climate change”, was just posted by the open access on-line journal Environmental Research Letters. Here’s the abstract and the introduction. Abstract The conventional benefit–cost approach to understanding the climate problem has serious limitations. Fortunately, an alternative way of thinking
Read moreCold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs was recently honored as a finalist in the Science: General category of the 2013 USA Best Book Awards. To see the list of 2013 winners, go here. In May of this year, the book was awarded an honorable mention in the
Read moreThe Annual Review of Environment and Resources has just released their Volume 38, which contains our latest article, titled “Smart Everything: Will Intelligent Systems Reduce Resource Use? (CLICK ON THE TITLE LINK TO DOWNLOAD A FREE COPY!)”. The article provides a broad look at the progress of distributed mobile computing
Read moreIn a white paper I wrote for Samsung last fall (Koomey 2012), I analyze the economics of purchasing green DRAM for servers. Assessing the economics of efficiency improvements in IT equipment requires knowledge not just of energy prices and energy savings, but also of the avoided infrastructure costs associated with
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