The New York Times today reports that airlines are exploring ways to reduce the amount of paper each plane carries as a way to reduce weight and fuel costs. The article implies that each pound of additional weight costs $17,600 (=$440,000/25 lbs) in added fuel costs over
Read moreBruce Rayner at Electrical Engineering Times did a great writeup on our work on trends in computing efficiency in their June 21, 2011 issue. It’s a cover story. Rayner uses our work as backdrop to tell the story of five key technologies that will have a huge impact on
Read moreI had heard of motion sensors controlling display cases before, but the Target in Emeryville, CA (which we visited this morning) has a particularly nice implementation of that technology. The display cases are lit with LEDs (see below). And here’s a closer shot of the motion detector: There were
Read moreJames Kanter has a very nice article on NYTimes.com today on data centers and the search for ever better ways to cool those facilities. Typical “in-house” data centers nowadays devote one kWh of electricity to cooling, pumps, fans, and power systems for every kWh of electricity used for servers
Read moreOn June 12, 2011, The New York Times reported on something novel in an article titlted “US Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors”. The first two paragraphs read: “The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive
Read moreOn June 3, 2011, Climate Progress reported on the development of a new type of corporation, the B-corp, “which modifies governance so that managers respond to long-term interests of investors, stakeholders, and the environment, rather than just focusing on short-term profits.” This is an important development because it changes the
Read moreIn an earlier post I speculated about window-integrated PV, and have now completed some further investigations. I emailed with Richard Lunt, the lead researcher on the window integrated PV paper, as well as with my friend Steve Selkowitz, head of LBNL’s Windows and Daylighting Group, about this new innovation,
Read moreWe visited Bill Nye’s terrific Climate Lab at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA on Saturday May 7, 2011. I didn’t get to play around with the exhibits as much as I’d like (that’s what happens when you have two year old twins)
Read moreAndrew Fanara, Larry Vertal, and me at the Uptime Institute Symposium in Santa Clara, CA, May 11, 2011. The three of us were at the center of efforts to improve energy efficiency in servers and data centers starting in early 2006. Larry was at AMD when that company started to
Read moreToday Intel announced the commercialization of 3D transistors using low voltages and a 22 nm fab process, a development that will help the technology industry keep pace with the long term trends in power efficiency identified in our forthcoming IEEE article (Koomey, Jonathan G., Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry
Read moreYesterday I tweeted about an innovation from MIT that converts infrared (IR) radiation to electricity, allowing for electricity generation from windows that appear transparent to the naked eye. The paper documenting those findings is here. My good friend Kurt Brown, who I worked with in collaboration to design the recommendation
Read moreYesterday (April 7th, 2011) Facebook announced its Open Compute Project and shared with the world technical details about its efficient data center in Prineville, OR. GigaOm did a nice summary of the technical details about that data center (as have others, here and here) but I wanted to talk about
Read moreGetting serious about climate solutions means shutting down coal plants, starting with the old dirty ones. Washington State just announced an agreement to shut down the last coal plant in the Pacific Northwest, the first boiler by 2020 and the 2nd by 2025 (another facility is already scheduled to be
Read moreI wrote about the importance of distinguishing facts from values in Chapter 19 of Turning Numbers into Knowledge, and I wanted to summarize that point here, because it is so often forgotten in discussions of technical issues. Every human choice embodies certain values. When technical people advocate a technology choice
Read moreThe folks at the Breakthrough Technology Institute (BTI) have kindly agreed to work through the concerns I raised in my memo on the state of the rebound dialogue in a collaborative way. We’re beginning that process by focusing on what’s called the elasticity of substitution in firms, which
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