The central problem of governance

I’ve worked with my friend Stephen Decanio, an economics professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara, for many years.  He’s an economist who, like me, has a deep skepticism about the computer models used to analyze the economics of climate change.  He’s also a keen observer of the politics around facing the climate challenge, so I take his musings seriously.

I sent Steve an article about the failure of our elected representatives to create the fundamental reforms needed in the financial system after the market collapse of 2008, and he replied “I’m becoming more and more convinced that the real problem doesn’t have to do with economics or technology, but with governance.”  What he meant was that the challenges we face, whether climate change or financial meltdowns, have in common the failure of government or corporate governance to align private incentives with the public good.

What has been most disheartening to me about the debates over financial regulations, health care reform, and climate change in the US in the past few years is how obviously sensible solutions are sidelined by one side or the other based on ideology or political interest, without serious discussion of the real issues.  Regulators and elected officials are “captured” by the industries they ostensibly control, and either fail or refuse to see the need for structural reform.  The news industry has been reduced to entertainment, with little real analysis in all but a few news shows (some comedy shows even do better analysis than the best of the real “news” shows). And the lack of accountability for truly colossal mistakes (like the financial meltdown) breeds a depth of public cynicism that virtually ensures that further disasters lie ahead.

Yet none of this is inevitable. The founding fathers laid out a framework for government that stands to this day as a paragon of how to make self interest work for the common good, relying strongly on checks and balances and competing interests to prevent the accumulation of too much power by any one individual or group.  The system hasn’t been perfect, but it has worked remarkably well (better than all competing systems, as Winston Churchill noted).   It has weathered world wars and numerous financial crises, and thus far always emerged stronger than before.  But the system only works when all participants share a commitment towards working together for the common good.

Now we face new realities, with technological and financial power beyond the imagination of the people of two centuries ago, and new environmental challenges that require new ways of working together (for one eloquent exposition of this idea, see David Orr’s book Down to the Wire). That means we must design institutions that recognize those realities, and use our new capabilities to align private interests with broader societal goals.  Private enterprise is the best means yet devised for driving down costs and spreading the use of technology, but capitalism cannot survive without some check on the actions of corporations.  Otherwise we end up with lead in children’s toys, testing of drugs on unsuspecting patients, fraud and theft by corporate cronies, and rivers that catch on fire.

The challenge is to create the right kind of check on corporate power, keeping the spirit of innovation alive while curtailing corporate excesses. In the US, at least until recently, we seem to have been moving away from limiting corporate action in any form.  Somehow the pendulum needs to swing back, but some systemic problems prevent it, including people who worry greatly about excess government power but not about excess corporate power, and vice-versa.  If you worry about both, I get it, but if you only care about one or the other, I think you’re missing the boat.

One important purpose of government is to promote what the US Constitution calls “the general welfare”.  This means designing systems that result in economic efficiency and social justice, minimizing perverse incentives.  For example, one of my former neighbors is a lawyer who defends developers against environmental lawsuits.  In a recent case, one of his clients bought an old railroad yard and promised significant funding to clean it up, so that housing could be built on the site.  A local environmental group, sensing an opportunity to get publicity, sued anyway, even after the company met with them and promised to go beyond current requirements.  The problem in this case is that the incentives for the local environmental group (to get publicity) are not aligned with the social goal of spending money on cleaning up the toxic mess left at the old industrial site, and now hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent on legal fees that could otherwise have gone to cleaning up the site.  There are many such examples where the incentives for individuals and institutions do not necessarily align with the social good.  Markets are pretty good at providing the right incentives (provided certain conditions are met) but they are not infallible, and need to be designed, operated, and regulated well, otherwise we get financial crises, polluted rivers, and toxic toys.

I do wonder if all great countries reach a point where they can’t reform themselves, because they are too rich, the entrenched interests are too powerful, and the people grow self congratulatory and self indulgent.  I’m hopeful we haven’t reached that point, and I don’t see why it has to be that way.  We live in a democracy, after all, and the American ability to reinvent ourselves has been proven time and time again. We just need to figure out how to get things moving in the right direction.

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This blog post draws from Chapter 7 in Jonathan Koomey’s latest book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, to be released by Analytics Press on February 15, 2012.    Written for entrepreneurs and investors, this book describes how to profit from tackling climate change, one of this century’s greatest challenges.   The author acts as your company’s scientific advisor, summarizing the business implications of the climate problem for both new and existing ventures.  Koomey helps you effectively allocate scarce time and resources to the most promising opportunities, drawing upon his more than 25 years of experience in analyzing and implementing climate solutions.

What kind of government do we want?

Imagine a company where the CEO says “We’ll never raise prices, borrow money, or increase our expenses under any circumstances, nor will we act to expand existing or create new markets when we have a competitive advantage in doing so”. You’d think that CEO was loony.  But this is exactly what some say about government when they say that spending and taxes should never increase, that environment regulations should always be relaxed, and that government should always do less than it’s doing now.

I believe that anyone who spends money should get what they pay for, and that money (particularly public funds) should be spent prudently, wisely, and carefully. But as a father, consultant, researcher, and entrepreneur, I’m also acutely aware that sometimes families, companies, governments, and societies need to invest money for the future.  "You have to spend money to make money", says the old proverb.  And sometimes only government can do what needs to be done.

What we need is an honest discussion about what kind of government we want and what we want it to do for us.  Sometimes we’ll want more government, like when we find lead in children’s toys, salmonella in peanut butter, poison in medicines, an unsustainable health care system, or fraudulent assets and a lack of transparency in the financial world.  We know from experience that only government can fix those things. Sometimes we’ll want less government, like when old and conflicting regulations get in the way of starting innovative new companies. Only government can fix that too (although the private sector has some lessons to teach on that score). And sometimes we’ll want the same government, just delivered more efficiently (like the state of California has done with the Department of Motor Vehicles in recent years, the good results of which I’ve experienced firsthand).

When it comes to government, more is not better. Less is not better.  Only better is better.  And better is the goal for which we as a society should strive.

It makes no sense to oppose taxes, increased spending, or stricter regulations in every circumstance. Sometimes we need to do those things, and when we do them, we should ensure fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and transparency so we get what we’re paying for.  But what we should not do is govern our actions based on ideology that is blind to fiscal, environmental, and other realities.  That’s not liberal or conservative, it’s just wrong.

Which brings me to the climate issue. The choice of how to fix the climate needs to be made based on facts and evidence, not on unreasoning hostility to any government action.  One common theme for those opposed to action on climate is a deep concern about government.  It is so deep, in fact, that these folks appear unable or unwilling to recognize the reality of the climate problem described in the earlier chapters.  This is exactly backwards–once you accept that only government can do certain things about the climate problem, we move that discussion to where it should be, focusing on the question “what kind of government do we want, and how can we make it work best?”  Government is us, it is not an alien force, and we will, as the old proverb says, get the government we deserve.  If we don’t figure out better ways to govern ourselves, we’re going to be in big trouble, given the scope and nature of the climate problem.

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This blog post draws from Chapter 7 in Jonathan Koomey’s latest book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, to be released by Analytics Press on February 15, 2012.    Written for entrepreneurs and investors, this book describes how to profit from tackling climate change, one of this century’s greatest challenges.   The author acts as your company’s scientific advisor, summarizing the business implications of the climate problem for both new and existing ventures.  Koomey helps you effectively allocate scarce time and resources to the most promising opportunities, drawing upon his more than 25 years of experience in analyzing and implementing climate solutions.

Climate scientists and money

One commonly expressed belief among those who deny climate change is that the scientists are “in it for the money”.  Texas governor Rick Perry stated this point of view bluntly (but inarticulately) on Aug. 17, 2011:

“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

What’s remarkable about this claim is that the climate science research money at stake (single digit billions, by most accounts) is tiny compared to the revenues of the global fossil fuel industry, which totaled at least $5 Trillion US dollars in 2010 (about $4 trillion for oil & gas and $1 trillion for coal, according to Appendix C in Cold Cash, Cool Climate).  This is about ten times larger than the revenues for the tobacco industry in that year (see Appendix D in the book).  Everyone knows how hard the tobacco industry fought to preserve its market share in the face of scientific evidence, funding competing and misleading research, lying about the results, and doing everything possible to delay action on smoking in the US. Why should we believe that the fossil fuel companies would act any differently to protect ten times as much annual revenue?

And the idea that scientists would lie in a coordinated way just to preserve research funding is a ridiculous conspiracy theory, but you have to know something about the scientific community to understand it.  Scientists try to determine truth based on the preponderance of the evidence in a process that has open inquiry, rigorous peer review, and independent third party reproducibility of scientific claims.  We also value truth above all else, so if we were to accept money in exchange for “throwing” our research we would be betraying the values that we hold most dear, would be punished for it in our expert community, and would be committing professional suicide.  Reputation is precious and perishable, and once destroyed cannot easily be restored. In effect, taking money for altering our views is about as close as you can get to treason in the scientific community.

So the idea that scientists are “in it for the money” is just plain silly.  But I can also explain this point in a different and more personal way. I’ve been working on understanding the climate issue since the mid 1980s, and I have a deep knowledge of how economic forecasting models work. If I really wanted to make money I could have applied my modeling smarts to working on Wall Street, where people with quantitative modeling skills are in high demand. Why then would I have worked at a government research lab for two decades when I could have had a salary five or ten times as high?  Can’t think of a reason, other than that I actually care about whether human civilization survives the next century in some reasonable semblance of its current form.

For those who think climate scientists are manipulating their research for financial gain, I ask you this:  Which do you think is more likely: that thousands of scientists who have devoted their lives to exploring for truth are engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth from the world, or that the fossil fuel industry is doing its best to protect $5 trillion US in revenues?   For most folks, this question practically answers itself.

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This blog post draws from Chapter 7 in Jonathan Koomey’s latest book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, to be released by Analytics Press on February 15, 2012.    Written for entrepreneurs and investors, this book describes how to profit from tackling climate change, one of this century’s greatest challenges.   The author acts as your company’s scientific advisor, summarizing the business implications of the climate problem for both new and existing ventures.  Koomey helps you effectively allocate scarce time and resources to the most promising opportunities, drawing upon his more than 25 years of experience in analyzing and implementing climate solutions.

Finally, someone in the mainstream media applies sensible analysis to claims about who created the national debt

While I don’t agree with all the details, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has taken a decent first crack at the question of who’s responsible for the increase in the national debt these past few years.  As I pointed out last August, it’s incumbent on people talking about this issue to do more than simply subtract the national debt today from the national debt the day President Obama took office.  To do this analysis properly you need to assign causality for all the spending.  So by this logic I would assign all the costs of the Iraq war to George W.  Bush, because he started that war while Obama campaigned against it, but I would assign the costs of the Afghan war to Obama during his first term because he supported that war and even expanded it.

It’s time for anyone examining this issue to do the simple math.  This isn’t rocket science, but the news media seems to treat it that way.  And of course, it’s better to be approximately right than exactly wrong, and the simpleminded assertion about this issue made by politicians attempting to blame the president for anything and everything is exactly wrong.

Why "drain America first" is not a jobs policy

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations did a useful analysis last fall of the jobs the US could expect from drastically reducing oversight and expanding oil and gas drilling, both on and offshore.  There are a few important insights from this work, the main one being that advocates for this approach vastly overestimate the number of jobs that would come from such a policy.  This overestimate mainly results from false assumptions, a big one being the belief that the Obama Administration has somehow strangled oil and gas development in the US.  Climate Progress, referring to a Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) summarized as follows:

America’s Oil Production Grew Faster Than Any Other Country in Last Three Years

Federal forecasters are expected to confirm on Monday what the energy industry already knows: Oil production is surging in the U.S.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is likely to raise by a substantial amount its existing estimate that U.S. oil production will grow by 550,000 barrels per day by 2020, to just over six million barrels daily.

The forecast will include new production data from developing oil fields, including the Bakken shale area in North Dakota, which could hold as much of 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. North Dakota’s output of oil and related liquids topped 500,000 barrels per day in November, meaning that the state pumped more oil than Ecuador. In fact, U.S. oil production grew faster than in any other country over the last three years and will continue to surge as drillers move away from natural gas due to a growing gas glut, experts say. The glut has sent natural-gas prices to a 10-year low.

Scientists slowly adopting new web tools to promote rapid innovation

The NY Times had an article Monday 16 January 2012 discussing how new technologies are challenging the role of traditional journals in science.  Having free and open access to scientific results is one way to accelerate technological change .  The old model of closed Journals for which people and institutions pay to access will eventually give way to the “Open Access” model (where authors pay a fee to publish but the article is then freely available to everyone), and that’s a good thing for anyone who thinks we need more rapid technical innovation to help fix the problems humanity faces (I also believe we need innovation in our values, behaviors, and institutional arrangements, not just in science and technology, but that’s a separate discussion).

The article also talks about new ways to use collaborative web technologies to accelerate innovative scientific thinking, and we’re just at the beginning of learning how to tap these new technologies for this purpose.  More, please!

The article refers to a recent book by Michael Nielsen that discusses these trends more thoroughly, titled Reinventing Discovery:  The New Era of Networked Science.

The false tradeoff between economy and environment

Climate progress today once again summarizes the reasons why the alleged tradeoff between economic growth and environmental protection is really a false choice.  This is a story that cannot be told enough times, given how plausible and pervasive people mistakenly think this tradeoff is.

Here’s the beginning few paragraphs of the Climate Progress story:

“A top GE executive is calling the political battle between economy and environment “nonsense.”

In a video interview (featured below) at an international clean energy investment conference last week, Mark Vachon, vice president of GE’s successful Ecomagination program, hailed “environmental performance” as a key driver for business.

“There’s this theory that you have to pick one: economics or environmental performance. That’s nonsense. Innovation is the way you can have both,” said Vachon.”

I like to talk about it this way:  We’re going to get our energy services one way or another. Either we’ll get them from conventional fossil fuels (like oil, gas, or coal) or we’ll deliver them with some combination of energy efficiency and non-fossil alternative sources. There will be jobs and economic growth generated either way, so the real question is, do we want jobs and economic activity that threaten our climate and cost us dearly in other kinds of pollution, or jobs and economic activity that don’t?  I choose the latter!

Of course, the question of cost comes up when framing the issue this way, but this concern is easily treated by focusing on total societal cost, including externalities. For climate it’s impossible to precisely assess those risks (even though we know the risks are real and substantial), but the external costs for other pollutants are well established (and large) for fossil fuels, large enough to make many renewables already economic from society’s perspective even without including climate risks.  Check out Epstein, Paul R., Jonathan J. Buonocore, Kevin Eckerle, Michael Hendryx, Benjamin M. Stout Iii, Richard Heinberg, Richard W. Clapp, Beverly May, Nancy L. Reinhart, Melissa M. Ahern, Samir K. Doshi, and Leslie Glustrom. 2011. “Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal."  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.  vol. 1219, no. 1. February 17. pp. 73-98. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x] and Muller, Nicholas Z., Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus. 2011. "Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy."  American Economic Review vol. 101, no. 5. August. pp. 1649–1675 for recent peer reviewed treatment of externalities.

I wrote more about the issue of externalities in my post about the EPA’s recently announced rules on mercury and other pollutants from power plants.

For those interested in a more detailed treatment of the issue of tradeoffs, see Goodstein, Eban. 1999. The Trade-Off Myth: Fact and Fiction About Jobs and the Environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.

My post giving "Four reasons why cloud computing is efficient" was #3 on the GigaOM list of top ten green stories of 2011

Back on Dec 23rd, 2011, Katie Fehrenbacher of GigaOM wrote about their top ten green stories of 2011 (as measured by number of clicks) and my post giving “Four reasons why cloud computing is efficient” was #3, which ain’t bad.   The original post was published on July 24, 2011.

Brilliant 1 minute video explaining the difference between weather and climate

Climate progress points to a wonderful video showing the difference between climate and weather.  Watch:

Interesting use of video games for educating the public about climate science

Climate Progress reports on Al Gore’s recent work promoting the use of video games to educate the public about climate science.  This is yet another example of how information technology can be a game changer, and we’re only at the beginning of learning how to use it for this purpose.  Interactive learning is powerful and effective, and I’m hopeful we’ll get a whole lot more clever at using it to help people understand science better.

Steve Lohr's NY Times blog highlighted our work on trends in computing efficiency today

I chatted with Steve Lohr of the NY Times yesterday about the implications of the last six decades of progress in computing efficiency, and his blog today reflects our conversation nicely.  He also talked about my new book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which will be released on February 15, 2012, which gives some examples of why those trends are so powerful and important.

Here’s the intro to the blog post:

A New ‘Law’ for the Mobile Computing Era

The new gadgetry at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week owes a lot to the crisp articulation of ever-increasing computer performance known as Moore’s Law. First proclaimed in 1965 by Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, it says that the number of transistors that can be put on a microchip doubles about every two years.

But a new descriptive formulation that focuses on energy use seems especially apt these days. So much of the excitement and product innovation today centers on battery-powered, mobile computing — smartphones, tablets, and a host of devices based on digital sensors, like personal health monitors that track vital signs and calorie-burn rates. And the impact of low-power sensor-based computing is evident well beyond the consumer market.

The trend in energy efficiency that has opened the door to the increasing spread of mobile computing is being called Koomey’s Law. It states that the amount of power needed to perform a computing task will fall by half every one and a half years.

The description of improving energy efficiency was the conclusion of an analysis published last year in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, with the title “Implications of Historical Trends in the Electrical Efficiency of Computing.” (An early draft [PDF] of the paper is here.) Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University, was the lead author. His collaborators were three other scientists — Stephen Berard of Microsoft, Maria Sanchez of Carnegie Mellon University, and Henry Wong of Intel. (Mr. Koomey did not use the term “Koomey’s Law,” but others have.)

Like Moore’s Law, the significance of Koomey’s Law is more as an influential observation than a scientific discovery. Both are concepts that credibly measure what has happened and what is possible with investment and effort.

My talk at Stanford on long-term trends in the efficiency of computing

Last Halloween (October 31, 2011) I gave a talk on the long-term trends in the efficiency of computing at Stanford, and I’m finally getting around to posting the link.

On a related  note, the trends I talk about in the Stanford talk were listed as #5 in the Popular Mechanics list of the top 10 tech concepts you need to know for 2012.

EPA announces mercury rules for power plants!

The EPA today announced stricter rules on mercury emissions from power plants, which is an important development for those interested in greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s because many of the older coal plants have no pollution controls and have social costs much higher than the value of the electricity they generate.  It’s long past time for these plants to retire.  And it turns out that there’s plenty of spare natural gas-fired generation capacity to pick up the slack, so CO2 emissions from these plants will go down a lot

Here’s what I wrote in Chapter 5 of my forthcoming book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs:

“About 15% of existing US coal plants (about 50 GW out of 300 GW total) are old, inefficient, polluting plants that were grandfathered under the Clean Air Act, so they have few or no pollution controls.[1]  More than half of US coal plants are 35 years of age or older.[2] The total social cost of running many of these plants is higher than the cost of alternative ways of supplying that electricity (even without counting the damages from greenhouse gas emissions),[3] so they represent an obsolete capital stock from society’s perspective.  The most effective action we as a society can take would be to enforce existing environmental regulations, develop new ones (as the US EPA is now considering for mercury, mining, and other environmental issues), and charge these plants the full social cost of the damages they inflict upon us, which would double the cost per kWh of existing coal-fired plants even using low estimates of pollution costs.  This will force lots of old polluting coal plants to retire, many others to reduce their hours of operation, generate lots of economic benefits in reduced health costs, give a boost to coal’s competitors, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so it’s a win all the way around.”

[1] Celebi, Metin, Frank C. Graves, Gunjan Bathla, and Lucas Bressan. 2010. Potential Coal Plant Retirements Under Emerging Environmental Regulations. The Brattle Group, Inc.  December 8. [http://www.brattle.com/documents/uploadlibrary/upload898.pdf]

[2] See Figure 5-6 in Lovins, Amory B., Mathias Bell, Lionel Bony, Albert Chan, Stephen Doig, Nathan J. Glasgow, Lena Hansen, Virginia Lacy, Eric Maurer, Jesse Morris, James Newcomb, Greg Rucks, and Caroline Traube. 2011. Reinventing Fire:  Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, p. 175.

[3] For details, see Muller, Nicholas Z., Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus. 2011. “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy."  American Economic Review vol. 101, no. 5. August. pp. 1649–1675, and Epstein, Paul R., Jonathan J. Buonocore, Kevin Eckerle, Michael Hendryx, Benjamin M. Stout III, Richard Heinberg, Richard W. Clapp, Beverly May, Nancy L. Reinhart, Melissa M. Ahern, Samir K. Doshi, and Leslie Glustrom. 2011. ”Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal.“  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.  vol. 1219, no. 1. February 17. pp. 73-98. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05890.x].

More on efficiency trends in computing, from my forthcoming book

My book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate:  Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, will be released on February 15, 2012.   In Chapter 6, I discuss the power of mobile information and communication technology, and I reproduce that section below.

The Power of Mobile ICT

The performance of electronic computers has shown remarkable and steady growth over the past 60 years, a finding that is not surprising to anyone with even a passing familiarity with computing technology. What most folks don’t know, however, is that the electrical efficiency of computing (the number of computations that can be completed per kilowatt-hour of electricity) has doubled about every one and a half years since the dawn of the computer age (See Figure 6-1).[1]  The existence of laptop computers, cellular phones, and personal digital assistants was enabled by these trends, which presage continuing rapid reductions in the power consumed by battery-powered computing devices, accompanied by new and varied applications for mobile computing, sensors, wireless communications and controls.

The most important future effect of these trends is that the power needed to perform a task requiring a fixed number of computations will fall by half every 1.5 years, enabling mobile devices performing such tasks to become smaller and less power consuming, and making many more mobile computing applications feasible.  Alternatively, the performance of some mobile devices will continue to double every 1.5 years while maintaining the same battery life (assuming battery capacity doesn’t improve).  These two scenarios define the range of possibilities.  Some applications (like laptop computers) will likely tend towards the latter scenario, while others (like mobile sensors and controls) will take advantage of increased efficiency to become less power hungry and more ubiquitous.

These technologies will allow us to better match energy services demanded with energy services supplied, and vastly increase our ability to collect and use data in real time.  They will also help us minimize the energy use and emissions from accomplishing human goals, a technical capability that we sorely need if we are to combat climate change in any serious way.  The future environmental implications of these trends are profound and only just now beginning to be understood.[2]

As one of many examples of what is becoming possible using ultra low power computing, consider the wireless no-battery sensors created by Joshua R. Smith of Intel and the University of Washington.[3]  These sensors scavenge energy from stray television and radio signals, and they use so little power (60 microwatts in this example) that they don’t need any other power source.  Stray light, motion, or heat can also be converted to meet slightly higher power needs, perhaps measured in milliwatts.

The contours of this exciting design space are only beginning to be explored.  Imagine wireless temperature, humidity, or pollution sensors that are powered by ambient energy flows, send information over wireless networks, and are so cheap and small that thousands can be installed where needed.   Imagine sensors scattered throughout a factory so pollutant or materials leaks can be pinpointed rapidly and precisely. Imagine sensors spread over vast areas of glacial ice, measuring motion, temperature, and ambient solar insolation at very fine geographical resolution.  Imagine tiny sensors inside products that tell consumers if temperatures while in transport and storage have been within a safe range.  Imagine a solar powered outdoor trash can/compactor that notifies the dispatcher when it is full, thus saving truck trips (no need to imagine this one, it’s real[4]). In short, these trends in computing will help us lower greenhouse gas emissions and allow vastly more efficient use of resources.

Figure 6-1:  Computations per kWh over time

Graph of computations/kWh from 1946 to 2009 by Jonathan Koomey is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.koomey.com.

[1] Koomey, Jonathan G., Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry Wong. 2011. “Implications of Historical Trends in The Electrical Efficiency of Computing."  IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.  vol. 33, no. 3. July-September. pp. 46-54. [http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MAHC.2010.28]

[2] Greene, Kate. 2011. "A New and Improved Moore’s Law.” In Technology Review. September 12. [http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38548/?p1=A1]

“A deeper law than Moore’s?” In The Economist. October 10, 2011. [http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/10/computing-power]

[3] Eisenberg, Anne. 2010. “Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source.” The New York Times.  New York, NY.  July 18. p. BU3. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18novel.html]

[4] [http://bigbellysolar.com/]

NYT today explores the implications of efficiency improvements in computing, even though the article doesn't mention computing efficiency once!

Steve Lohr wrote a great article for the NY Times today titled “The Internet Gets Physical”, where he explores what he thinks is the next big thing (and I think he’s right).  The article states:

“…the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative consumer bailiwick. Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution. The consumer Internet can be seen as the warm-up act for these technologies.”

Internet watchers are just now waking up to this new potential, which is driven by trends in the efficiency of computing that we identified in our recent paper in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (Koomey et al. 2011).  The electrical efficiency of computing (the number of computations that can be completed per kilowatt-hour of electricity) has doubled about every one and a half years since the dawn of the computer age, so that the power needed to perform a task requiring a fixed number of computations will fall by half every 1.5 years.  Devices performing such tasks can thus become smaller and less power consuming, making many more mobile computing applications feasible.

These technologies will allow us to better match energy services demanded with energy services supplied, and vastly increase our ability to collect and use data in real time.  They will also help us minimize the energy use and emissions from accomplishing human goals, a technical capability that we sorely need if we are to combat climate change in any serious way.  The future environmental implications of these trends are profound and only just now beginning to be understood (Greene 2011, The Economist 2011)

If you know of specific examples of innovations in low power computing, sensors, and controls, I’m eager to hear about them, as I’m starting to think about how to describe these trends for a broader audience.  So send me email!

For more background, check out my recent radio interviews on this topic.  Also see the talk I gave at Microsoft in December 2010.

References

Greene, Kate. 2011. “A New and Improved Moore’s Law.” In Technology Review. September 12.

“A deeper law than Moore’s?” In The Economist. October 10, 2011.

Koomey, Jonathan G., Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry Wong. 2011. “Implications of Historical Trends in The Electrical Efficiency of Computing."  IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.  vol. 33, no. 3. July-September. pp. 46-54.