Going Green - Archive

Green To Gold: The Next Chapter

2011-07-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

The follow-up book to the highly acclaimed Green To Gold was recently published. The new book, The Green to Gold: Business Playbook, by Etsy and Simmons provides a detailed roadmap on how to deploy green in any organization.

The book starts with the benefits of green and the rationale for an eco-strategy. The book is then organized by functional area --- such as facilities, IT, design, procurement and marketing, These chapter provide detailed checklists and references to help managers deploy specific green inititiatives. The final chapters focus on change managemnt.

While reading the book, I was pleased to note that Etsy and Simmons had referenced the case study I had authored last year on packaging. My case study reviewed Cisco's efforts to reduce its packaging. Cisco saved an average $5 for each pound of packaging it reduced. The savings were achieved by cutting packaging materials, handling and transportation costs. For helpful tips to reduce your packaging, read the original report on Cisco.

And for more great ideas, buy and use The Green to Gold Business Playbook.

Learn How Publishing A Book Can Increase Your Influence & Land Your Dream Job

2011-05-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Leadership Is Influence: A continuing series
Elton Sherwin made a dramatic career change from corporate high tech job to venture capitalist at Ridgewood Capital more than a decade ago. Sherwin credits his first book, The Silicon Valley Way, for broadening his opportunities which led to Ridgewood Capital.

Sherwin was already involved in high tech, first with IBM and then Motorola where his last position was heading the Silcon Valley office of Motorola ventures. Although he had a foot in the world of technology start-ups, he was mid-career and looking for opportunities.

When Sherwin started his research on Silicon Valley, his goal was to uncover and reveal the techniques of successful Silicon Valley entreprenuers in a concise and usable format.

He found that a published book confers the author with a mantle of authority for his topic. Consequently, Sherwin was sought out for advice, speaking engagements and insights from the media. This PR led to making more connections in the industry and connections led to his transformed career.

His first book, which he wrote in the late ninties, followed the traditional publishing route of hiring an agent and submitting briefs to publishers.

When starting work on his second book, Addicted to Energy, he found that self-publishing via Amazon was the best route. The tools provided by Amazon are excellent, the quality of any printed materials is outstanding, author compensation is competitive (although unlikely to make one rich) and the author retains rights to his work.

Sherwin shared more tips:

Allow one to three years to complete research and write your book
Even if you self-publish, prepare a brief to guide your work
Acquire your own ISBN to avoid the "published by Amazon" moniker
Leverage new e-book formats by using visuals extensively
Ensure your readers take away key points even if they are skimming content by writing great summary headlines and captions for illustrations
Share first drafts of chapters on your blog for feedback
Recruit many industry experts to review your book and comment on it

Personal Learning
My discussion with Sherwin was valuable since it confirmed the next step in my strategy to enhance my influence. I had thought about writing a book and also investigated self-publishing tools on Amazon. Stay tuned.

How the Chevy Volt Became the Heartbeat of GM

2011-02-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

Read my 2-part article published by Greener World Media providing the inside story of the Chevy Volt inception and development. Jon Lauckner, President of GM Ventures and Tony Posawatz, Volt Line Director share insights and lessons that other organizations can use to accelerate green innovation.

Part 1: Every aspect of the new Chevy Volt, from its conception to its execution, exemplifies disruptive innovation. Here's how the old-school automaker overcame internal and external challenges. Read more at GreenBiz.com >>

Part 2: From concept to prize-winning machine, read the seven steps the program leader used to shepherd the Chevy Volt across the finish line. Read more at GreenBiz.com >>

Starbucks Save Millions with LED Lighting

2010-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

When Starbucks converted the lighting in more than 7,000 of its stores from inefficient incandescents and halogens to LEDs, developed in partnership with GE, the company ended up saving millions per year in energy costs.
Read my article published by Greener World Media >>

How To Sell Green Projects to Hostile Stakeholders

2010-11-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

First published by Greener World Media on Oct 25, 2010.
What Saving Lions Can Teach Us About Green Business

Desert Lioness

In the corporate jungle, when trying to sell a new program and make changes in culture, meetings are often tense or inconclusive. Finesse is required to facilitate such situations to make progress while satisfying stakeholders.

The other night I witnessed a skilled leader -- Flip Stander -- who negotiated a settlement with stakeholders who were justifiably concerned that the program he was advocating could cause severe financial hardship. In the end, the stakeholders themselves saved the program. I was so impressed with Flip Stander's techniques that I wanted to learn more about what made them effective and how to use them more broadly to accelerate green programs in the corporate setting.

Flip Stander

Dr. Stander is founder of the Desert Lion Conservation Project. His program supports the restoration of lions in the desert region of Namibia who were on the brink of extinction. The restoration program started with a few surviving lions in an isolated and small refuge. To fully recover, it would be necessary for the lions to extend their range, often in conflict with farming communities.

The Desert Lion Conservation Project faced the same challenges as many corporate green programs, where sponsors and stakeholders are sympathetic and support green goals but often delay in expanding the program since the program is deemed too risky, too ambitious or too low of a priority.

After making a big pitch that recommends a new green program, many of us have heard that the proposed technology and methods are too risky, we don't have the skills, we tried something similar a few years ago and it failed, the company is already doing better than its peers and that is sufficient for now or given the poor economy, this is just not an area of focus.

Stander's stakeholders -- the villagers near the refuge -- appreciated nature, but when asked to support the reintroduction of the lions, believed it was:

Namibia Livestock

• Too risky: The livestock was their livelihood and losses were not covered by insurance. Lions had destroyed their valuable property before and were hunted aggressively by farmers during an extended drought in the 1980s, when wild food sources were scarce and domesticated animals became attractive prey. (Surprisingly they did not fear personal injury.)

• Too ambitious: Lions already had a refuge and that should be sufficient.

• Too low of a priority: As subsistence farmers, they had bigger issues to worry about than the fate of a few lions.

Conflict & Resolution

When the lions started to recover, a juvenile lioness migrated to a nearby valley which was home to a few villages. She killed several cows and the villagers insisted that the lioness be returned to the refuge. Confined to the refuge, the lions would have no chance to rebound and would remain at best a few specimens -- as if they were in a zoo.

Instead of moving the lioness back to the refuge, Stander sedated the lioness and brought her into the village. As the villagers gathered to discuss the lioness' fate, some thought relocating the lioness was unsatisfactory; they argued that she should be killed.

Stander acted quickly to this threat and placed a knife by the lion's supine body and then told the villagers that the lioness's fate was in their hands. Stander backed away and let the villagers decide.

After intense debate, the villagers recommended a third way. The lioness could live and remain in the valley, if she was monitored and the villagers informed of her whereabouts.

A radio collar was placed on her and Dr. Stander's became her parole officer. With abundant game, the lioness went on to produce many offspring. The lions never resorted to killing the villagers' property.

Analysis & Application

Most of us when confronted with a similar challenge would put together an exhaustive and exhausting presentation to justify the program. Stander could have rushed into the village and called a meeting and proceeded with his best sales pitch to avert the relocation, but his approach was different.

Prior to the showdown over the lioness, Stander and his goals were well known to the individuals in the village. He had listened with respect to their concerns. Stander also won over a few villagers to the cause, who would have more credibility pleading the lions' case.

Stander did the unexpected and brought the sedated lioness into the village. Here she was up close. Her grace and beauty could be admired and not just feared. Stander transformed the lioness from an abstract property-destroying-monster to a sympathetic natural wonder.

He then did something even more astonishing: He literally put the decision in the hands of the villagers. Having provided the knife to the lioness' would-be assassins, Stander made the repercussions of a negative decision explicit. The act of killing her would be personal -- which of the villagers would thrust the knife? Stander said implicitly, I trust you to make the right decision.

Allowing an educated group to freely discourse and make the decision is the best option to achieve the highest buy-in possible. Many of us invest too little time to educate the group we are trying to convince and hope the big pitch will achieve both goals -- education and approval.

Since the group is often uninformed before the big pitch and we are equally uniformed about stated and unstated resistance, we tend to direct the meeting making the participants feel rushed and pressured. This leads to a poor outcome where the program is killed outright or languishes in limbo by asking for more research.

On the day of the show-down, Stander was able to step aside. Even with such preparation, many of us would feel threatened if our audience were to take-over and want to get the meeting back on-track. The more controlling may actually stop the discussion. It is critical to know when to shut-up.

The story reached a dramatic juncture which made the decision clear and simple -- whether this lioness lives or dies. Many of us overburden the agenda. At a typical corporate meeting … Since we're already talking about lions, let's take the time to discuss my entire program to restore the lions, track them, monitor their health, expand their range, and so on. Stander wisely decided to focus on one topic and then moved quickly to wrap-up the meeting.

Desert Lion With Collar

He left the meeting and immediately implemented monitoring that benefited the lions and supported the next part of Stander's innovative program.

Stander's approach was so unpredictable and radical that it got the villagers' attention. It caused the villagers to pause and rethink their position and find a better way. When you need to sell a new green program, consider supplementing the typical bullet point presentation and engage the stakeholders with a specific real world problem.

1. Invest time to share information and learn about the individual points of view. Small group or individual meetings are often more effective which allow you to tailor the discussion and encourage open feedback.

2. Recruit leaders of the various constituencies to present your case. They have more credibility.

3. Define a concrete decision that engages your audience

4. Provide a graphic and real life example. Make the effort to bring your example to the conference room for all to see and touch. Or take the stakeholders to the field.

5. Trust the team to come to the right decision. Encourage group dynamics and take a background role. Only if necessary, ask open-ended questions to get the dialog back on-track or answer questions.

6. Summarize the decision and next steps. Stop once the sale has been made.

7. Focus on implementing the decision to ensure a visible win to support furthering the program.

You may just find that a lion sells better than bullets.

Author's Note: I learned of Dr. Stander while watching the documentary "Desert Lions," produced by Nature / PBS.

Desert lions are different from their more familiar cousins, the lions of equatorial Africa. They have evolved physical characteristics to allow them to survive in the harsh conditions of the desert. One distinction is a desert lion requires a hundred times greater range than a Serengeti lion given the sparser distribution of prey animals.

The specific incidents referenced in this article may be viewed from a segment on a YouTube clip of the documentary. Two minutes into the video is a villager discussing the hardship of loss from a lion destroying property. And 8:30 into the video is the showdown with the villagers.

To learn more about the Dr Stander's Desert Lion Conservation Project, visit DesertLion.info.

Green Project Management: 4 Dimensions To Consider

2010-11-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

First published in June by Project Management Institute, San Francisco Chapter

Definition of Green Project Management
A green or sustainable project considers its impact on the planet and people while achieving organizational goals such as profits. Gone are the days where environmental goals are in conflict with organizational goals. In fact, sustainability will decrease costs, reduce risks, and enhance brand value.

Benefits of Green Project Management

Wasting natural resources hurts the environment and the bottom-line. Projects focused on operational efficiency to eliminate waste will reduce your company’s costs. DOW Chemical has been working since the 90’s to reduce waste at considerable profit. For each dollar invested on environmental efficiency, DOW achieved a $5 return.

Poor environmental practices are risky. When they become known, poor practices could lead to fines and legal proceedings, hurt sales, poisoned relations with the host community, make recruiting talent more difficult, and trigger stock prices to crumble. When Coca Cola who bottles its drinks in-country wanted to expand in India a few years ago, the local community objected given the excessive water required when bottling. That same water was needed to irrigate crops and provide drinking water. By finding ways to conserve water during bottling, Coca Cola is now welcome in the 50% of its markets where water is under stress.

Your company’s brand may be enhanced by either improving environmental operations or providing products that are environmentally sound. Wal-Mart who just a few years ago was considered least likely to be green by many environmentalists, is now lauded as a role model by investing millions of dollars each year in operating efficiency and promoting greener products. Wal-Mart remains a competitive for-profit company who credits sustainability with improving its triple bottom line (people, planet, profits).

Project Manager’s Role
Sustainability is a new frontier. Similar to globalization or IT a few decades ago, methods are still evolving and environmental considerations are often overlooked. That’s why creative, entrepreneurial, and hard-working projects managers are required to embed sustainability into each and every project.

Some areas that will pay green dividends are already familiar:
1. Scope.
Ensure that features and functions that are deemed “must-have” will be used. Otherwise those functions are a waste of resources and development costs. The National Science Foundation completed a study a few years ago that found that 50% of system features were never used and a significant percent were used sparingly. Those extra features also make products more difficult to use and frequently add to the on-going operating costs.

Iterative or agile development is a useful technique to help your team focus on a limited scope to start. The team may find that the smaller scope achieves the project goals with even better ROI when compared to a bloated solution. Google often uses this approach as it did when developing its Google Docs product to provide the best of Microsoft while losing the rest. The features cut were not missed by the typical user.

2. Design.
Instead of adding more features, direct your team’s creative effort to ensuring that the remaining features are usable and hence used. Apple excels at this by making its products appealing to kids, grandparents and all those in-between.

Look to leaders in the industry or lessons from other industries for design inspiration. For example, Cisco took its engineers to a recycling plant to learn how dismantling costs directly correlate to recycling profitability and how to design for end-of-life.

3. Implementation.
When acquiring equipment or expanding infrastructure to support a new project, more environmentally efficient products will pay-off in the time. Often the expense to operate equipment is overlooked, which leads to higher total cost of ownership. For example, a less expensive unit that uses more energy, does not hibernate when not in use or uses constant power regardless of load will be much more expensive to operate than an energy efficient unit.

In addition to energy consumption, also include green criteria for materials used, transportation, packaging, maintenance and disposal at end-of-life.

Deploy infrastructure whenever possible in phases to increase its utilization. Infrastructure tends to be overbuilt. In 2009, McKinsey reported that Data Center utilization is typically less than 20% utilization.

4. Administration.
When managing a project, reducing travel and printing of project documents can also contribute to a sustainable project.

To ensure that the project you deliver stays green throughout its life, include on-going measurements such as operating and environmental costs, utilization of features and infrastructure and the financial and environmental benefits.

Your current skills are critical to delivering projects within budget, on schedule and with quality. By adding a green dimension you can further enhance your project while making a positive impact to the environment.

LED Lighting: UCSF Medical Center, Pittsburgh Airport, Unilever & Starbucks Deploy

2010-11-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

Spotlighting the Green Benefits of LEDs was first published by Greener World Media on Sept 2, 2010 and covered by Reuters.

The capability to provide artificial sunlight has dramatically expanded the boundaries of time and space, adding hours to the day when we may see and illuminating where sunlight was unable to penetrate. Since the first humans carried a torch to provide light, heat has been a by-product of producing light.

Traditional electric lights continue to give off more heat than light. An incandescent light bulb uses a paltry 10 percent of its energy to create light. Fluorescent lighting -- which has been the green standard in energy efficiency -- still wastes nearly half of the electricity it consumes in generating heat. All of this lost energy is significant considering that lighting devours more than a quarter of a typical commercial building's electricity, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

LED, or light emitting diode, fixtures, in comparison, are twice as efficient as fluorescents at converting electricity to light and hence generate very little heat. In addition to improved energy efficiency, LED fixtures are nearly maintenance free and provide high quality of light. They are also dimmable, contain no mercury and tolerate frequent on/off switching without degrading their lifespan.

LED Case Studies

Since UCSF Medical Center replaced some of its surgical lighting with LED fixtures, doctors and nurses no longer complain about the heat from the light fixtures when performing surgical procedures.

"Previously we had to chill the OR [operating room] to offset the heat generated by the old fixtures," UCSF Project Manager John Lewis explained. "The new LED lights do not radiate heat and the OR medical staff is comfortable at standard OR temperatures."

LED Surgical Lighting

Quality of light is an important issue to adoption of any new lighting technology. Fluorescents were unable to replicate the incandescent bulb's soft and pleasing glow and disappointed both professional lighting designers and the cube dwellers who toiled under their unnatural glare. LEDs hark back to a more basic light source, the sun. The spectrum and color rendition come closest yet to natural daylight.

An LED is a semiconductor that creates light by releasing energy from electrons. It is frequently referred to as "solid state" or "digital" lighting. Because LED fixtures generate light over an area using thousands of tiny light sources, the fixtures also provide a clear, shadow-free light field that is ideal for task work, whether an accountant, engineer or surgeon.

"The most important criteria for our application is the quality of light. After an early test, we eliminated fluorescent fixtures since fluorescents render colors poorly," Lewis said. "The medical team found the quality of light provided by the new LED lighting was superior to the existing incandescent lighting."

While quality of light is important, CFOs, facilities managers and contractors also want to understand the financial benefits of LED fixtures. LED lighting providers emphasize the lower total cost of ownership offered by LED lighting to justify the higher upfront investment.

Pittsburgh Airport LED installation

"Not only does the LED technology reduce our energy costs, it also reduces maintenance," said JoAnn Jenny, director of communications for Allegheny County Airport Authority.

Much of the savings stems from the improved energy efficiency of LED lighting; up to 70 percent less energy is required to produce light. An added benefit is reducing heat generated, which saves on air conditioning and is noticeable in an operating room, office or data center.

Adding to the cost benefits, LED manufacturers promise an exceptionally long life of 10, 15 or more years. Shifting from disposable to durable lighting eliminates the maintenance costs such as tube and ballast replacement that are standard with fluorescents. Adding to replacement costs is proper disposal of the mercury-based fluorescent tubes.

The Pittsburgh International Airport found the ROI compelling. The airport is installing more than a thousand LED fixtures to cover over a million square feet in its garage (pictured below) and passenger loading and unloading area. The project is believed to be largest single installation of LEDs to date.

To further improve ROI, there may be grants and incentives available. Pittsburgh International Airport is taking advantage of a state grant to subsidize installation of LED lighting. With the grant, the pay-back period is cut by half.

Barriers to Adoption
Although LED fixtures offer compelling advantages, there are barriers to adoption. Kim Parsley, a principal for IA Interior Architects, which focuses on sustainable commercial building design, commented, "We are still recommending T5 fluorescents for office and retail spaces. We are cautious about the claims of LED lighting providers and want more case studies. The upfront costs are also off-putting to clients."

To overcome these early adopter risks, Pittsburgh International Airport first completed a small pilot and then negotiated guarantees from its vendor that the LED fixtures would achieve the advertised light output, efficiency and life expectancy.

Unilever's HQ lit by LED

LEDs are starting to light standard commercial installations such as offices and retail. Last year, Unilever's new 400,000-square-foot headquarters used LEDs as primary electric light source. Starbucks also announced last year its plan to retrofit all of its 8,000 company owned stores with LED fixtures and is on-track to roll-out by the end of this year.

Costs are expected to decline with continued improvement in performance. Sandia National Laboratories completed a LED study in 2001 [PDF] to develop a price / performance model. In that paper, Drennen, Haitz and Tsao described LED improvements over the previous thirty years, "In a Moore's-law-like fashion, [light] per unit has been increasing 30x per decade ... Similarly, the cost per unit … has been decreasing 10x per decade." Improvements in this decade have been consistent with the model.

Implementation Considerations
The most favorable ROIs are for those applications where the lighting is expensive to operate:

Energy intensive -- Where there is long hours of operation, inefficient technology such as incandescent, halides, or halogens. These applications include garages, hospitals, retail, airports and other transportation hubs, decorative lighting, signage, elevator and restaurants.
Costly maintenance -- Frequent replacement required. Expensive to replace parts when using traditional fixtures. Examples are signage or outdoor lights.

Even when the ROI satisfies the company's hurdle rates, other complications may limit the realization of benefits. Since many commercial buildings are leased, if the installation pay-back period is longer than the lease or the tenant does not pay for electricity used, then the tenant has no incentive to make the investment. In these types of scenarios, the tenant and landlord need to negotiate to determine an equitable way to share the costs and benefits of an LED installation.

When selecting LED providers, the Department of Energy (DOE) has established a certification program to test and compare various LED products. Since technology advances continue, DOE and other industry groups should be checked periodically for latest insights.

No matter the lighting technology selected, the first step is to reduce the lighting required and then find the most efficient technology for the remainder. Incorporating day lighting reduces the need for artificial lights. Presence detectors and automatic dimming to maintain correct level of light will eliminate waste.

LEDs Ready for Expansion

LED used for cancer treatment

The newest use for LEDs, developed by NASA, is to provide light to grow plants for oxygen and food in space. The research from this space application has been transferred to medical uses in the treatment of cancers

The nonprofit Light Up the World Foundation is developing and distributing solar LED lighting to poor people in remote areas who still rely on kerosene lamps and wood fires. This old style lighting creates toxic emissions that debilitate the health of those exposed; especially vulnerable are the young and chronically ill. The new LED light is appreciated for its bright illumination as well as its clean and frugal operation.

The quest to provide artificial light has always been about discovering more efficient and safer lighting technology. LED lighting is the next step in that evolution. LEDs have already expanded from niche lighting to standard commercial applications in the last few years. And LED technology is helping to open new frontiers because of its low energy requirements and ability to mimic sunlight.

Project and Other References
UCSF Mount Zion OR Project -- Design: Mazzetti, Nash, Lipsey, Burch. LED Solution: Maquet Gmbh & Co
Pittsburgh Airport -- LED Solution: Appalachian Lighting Systems
Starbucks Retail -- LED Solution: GE Consumer and Industrial Lighting Systems
Unilever Headquarters -- Design: Licht 01 Lighting Design. LED Solution: Nimbus Group.
Light Up The World Foundation -- Strategic Partners: Phillips, Nemalux LED Lighting.

Resources
ROI Calculators: There are many on-line calculators available from suppliers. Ensure that the calculator considers maintenance and number of hours of operation. Although helpful that a calculator provides default values for energy costs, existing lighting and other parameters, it is best if these can be updated to reflect more accurately the ROI for a particular installation.

DOE LED Testing Program (Caliper): www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/caliper.html

Unique Characteristics of LED DOE: As identified by the Department of Energy, LEDs have several unique characteristics that make them ideal for specialized applications. For example, LEDs perform better in cold temperatures making supermarket refrigerator cases a good use. They also do not emit UV light. UV light will damage archival materials and can be irritating to skin and eyes. For more LED applications, the DOE created an excellent publication. (Download the PDF here.)

William Dinkel, an avid blogger on green technologies and energy efficient solutions, contributed to the reporting and research for this article.

Starbucks Leads LEED Retail

2010-11-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

First published by Greener World Media on October 28, 2010 and covered by Reuters

Last year Starbucks announced its intention to complete U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification for all new company-owned stores starting in late 2010. Since then a number of Starbucks stores have been built or remodeled as part of the new LEED Volume Certification program that Starbucks helped to establish.

When Starbucks first investigated building certification programs, Starbucks found that none were practical for retail. Like many evolving programs and processes that support sustainability, LEED required creativity and effort to fit Starbucks' business model.

But that extra effort did not deter Starbucks. Jim Hanna, Director of Environmental Impact for Starbucks explained that sustainability has been a part of the company's culture since its founding. Starbucks sees the impact of the climate crisis directly on those communities that support its supply chain -- the coffee growers. As a result, the company has stepped up its commitment to doing its part to support these communities.

As a publicly traded company, Starbucks also considers sourcing risks, operational efficiency and brand building when making its green investments. Building more sustainable facilities -- by embracing LEED certification -- achieves all three:

Sourcing risks. In the world's most important coffee growing regions, there is already more erosion, increased infestation by pests, and shifts in rainfall that are putting supplies of quality coffee at risk.
Operational efficiency. Using energy and other natural resources more efficiently cuts costs.
Brand building. Many of its associates and customers appreciate Starbucks' commitment to reducing its carbon footprint.

Since energy use in Starbucks' stores makes up roughly 80 percent of its entire carbon footprint (as reported in Starbucks CSR Report of 2009), a sustainable building program will have significant impact.

Before deciding on a building certification program, Starbucks established objectives, which included sourcing construction materials locally, reducing energy and water utilization, and providing a healthy and inviting environment for employees and customers. Hanna shared that "[Starbucks] settled on LEED, since LEED is consistent with our goals. It also provides third-party verification, is broadly accepted and supports electronic filing."

Selecting LEED was just the first step. Since LEED was designed for office buildings, Starbucks found LEED cumbersome for retail and cost-prohibitive when certifying each store. Hanna stated that "We took our complaints to LEED and they listened intently and then told us to 'go fix it.'" The LEED Retail Committee was founded that went on to enhance the LEED program to better support the retail segment.

Starbucks approach to its green building program is also consistent with its culture of innovation. We can learn from Starbucks to:

1. Invest first where large impact;
2. Set goals and then select the best tools and processes;
3. Tune evolving green tools and processes to fit the organization;

The next time I find myself in Starbucks, I can appreciate that the same care that goes into its latte also went into its sustainable building.

Bright News About LED Lighting

2010-10-05T21:54:00.001-07:00

More news about LED lighting that includes

A humorous video highlighting improved office productivity
An introduction of a cool personal lighting device.

Video on the Debilitating Effects of Florescent Lights
The point of the video is to illustrate how the typical office worker toiling under the unnatural glare of florescents is less productive, The humorous video was produced by CREE Inc, a manufacturer of LED lighting. LED lighting is called "digital daylight" because it comes closest to natural daylight and hence is considered energizing. The shadowless light is also less fatiguing to eyes.

LED Torch Light
One other interesting use of LED is a personal lighting device designed by Tilen Sepic. Since LED lighting requires little energy and produces little heat, it is practical to package into a glove-like device. The bright, clear and shadowless light is ideal for hands-free task lighting. To learn more, read post at Tuvie, a website dedicated to upcoming technologies and designs.

Buying Green

2010-08-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

Recently the project I am managing acquired new software and services. Purchases made during a project provide a great opportunity to deploy more sustainable solutions.

Benefits
A compelling reason to make a green purchase is to save on the operating costs. This can include reduced natural resource use, but also a green purchase can reduce spending on toxic disposal and reduce overall risk.

A compelling reason to buy green is to save green.

Even if green features are less important than other criteria, they can be used as a tie-breaker. They can be a good indicator of operational excellence and innovation.

Including green criteria will also signal to vendors that sustainable products are important. There is likely to be a green champion at provider companies who can use the “voice of the customer” as evidence to continue to improve products.

RFP
The first step is to include green criteria in the RFP (Request For Pricing). Your company may already use a standard RFP format, but most are easily augmented with additional green criteria. I have found sourcing, purchasing and project team members are supportive of including green.

The goal of the RFP is to uncover the environmental impact when operating the product, but also in building, acquiring, deploying and disposing of the product. The specifics may vary by type of product [Note 1], but the topics to consider for any RFP include:

Lifecycle – Has an end-to-end lifecycle analysis been completed for the product or product family? What areas utilize the most natural resources? Any certifications or eco-labels received?

Materials – What toxic materials are used? What are the plans to reduce and eliminate toxic materials? What recycled materials are used? What are plans to increase use of recycled materials?

Manufacturing – How much energy, water and other natural resources are consumed during the manufacturing process? How much waste is produced? How is waste handled?

Packaging – Is packaging right-sized to avoid excess while ensuring product arrives undamaged? Are manuals available electronically? What recycled materials are used in the packaging? What are plans to increase use of recycled materials?

Transportation – Can products ship together to avoid extra miles? Can more efficient modes of transportation be requested (water/rail). What are carriers transportation efficiency rating (energy used per ton-mile)

Operations – What is energy consumed during operations? Does product use variable energy depending on its load? Is there a hibernate mode? What is planned life? What other natural resources are consumed in operations? What waste is generated during operations – solid, water, atmosphere (including indoor air quality if applicable)? What is recommended use for optimal energy efficiency? How should configuration be tuned for different loads?

Disposal – Is an end-of-life service provided to properly dispose of product? Is the product easily recyclable? Is there an active market for the recycled materials?

Selection Process
Comparing the various candidates across these criteria can be complicated and a few key items that support your company’s eco goals may be more appropriate. For example, my company participated in the EPA’s Climate Leader Program that emphasizes energy savings and consequently our team placed a higher priority on energy use during operations.

One other way to simplify the environmental selection criteria is to rely on certification or eco-label, should the product segment be supported actively. Energy Star is a well established eco-label that provides simple metrics to compare energy use among products. [Note 2]

When comparing candidates, the total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) will provide the most comprehensive financial analysis. What appears to be the better deal when considering just purchase costs could become less attractive when operational and end-of-life expenses are taken into account. For example, a less expensive computer that uses more energy during its operations is a poor choice, both financially and environmentally.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis exposes the complete costs to avoid sub-optimal decisions.

To improve the return-on-investment, there may be grants, tax rebates, utility and other incentives available to defray the capital costs. Federal, state, local government and utilities should be checked to determine if any programs are available. [Note 3]

Although we selected the product primarily due to its functionality and commitment to innovation, we were pleased to find it required fewer computer resources than the current solution or some of the alternatives. We estimated that a 50% reduction in computing resources can occur.

Acquisition
Rather than acquiring a product, it may be greener to receive it as a service; especially if the incentives are aligned to make the provider behave greener to be more profitable. It may also be easier to negotiate green practices with a third party then with your colleagues, given priorities and workload.

It can be greener to receive the product as a service

In my case, we decided to host the new software at a third party for one of the business groups. We found that a third party hosting service is incented to run its data center as efficiently as possible since the data center is its primary cost of operations.

During the project, it is prudent to establish regular tune-ups to ensure that the product is being used as efficiently as possible. For example, a building’s environmental system (HVAC) should be tuned by season or when significant change in occupants. Paying for these tune-ups upfront during the project will ensure they occur and make the change sustainable.

References

Note 1: Green Criteria

Image and green tutorial on life cycle assessment at EcoDesign Guide

Check with industry organizations for more specific criteria for a particular segment.

One other source is governmental agencies since they are mandated to support greener purchasing. Since 1995, the Federal Government’s Comprehensive Procurement Guideline (CPG) program promotes the use of recycled material. Buying recycled-content products ensures that the materials collected in recycling programs will be used again in the manufacture of new products.

For more details on packaging best practices, check-out an earlier post

Note 2: Eco-labels reference

Check out certification information

Note 3: Grants, incentives

Government website sharing info on grants and other incentives.

Businesses may also want to use Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) funding.

PACE Financing: Accelerating Adoption

2010-07-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

by William Dinkel and Claudia Girrbach
This is the second of a two-part interview with Dennis Tsu, who manages Business Development for Commercial PACE with Renewable Funding.

In part one of our interview, we introduced PACE – Property Assessed Clean Energy. PACE provides business and residential property owners with financing for renewable energy or energy efficiency investments that is repaid through a property tax assessment.

As we learned in part one, PACE was established to overcome the financial hurdle faced by property owners by eliminating the high upfront costs that often derail green projects. Although PACE is an innovative financing approach, it will only be effective if it is adopted.

In this portion of the interview, we address the barriers to widespread adoption. Like most sustainability efforts, adoption requires engaging multiple and diverse constituents, including the following:

• Sponsors – State governments

• Management – Cities / counties and PACE administrators

• Consumers – Property owners

• Influencers – Property Leasers, contractors, architects, engineering firms, product suppliers, media

• Other interested parties – Lenders, voters, federal government

William Dinkel: Who are the key players and what roles do they play in making PACE available to every property owner?

Dennis Tsu: First, each state legislature needs to understand the benefits of PACE and then pass the appropriate legislation to enable the establishment of PACE programs. As of today, there are, 20+ states that have passed PACE-enabling legislation, and another five to ten that are actively debating whether to pass PACE legislation in their state legislatures.

Once legislation is passed, then the cities and counties need to set up their own PACE programs. The cities and counties may administer the program on their own or select a third party. Here in California, a statewide program [Note 1] to administer PACE was implemented that any jurisdiction may opt into. Some jurisdictions are still choosing to implement their own independent program.

The administrator can play various roles – from arranging financing to establishing the process to request and reviewing funding applications; this is the role that Renewable Funding plays: we sign contracts with various counties, cities, or municipalities to help them implement and administer these programs.

Once the program is underway, property owners, as well as contractors, need to be made aware of the program and how it works.

WD: Why is it necessary to pass legislation to create PACE programs? What does the legislation consist of?

DT: The only way that a legislature can pass a law establishing a special tax district – which is required to put PACE in place – is if there a greater public good that the tax district is addressing. The greater public good, in this case, is the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Unlike some legislation on greenhouse gas reduction which can be controversial, PACE is a great way for government to address climate change; PACE is a low-cost program and it encourages capital investment, creates jobs, and supports energy independence.

WD: Do you feel that there is a lack of understanding about energy efficiency investments?

DT: Yes, there’s no question that the energy efficiency industry is evolving on how to educate and market to consumers and businesses. We need to convince people that swapping out incandescent bulbs for LED lighting isn’t a fringe, lunatic kind of thing. To close the deal, we need to clearly and simply articulate that energy efficiency investments make good business sense. This story is made more compelling with PACE since the property owner has no upfront costs and gets to pocket the energy savings from day one.

There is also a need to educate state and local governments, property management firms, local power utilities, architects, and more.

At Renewable Funding, we have been working with legislators, private companies, and industry consortia to provide information on the need for energy efficient projects and the importance of PACE.

WD: How has the recent “debt crisis” affecting the financing of PACE?

DT: As we know, a large part of the current economic crisis was caused by mortgage problems, making the parties holding mortgages wary of other debt holders. Since PACE is based on property tax assessment – which in most legal structures is senior to the mortgage debt – PACE funded debts are paid first in case of default, ahead of the primary mortgage holder.

We believe that PACE financing does not place lenders at risk, and there’s a lot of evidence to back that up. Several of the large ESCOs (Energy Service Companies) have published studies on this. The Clinton Climate Initiative is also doing a lot of work in this area and has published some documents and recommendations. And many vendors of energy efficient lighting, HVAC, roofing, etc. have also published their own case studies and examples.

Unfortunately, the cloud of the debt crisis has cast a shadow over PACE. Fannie and Freddie [Federal Home Mortgage - Note 2] have challenged the underlying concept of PACE financing for residential properties and this is definitely having an impact on PACE residential financing programs across the country.

However, commercial properties and commercial real estate lending are totally independent of Fannie and Freddie - and this may end up benefiting and accelerating PACE Commercial financing programs - both here in California and across the country. There's lots of discussion around this happening real-time now.

WD: How has Renewable Funding’s experiences prepared it for large scale roll-out?

DT: Renewable Funding’s president, Cisco DeVries, spearheaded the first PACE financing program while working as Chief of Staff under Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. It was then, when looking to finance solar array for his own home, that Cisco was faced with the problem that stymies many green projects: the high upfront cost. This led Cisco to begin laying the groundwork for what would come to be known as CityFIRST, a "turnkey" model that cities could adopt to access on-demand financing for energy projects.

From these beginnings, Renewable Funding and the model of PACE financing have made significant progress over the last two years, and we are ready to scale-up to facilitate financing of energy improvements on a national level.

References
Note 1: Statewide administrator, California First

Note 2: Editor's Note: Last update July 19

Fannie MAE and Freddie MAC stated they would not purchase mortgages with PACE liens attached to them and have advised lenders across the country that PACE programs are risky and inadvisable. California's attorney general, Jerry Brown --- supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger --- sued the U.S. mortgage agencies in an effort to revive PACE. A house bill was also introduced recently to protect PACE programs. Federal legislators forwarded a letter to President Obama that urges him to use his executive authority to resolve issues created by Federal Housing Finance Agency (Fannie and Freddie).

Related Posts

PACE Part 1: Affordable Financing for Green Projects

Our Guest Blogger - William Dinkel

William Dinkel is an avid researcher and blogger on green technologies and energy efficient solutions. Also a passionate sportswriter, William was published on the NYTimes "Off the Dribble" blog. William works at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, and holds a BS in Computer Engineering from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.

Our PACE expert - Dennis Tsu

Dennis Tsu is a consultant, assisting Renewable Funding in developing the market for PACE Commercial projects - energy efficiency and alternative energy projects on commercial (office, industrial, multi-family residential, mixed-use, hotel/lodging, etc.) properties. He has over 30 years of sales and marketing business experience, including several doing solar PPA development. He has a BA from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

PACE Promises Affordable Financing for Green Projects

2010-05-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

by William Dinkel
Have high upfront costs derailed your renewable energy or energy efficiency projects?

Would receiving positive cash flow from day one make your clean energy project more attractive?

Are you worried that it may be difficult to recoup your investment in clean energy if you sell your property?

To resolve these issues and accelerate the implementation of energy upgrades to commercial and residential property, cities and counties across the nation are offering PACE, a new financing model for clean energy projects.

To learn more about how PACE works and how it can benefit businesses and homeowners, I recently spoke with Dennis Tsu, who manages Business Development for Commercial PACE with Renewable Funding. Based in Oakland, Renewable Funding is the leader in the turnkey administration of PACE programs.

What is PACE?

William Dinkel: Could you please provide a brief summary of PACE programs for our readers?

Dennis Tsu: First off, PACE is an acronym for Property Assessed Clean Energy. The basic concept is to allow residential and commercial property owners to borrow money from their local governments to use for making energy efficiency or alternative energy improvements to their properties, and then to pay that money back through a property tax assessment over the useful life of the improvement.

Commercial property owners can use PACE financing to make energy efficiency improvements on their buildings – for example, by improving the building envelope, improving the lighting systems, improving the HVAC systems, or installing alternative energy systems – which will help them save money on their utility bills and help the environment. The two key requirements are that the improvements : a) save energy or create alternative energy, and b) be permanently attached to the property.

WD: How does PACE financing differ from a traditional bank loan?
DT: If a property owner were to go to a large commercial bank today and say, “I want to borrow 500,000 dollars to swap out all the lighting systems in my big office building, and I can get a three-year payback on the investment,” the bank will then reply, “Okay, we will give you a three year loan.”

Then for the first three years of the life of those lights – which is typically about ten years – you haven’t made any money and you haven’t saved any money. You’ve saved energy, but all the energy savings you had is going to repay the bank loan. So, it’s not until year four that you start to see cash using a traditional bank loan.

One of the fundamental elements of PACE is that you can amortize the cost of the project over its anticipated useful life. You can take that half-million-dollar lighting project and amortize it over ten years, and your energy savings are going to be greater than your property tax assessment from the very start. So, you actually start generating cash in year one, instead of having to wait until year four.

In most of the projects we’ve examined, property owners can save money and immediately generate cash by taking advantage of PACE. In today’s economic environment, this makes PACE compelling.

WD: What are the rates charged on PACE financings?
DT: To give you some data points, Sonoma County is offering financing at about 7%. Placer County is at 7.25%. Boulder, Colorado, which has its own program that we’re helping to administer, is actually at 6.75%. San Francisco, for the package they’ve announced for the first set of loans, while they still have access to some stimulus funds through the federal stimulus package, their rate is going to be 7% for residential.

The rates are going to vary based on a number of factors – of course, the most important being the market conditions. But it’s also going to vary based on whether or not the city or county is willing to put their general fund at risk to guarantee the loans if they default. We anticipate there will be some variation in rates based on whether it’s a commercial set of properties that we’re financing or a residential set.

WD: Do you see these rates decreasing over time?
DT: The hope and the desire on the part of Renewable Funding, and I think of many municipalities, is that over time, as PACE financing becomes a well-accepted, well-understood financial instrument in the market, the interest rates on PACE loans will approach municipal bond rates.

WD: What happens when the property owner sells the property?
DT: The general rule is that the property tax assessment/obligation will transfer to the new owner of the property, just as any other property tax obligation would transfer. What this means is that any property owner (residential or commercial) is only paying for the improvement project for as long as they own the property. So, if you put in solar PV using PACE, which has a 20 year life, and you sell the property after 7 years, then you pay the property tax assessment for the first 7 years, and the new owners have to pay the property tax assessment once they take possession of the property (and get the benefits of the solar system).

WD: Can property owners combine PACE financing with other clean energy rebates, such as the rebates offered by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD)?

DT: The simple answer is “yes”.

In the PACE programs we (Renewable Funding) administer, we strongly encourage the property owner to take advantage of all existing rebate programs. And we want to leverage the engineering requirements and technical protocols that have already been put in place by PG&E or the local municipalities, to ensure that the improvements someone is making will be effective and have an economic benefit.

So typically, we will tell the property owner to go apply to these rebate programs, get the rebate, and then use PACE financing to finance the balance that remains after the rebate. The one exception to that – the one big exception – is in solar, where we encourage property owners to finance the full amount of the solar project and then collect the 30% federal income tax credit. We don’t require them to deduct the credit from the amount financed. They may if they want to – and actually in the models I’ve run, it makes better economic sense for them to do it that way – but it’s really the choice of the property owner.

WD: Who has access to PACE programs?

DT: In California, there is both a statewide initiative that municipalities can join and individual programs.

The statewide initiative – CaliforniaFIRST – is being administered by Renewable Funding and will cover 14 counties and 130+ cities in phase one, which will go live this summer. The commercial program will probably lag the residential program by a little bit.

Independent of CaliforniaFIRST, San Francisco has a program (GreenFinanceSF) which is active today, and Los Angeles County and the City of San Diego are also starting their own versions of PACE programs, and they both plan to go live this summer.

Outside California, more than fifteen states have passed PACE-enabling legislation, including New York, Texas, and Florida. New Mexico is in the process of rolling out a PACE program right now.

WD: Are there plans to expand PACE to more areas?
DT: To my current knowledge, there are about a dozen additional counties in California that have said they want to participate in phase two of CaliforniaFIRST. So, by the first quarter of 2011, I’d say three quarters of California, if not more, will have a PACE program available to property owners.

The Department of Energy and the Office of the President and Vice President have been very supportive of PACE, and so we are hopeful that PACE financing will be available to the majority of American property owners by the middle to end of 2011, if not sooner.

WD: When should a property owner interested in PACE take action? And how?

DT: Take action now. You can save money and save the environment.

Residential property owners should start applying through the process tomorrow – there’s no reason to wait.

In practical terms, a property owner can take action by learning more about any local programs and contacting his or her local PACE program administrator. For example, a commercial property owner in San Francisco should call me at Renewable Funding. It’s my job to help develop the pipeline of projects, and we’re currently working on the rollout of the commercial program for San Francisco.

I would encourage property owners not covered by upcoming PACE programs to talk to their local city governments – whether it’s the mayor’s office, the city council, or the board of supervisors, encourage your municipality to set up a PACE program. PACE is a funding option that should be made available to every property owner in the state, and across the country.

REFERENCES
San Francisco Property owners in the city or county of San Francisco should go to www.greenfinancesf.org to learn about the program. Commercial property owners may contact Dennis Tsu of Renewable Funding at (510) 350-3730.

City of San Diego property owners will find informaton at the Energy Center website.

Other California property owners should visit CaliforniaFIRST website to determine if their communities are going to be part of the phase one rollout.The San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Monterey, and San Benito counties are all part of phase one.

Other states should your city manager’s office or your elected representative to find out if a PACE program is underway. If not, let your local government representatives and officials know that you are interested in taking part in a PACE financing program.

Our Guest Blogger - William Dinkel
William Dinkel is an avid researcher and blogger on Green technologies and energy efficient solutions. Also a passionate sportswriter, William was published on the NYTimes "Off the Dribble" blog. William works at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, and holds a BS in Computer Engineering from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo.

Our PACE expert - Dennis Tsu
Dennis Tsu is a consultant, assisting Renewable Funding in developing the market for PACE Commercial projects - energy efficiency and alternative energy projects on commercial (office, industrial, multi-family residential, mixed-use, hotel/lodging, etc.) properties. He has over 30 years of sales and marketing business experience, including several doing solar PPA development. He has a BA from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Related Posts
Part 2: PACE Financing - Accelerating Adoption

SAP Execs Commute Green

2010-03-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

Part 8 of Commuting Series:

SAP Executives Support Gold Medal Effort

We’ve all heard about Canada’s win over the US in hockey at the 2010 Olympics. But there was also a decisive victory in shifting commuters to greener options. In preparation for the scores of visitors that would arrive for the Olympics, Vancouver’s transit authority asked for a commitment from businesses to reduce traffic by at least 30%.

I chatted recently with SAP, one of the businesses with offices in downtown Vancouver, to learn more. I was especially interested in finding SAP executives who not only “talk the talk” but also “walk the walk” (or bus, or bike, or car pool).

Prior to the Olympics, more than sixty percent of SAP’s staff in Vancouver already used green commuting options. SAP’s pre-Olympic commute modes are compared to typical Canada, Vancouver, US and the University of Califonia Los Angeles (UCLA). Los Angeles was the host of the 1984 summer Olympics.

Although Canada and Vancouver are better than US patterns, SAP was able to significantly shift commuters to green methods.

Method	Canada Average	Vancouver Average	SAP Vancouver	US and LA Average	UCLA
Solo	72%	67%	32%	77%	53%
Other	1%	1%	2%	1%	-
TOTAL GREEN	26%	32%	66%	22%	47%
Public Transit	11%	17%	36%	4%	16%
Car Pool & Van Pool	8%	7%	6%	12%	16%
Tele-work	--	--	2%	3%	3%
Walk/bike	8%	8%	21% (Walk is 17%)	3%	12% (Walk is 10%)

TransLink, Vancouver’s transit authority [Note 1], visited SAP well before the Games began to elicit support for the city-wide program to reduce traffic by increasing green commuting. Kirsten Sutton, VP and Managing Director of SAP Labs explained, “This was an excellent challenge for everyone to change their behavior slightly, and reap the rewards. We had a real opportunity to leave an Olympic legacy of eco-friendly commuting as a permanent change.”

Both the city and SAP are still compiling the stats [Note 2], but the immediate Olympic goal was achieved and they are on-track to sustain the greener commute practices. Kirsten Sutton is one of those employees who made the switch during the recent Olympics pledge. Kirsten used to drive alone but now rides the bus. Kirsten’s transit pass is subsidized by SAP as well as those for all other SAP employees. Kirsten recently tweeted that even though the Olympics are over, she plans to continue to ride the bus. As she confided, “You can teach an old dog new tricks.”

SAP’s downtown location also contributes to make greener options just as convenient as driving solo. Janet Wood, EVP SAP Go-To-Market Maintenance lives a few blocks from the SAP office. In her role, Janet travels internationally, but when at home, she can be seen strolling down Mainland Street under an umbrella or sporting her sunglasses. Should she walk briskly enough to break a sweat, SAP provides shower facilities. For those that prefer to bike when going self-powered, SAP built lockers and a bike room.

The civic pride produced by the Olympic event was a huge boost to SAP’s green commute program. Even without the Olympics, we can all win in commuting by applying the lessons learned. Leaders can create a buzz, define a “big, hairy goal” and model green behavior. Sutton expressed, “I am thrilled to see the uptake in greener forms of commuting amongst the 1,200 passionate employees here in Vancouver. We not only reduced our carbon footprint, we also increased fitness, wellness and found pure enjoyment in the simple act of getting to the office and back every day.”

Notes:
Note 1: TransLink, Vancouver’s transit authority and link to participating organizations.
Note 2: Vancouver and SAP’s commute statistics will be shared when they become available.

Related Posts:
As explored in previous posts, the challenge in shifting employees to green alternatives for commuting is to find the right combination of incentives to overcome adoption issues.

Cisco Trims Packaging & Saves $24M

2010-03-03T01:36:00.000-08:00

This case study was also published by Greener World Media in March 2010 and referenced in the 2011 book, Green to Gold Business Playbook.

In a recent post, I challenged ITC suppliers to reduce packaging. Since then I visited with several members of Cisco’s supply chain team working toward a comprehensive Sustainable Value Chain strategy overseen by Edna Conway, Sr. Director, Advanced Compliance and Social Responsibility for Cisco.

Cisco’s environmentally sound packaging program is still evolving and not fully rolled out, but early results show what is possible.

One product line reduced packaging by 33% and increased transportation load utilization by 50% resulting in $1.3M annual savings. The most dramatic improvement for a product was 450% increase in transportation efficiency with savings of $1.8 million.

Results
The savings are sensational! The savings realized in the pilot program were $24 million annually. A savings in materials and transportation costs was achieved by focusing on packaging material content, volume, and transport container efficiency.

More than 4 million pounds of materials were eliminated across the pilot products. In addition, progress was made to increase recycling potential. From an environmental perspective, greener packaging resulted in decreased energy and water use while reducing GHGs related to transport.

Transportation costs were a major contributor to costs since Cisco supports global manufacturing and a global customer base. Much of the product is shipped at some part of its journey via air which is the most expensive transport method, both financially and environmentally. As reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), shipping by air compared to ship creates nearly 20 times as much GHG for the same ton-mile shipped.

Cisco selected high volume products from its wide range of product families to participate in the pilot program.

Product	$ saved annually	lb saved annually
IP Phone	$1.3 M	954,000
Cisco Niagra Router	$14.1 M	2,008,000
Optical Modules	$ 2.3 M	500,000
Midsize 3RU/5RU Catalyst	$ 2.3 M	430,000
CRS TelePresence	$ 1.8 M	208,000
Spares, cables, memory modules, etc	$ 2.3 M	461,000
TOTAL	$24.0 M	4,561,000

When trying to digest the millions saved, I noticed that for each pound of packaging material that Cisco reduced, more than $5 of annual savings was achieved for those products participating in the pilot. The type of materials, weight, volume and transportation methods could change how many dollars are saved per pound.

A “per pound saved” metric is simple to conceptualize. Most of us are able to imagine removing at least one pound of materials and thus provides a good starting point for brainstorming new packaging design. It is also a helpful metric when comparing savings across product lines.

Best Practices
Cisco’s new packaging practices are compared to the three best practices reviewed in my previous post, which are eliminate, right-size and sustain.

1. Eliminate
Paper based documentation was digitized and migrated to CD’s or “pointer cards” --- 3 by 5 inch card with on-line reference. The intention is to use pointer cards whenever documentation is not mandated by regulation. The IP phone benefited from documentation reduction. Now three IP phones can be shipped in the same space that previously could only support two units --- a 50% improvement.

Photo provided by Cisco Systems

Cisco also looked for activities that could be eliminated. For example, with its TelePresence product, the old method was to depopulate and package cards after testing. By leaving the cards in the rack, Cisco was able to eliminate an entire crate. Cisco also reduced labor by no longer removing and packing the cards.

Photos provided by Cisco Systems

2. Right-size
Although cushioning is still required, Cisco took a solid piece of cushioning and reduced the materials used without any performance degradation.

Cisco also eliminated a plastic bag type that could not be recycled and replaced it with a thinner and recyclable bag.

For multiple unit shipments, engineers reviewed the shipment holistically --- like a 3-D puzzle – to optimize the footprint. For Cisco’s Telepresence CTS-3000, product engineers were able to increase packing capacity by 450%. Nine units now fit on a single truck while only two units could be transported per truck prior to reengineering the packaging.

3. Sustain
Cisco is making recycling easier through better design of its packaging. “Pizza” type boxes were made easier to compress. One distribution center uses honeycomb paper pallets that can also be easily recycled. On some products, Cisco is using plastic pallets made out of material that can be recycled.

Edna Conway shared, “Through the efforts of our purchasing, engineering and reverse logistics teams, over 99% (by weight) of our packaging can be recycled in regions with robust recycling processes in place.” Cisco notes however, that the feasibility of achieving this volume of recycling varies by geographic regions.

Cisco is committed to supporting the market for recycled plastics and cardboard by purchasing recycled materials. For example, Cisco used 100% recycled cushioning in one router family. [Note 1] Conway observed that material availability still constrains what Cisco and the industry can do.
Photo provided by Cisco Systems

Cisco is looking for opportunities to go even further in partnership with its supply chain. Cisco’s distribution centers and logistics providers reuse pallets; buying used pallets from recyclers that are pre-inspected and repaired as needed.

Approach
Nearly all of Cisco’s manufacturing is outsourced. Consequently to make improvements, Cisco needed to engage with its more than one thousand suppliers. Cisco invited suppliers to participate in industry organizations to show suppliers that packaging was more than a Cisco issue and that greener packaging had broad industry support.

Cisco also emphasized how suppliers would share the benefits of improved packaging. As Conway noted “We are collaborating with our suppliers on packaging innovation which they can use to differentiate themselves from their competition.”

A partnership between suppliers and Cisco was critical to the process and packaging innovation Cisco has achieved to date. Conway shared that “my job is to frame the challenge to inspire our supply chain partners and our own engineering and manufacturing talent to find creative ways to both protect the product and the environment.”

Cisco packaging engineers and colleagues from many other organizations rose to that challenge to develop a smaller packaging footprint. It was a collaborative effort among teams across the organizations including product, documentation and packaging teams. Critical to their success was working together in order to see the impact of each team’s design to the whole. Customers also played a part in the process to identify areas that were inefficient.

Cisco’s packaging project is more than a one-time effort. Greener packaging will now be incorporated as part of Cisco’s value engineering process. Existing product lines will be incorporated based on potential for reduction.

Cisco is sharing its practices with and learning from industry groups to ensure that we are all motivated and have knowledge to put greener packaging in-place. As Edna Conway said, “Packaging sustainability provides empirical evidence that green is good for the bottom line.”

Notes
Note 1: The thermoformed cushions are made from 100% recycled polyethylene. Cisco is using products from Reflex that include juice and milk jugs as part of its recycled PE content. Previously these cushions were largely made from virgin oil. Cisco is exploring Reflex or similar product for broader expansion.

Note 2: PDF presentation from Cisco sharing more about its Sustainable Value Chain packaging

Cisco Sustainable Packaging Update Feb 2010.pdf
View

Note 3: Edna Conway, Senior Director, Advanced Compliance & Social Responsibility for Cisco’s Customer Value Chain Management organization.

Conway oversees teams focused on Cisco’s global product compliance, supplier diversity, value chain social responsibility, and supply chain contracts. As the Strategist for Cisco’s Sustainable Value Chain, she is responsible for creating and driving Cisco’s Green Supply Chain initiative in alignment with the mission of Cisco’s EcoBoard, the cross-functional council setting Cisco’s long-term green vision and strategy. Conway is frequently consulted by industry analysts on Green Supply Chain processes and methodologies. For example, in 2008 Conway’s work was recognized by the Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen noted Cisco’s Global Supply Chain Management "green" best practices and used Cisco as a case study in its January 2008 “Supply Chain Executive’s Strategic Agenda.”

Conway wrote a guest column for the April/May 2008 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine, entitled "Tackling Green in the IT Supply Chain."

Related Posts

Greener World Media: Working with IT Vendors to Put Packaging On a Diet

eBay helps its sellers to green their packaging
Amazon thinks outside the box to eliminate "clamshell" and other excessive packaging

Green Grows Green: Harvesting the Hidden Returns of Sustainability

2010-02-20T08:29:00.000-08:00

Are you a green enthusiast, but unsure where to focus first and how to make the business case?
Are you a pragmatist wondering if green is just more hype by consultants or a lucrative opportunity that your business is missing?
Are you a supporter already doing some green activities but wanting to select better investments, engage stakeholders, and accelerate benefits?

Then join me on Thursday evenings in April at Stanford University for the course that I am teaching. Sign-up now at Stanford Continuing Studies or read more about the course below. Please share with others who may have interest in this topic.

Class Details

Course Title: Green Grows Green
Course Code: Business 203
Quarter: Spring 2010
Course Schedule: Thursday evenings, April 1 – April 29 (5 sessions) 7PM to 8:50 PM

Themes during this five-week course will include how to

Uncover environmental efficiencies to enhance profits,
Develop a green mindset to enable new business models and refresh existing brands to grow sales,
Establish a green framework to consistently innovate (top-line) and improve (bottomline) all while replenishing the environment.

Learn how the most innovative and profitable companies are embracing sustainability to move ahead. Best practices and case studies will be explored with the instructor and guest speakers.

Weekly Outline

Week 1 – Thursday, April 1 2010

Introduction: Review green frameworks. Examine specific benefits of green including enhanced operational efficiency, branding building and reduced risks. Share examples of how some companies and organizations are leading the way.

• Guest Speaker: Dr. Peter Graf, Chief Sustainability Officer and EVP of Sustainability Solutions at SAP.

Week 2 – Thursday, April 8 2010

Operational Efficiency: Focus on best practices in facilities, including data centers, transportation, manufacturing, waste management and consumables. Focus on the many low risk and fast pay-back activities that will provide benefits immediately.

• Guest Speaker: Laura Billings, Principal, Sage Green Development, LLC.

Week 3 – Thursday, April 15 2010

Brand Building: Review brand building approaches using a green lens. Explore how new sales methods, pricing models and financing options can accelerate adoption. Explore how nature provides designs that have yet to be eclipsed by humans and how products are being developed leveraging nature’s design catalog (biomimicry).

Guest Speaker:Jeremy Faludi, LEED AP

Green Design Strategy & Research, Project Frog
Lecturer, Design Program, Stanford University
Contributing Editor, Worldchanging

Week 4 – Thursday, April 22 2010

Risk Management: Learn how leading organizations are dealing with current and projected shortages of critical natural resources used in production. Explore framework to leverage activist passion to develop new markets.

Guest Speakers:

Dr. Peter Williams, CTO IBM Big Green Incubator
John Hailey, Environmental Consultant, Former Sr, Manager Sustainability at Cisco
Both are members of California Environmental Dialog

Week 5 – Thursday, April 29 2010

Implementation: Review creative funding options. Explore communication methods to inspire change. Discuss classic business change frameworks and how to utilize for green.

Guest Speakers:

Mark Bramfitt - Utility Consultant, Former Principal Program Manager, Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Dennis Tsu - PACE Program Director

Next Steps
Review syllabus with reading and class assignments

- SYLLABUS Business 203 v4.pdf - on Mar 27, 2010
  400k Download

Sign-up at Stanford Continuing Studies

Please share with others who may have interest in this topic.

UCLA’s Gold Medal Commute

2010-02-17T19:48:00.001-08:00

In the months preceding the 1984 Summer Olympics, employers in the Los Angeles area were encouraged by the Southern California Transportation Authority to find ways to reduce travel during the Olympics. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) seized the challenge and established its commute program that currently attracts 47% of its employee population. One mainstay of its program is the van pools which currently transport over six percent of its employees. Recently, I chatted with Penny Menton, associate director of UCLA Transportation department who was has been involved since the start of the program.

Long before there was private bus service sponsored by an employer such as Google or Genentech, van pools have been filling the gap where public transportation is unavailable. UCLA operates one of the oldest van pool programs in the country, with over 25 years of service. [Note 1] The university owns and maintains the 160 vans, establishes and collects fares and ensures drivers are trained and complete certification.

The UCLA van pool will save the typical rider 70% compared to driving alone when considering gas, insurance and parking costs. [Note 2] In much of the LA area, the van pool is faster than driving alone and allows the rider to pursue other activities. Modern vans offer comfortable high-backed reclining seats with individual reading lights to provide a private, quiet space for each rider.

Its small size allows UCLA to offer varied schedules that are tailored for different riders’ needs. For example, UCLA provides fourteen day routes and one off-shift from Palmdale. During the day, vans arrive at UCLA from Palmdale starting at 6AM until 9:30 AM. A more typical example is two to four vans serving an area.

Van pools – like other alternative commute methods - work best if the concerns preventing adoption are resolved. Specifically green commuters who are abandoning the flexibility of their car

Appreciate a guaranteed ride home in case of an emergency.

Worry about being stuck during the workday to run errands or get around the large campus. UCLA and many programs provide access to cars when needed. But UCLA has also emphasized that walking is a great alternative for travel on-campus and to run errands to nearby neighborhoods that offer restaurants and services. UCLA is also experimenting with bike loaner program as another way for employees to get around campus and nearby neighborhoods during the workday.

Marketing is critical with any alternative commute method. Word-of-mouth, peers as role models, try it - you’ll like it programs have all been used effectively at UCLA. “People relate to their peers. Consequently they are more inclined to take a chance and do something different when they see or hear about a peer already doing it,” Penny Menton observed. In recent years, web 2.0 technology has been incorporated to reach a broader and more tech-savvy audience.

Google and others who operate private bus services do not disclose their precise costs, but back of the envelope estimates comparing bus to van pool indicate that van pools are more cost effective to operate and could therefore be offered by more employers than a bus. Although frequently subsidized [Note 3], employees usually pay toward a van pool while private bus services are frequently offered free of charge.

To further ensure cost efficiency, UCLA started a seat-filler program. Riders go stand-by and fill unexpected vacancies. Penny Menton reported that “many stand-by riders are able to fill a seat every day.” When a full-time seat comes available, a stand-by has first priority to become a regular rider. UCLA also leases seats for planned absences such as vacation and jury duty.

Van pools are a viable and cost-effective part of a green commute program. [Note 4] Van pools should be implemented in those geographies where public transportation is limited. [Note 5] Without such an alternative, employers with large populations of employees in remote areas will be unable to achieve the gold standard for a greener commute.

Notes
Note 1: Many claim the date of first van pools as 1979. The oldest multi-employer vanpool program in the country is in Treasure Valley, home to Boise Idaho. The Seattle King County Commuter Pool was the first publicly financed van pool service in the United States, organized in 1979.

Note 2: Anaheim to UCLA is 44 miles. IRS mileage rate of $0.55 is used in calculations. UCLA one way fare is $7.

Note 3: Monthly fares on a UCLA van pool are subsidized by the University by 34% (compared to non-UCLA employees). Fares range from $109 - $220 per month.

Note 4: UCLA stats

Method	Average	UCLA	% Difference
Solo	77%	53%	-31%
Public	4%	16%	300%
Car Pool & Van Pool is 6%	12%	16%	32%
Tele-work	3%	3%	0%
Walk/bike (Walk is 10%)	3%	12%	300%

Note 5: A successful van pool provides proof that sufficient ridership to potentially support public option such as express service

References
UCLA commute program summary

Related Posts:

Kids and Bullying

2010-02-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

Kids Deserve Same Protection From Bullying as Adults

This post is about a different kind of sustainability... Kids are settling back into their school routine with a mixture of anxiety and excitement --- new classes and teachers; meeting old friends and making new acquaintances, wondering what’s for lunch and who will sign-up for what after school activities. Unfortunately too many children are anxious about bullying. Bullying is a real threat where one in three children will experience bullying at some point in their school career.

To highlight this issue, I co-wrote an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News. This essay compares school bullying to workplace bullying and recommends using the same approaches that have been successful in reducing workplace harassment. An effective bullying prevention program not only deters bullying, but teaches kids better interpersonal skills which will enhance future workplace and other adult relationships.

Opinion: Kids deserve same protection from bullying as adults
By Claudia Girrbach and Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet
Special to the Mercury News
Publication: San Jose Mercury News (California)
Date: Sunday, September 20 2009

Thanks to anti-harassment laws, dramatic shifts in cultural attitudes and employer education programs, we've come a long way in combating bullying behavior in the workplace.Yet there's one class of citizens who must still contend with frequent, persistent and mean-spirited bullying in their workplace: our children.

By the time students graduate from high school, one in two will have witnessed bullying.

One in three will have been a target.

Every day, in schoolyards and classrooms, on buses and playgrounds, our youngsters are heckled, ridiculed and abused by their peers. Now that we live in the digital age, bullying also occurs over the Internet.

Although laws to protect kids from bullying are on the books in many school districts including those in California knowledge about what constitutes bullying and how best to intervene is inconsistent. Many still have difficulty distinguishing between teasing and bullying and assume that unless there is bodily harm involved, "boys will be boys" and "girls are too nice" to bully. By its nature, Internet bullying is often invisible to adults.

Bullying occurs when there is 1) an imbalance of power including greater physical strength or social dominance, 2) an intent to harm physically but also psychologically and 3) the threat of ongoing abuse. When a group of boys repeatedly roughhouses a smaller, younger boy and calls him names, that's bullying. When a group of "popular" girls continues to snub the "new girl " whispering behind her back that's bullying, too. Setting up an online "slam-book" and inviting others to make cruel and negative comments about the target is an example of cyberbullying.

Within schools with simplistic or inconsistent programs to deal with bullying, targets often remain silent while friends and bystanders do nothing to intervene. Kids who want to report it to authorities fear being branded a snitch. Should a child be brave enough to speak up, adults may discount the grievance and advise the target to toughen up.

As a result, the bully receives the tacit message that his or her conduct is acceptable. The target grows angrier, more frightened and isolated, while the bystander feels powerless. All students are less able to learn in such a contentious atmosphere. Studies by the U.S. Department of Education show that a hostile environment is a major contributor to poor achievement.

Comprehensive bullying prevention programs should start in elementary school. At Parents Place, a family resource center of Jewish Family and Children's Services, we have created a bullying prevention program that involves the entire school community students, teachers, administrators, parents, and all staff. School support staff form a critical link, including bus drivers, crossing guards, playground supervisors, cafeteria workers and maintenance staff. They interact with students in less structured settings, where most of the bullying occurs. In fact, classrooms are the least common site for bullying, less than 25 percent on average.

Education of the entire community is essential. Specific examples are useful to help kids and adults identify different types of bullying. Role playing allows the community to practice new skills and positive ways to interact. A confidential reporting process also is essential so that teachers and administrators are accountable for timely follow-up of incidents.

Harassment prevention programs work. Adults no longer have to contend with bullying at work. Why should our kids?

GLORIA MOSKOWITZ-SWEET is coordinator of the Parents Place Community Education Center and has taught social work at San Jose State University for 20 years, with a focus on children and families.

CLAUDIA GIRRBACH is a senior director at Gap Inc. and a Stanford ACT volunteer at Parents Place. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

Postscript
A leader for a teacher's group read this op-ed and contacted Parents Place to request training on recognizing and preventing bullying. The focus of training is for instructional assistants. With over six million students enrolled in California schools, the opportunity for impact is enormous.

Made To Stick Green Messaging

2010-02-01T18:36:00.001-08:00

Are your green and sustainable communications able to cut through the clutter? Do they resonate and persuade the employee to take action? If you are like me and on the look-out for more effective social marketing techniques, a great book to consult is “Made to Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. [Note 1]

To illustrate the “Made to Stick” methodology, this post shares sample messaging that was developed for marketing paper conservation to employees.

Pause Before You Print >>

The “Made to Stick Model” consists of six principles. Each principle is highlighted as encountered in the sample message with the related slides referenced. [Note 2]

1. Principle – Simple (throughout)

Ruthlessly jettison any extra messages to convey a single theme. This presentation focused on printing, but my first draft incorporated a related concept about recycling. Recycling was eliminated since it was tangential to the point of reducing paper use. [Note 3]

Many of us --- with the good intention of getting more benefits from a message --- tend to overload. Unfortunately, too much information is overwhelming and likely to be ignored.

2. Principle – Story (throughout)

This message is in the form of a story about Paul, a co-worker. It follows the standard story formula of creating dramatic tension and then resolving the issue. Most organizations have green enthusiasts in the trenches that have stories to tell. Our job is to find them to make our messages resonate.

3. Principle – Concrete (Slides 2, 4, 13 – 15)
The alliteration “Pause Before You Print” is my attempt at a proverb such as “look before you leap”. The goal is to create a snappy tagline to anchor the entire message and make it easier to recall.

The message starts with a tangible example – an individual’s paper consumption – for a day and then a year before expanding to the entire company. Many of us violate this principle and start spouting statistics about the big problem, because we are already grounded with many examples. We just need to remember to bring the audience along by first framing.

4. Principle – Unexpected (Slides 7 - 8)

“Paper Used Annually …, enough paper that if stacked would reach Mount Everest” This uses a surprising statistic of how quickly a few pages each day when multiplied can lead to a huge amount of paper consumed. This analogy avoids giving the number of sheets, which is a mind-boggling number, but instead illustrates the size using an example from the sensory world.

5. Principle – Emotional (Slides 9 - 12)

The first emotional feature is using Paul to convey the message. Often, employee messages are intoned by a faceless corporate bureaucrat. Later, in the message we engage the target as part of a larger team that can make a difference. Finally, the statistic about what other colleagues have achieved can simultaneously invoke pride and a sense of competition to do as well.

6. Principle – Credible (Slides 13 -14)
The action requested is specific and doable and hence credible. Since this was a sample, I had the liberty to assume that a robust green printing program was already in-place and could then focus the target on using the tools available.

With social marketing, just like any other kind of marketing, it is critical that the customer may easily acquire the product being hyped. If Bud Light were as difficult to acquire as most green behaviors, we’d all be teetotalers. Consequently, it is essential to make it easy to be green. [Note 4]

We, social marketers, are often guilty of breaking this fundamental rule even though we have ample evidence that vague admonishments are likely to fail. If such blandishments were effective, we would be a nation of health-food fans, exercise enthusiasts, saving for a rainy day, and flossing fanatics. But we are not.

To go a step further, we should make the desired behavior automatic (as much as possible) and the remainder easy. Rather than spend a great deal of marketing effort to convince people to print double sided or increase margin’s on documents, as green marketers we should expend our energy on gaining approval to deploy tools and aides that make the desired behavior the default. In the printing case, the supporting tools and infrastructure that should be in-place prior to any messaging are

Access anywhere, anytime, any device including wireless access in the building
Document sharing when meeting in person or virtually
Green templates for different document types that set-up with right-sized margins and fonts

Double sided printing

.
In addition to making it easy and automatic, the final step is to make the outcome visible. Without some feedback, it’s easy to forget or fudge the amount of paper being used. Feedback when printing --- such as receiving kudos if doing well or a gentle nudge if falling behind --- will ensure intense employee engagement.

Notes & References
Note 1: Made To Stick is a general business book whose principles are valuable for all sorts of communications. The Made to Stick website inlcudes great resources to get you started. It is worth purchasing the book.

Note 2: Thanks to Peter Graf, CSO and EVP of Sustainability Solutions at SAP for sharing his “Enough Paper to Mount Everest” analogy. He is also a fan of "Made To Stick".

The other parts of the marketing message were created by me for this post to illustrate the “Made To Stick” methodology. Your indulgence of my amateur copy writing is appreciated. Any resemblance to persons or organizations living or dead is purely coincidental.

Note 3: The recycling message. although a worthy goal, was eliminated

Give Paper A Second Chance - Paper has more lives than the proverbial cat. Paper can be recycled up to 12 times and high grade office paper can be made it to almost any other paper product. This will be saved for a subsequent marketing message.

Note 4: Example of typical paper conservation message.

Related Posts
Social Marketing Example: Bottled Water
HP Lives Green - More on change management and employee engagement
Tips on using paper more wisely
Green Goal of Paperless Office Remains Elusive

Stanford University's Green Commute

2010-01-05T17:47:00.000-08:00

In 2002, Stanford had to shift more commuters to alternative methods or it would be forced by Santa Clara County to make a huge investment in traffic mitigating infrastructure to support its expansion plans.

When I met with Brodie Hamilton, Director Parking and Transportation Services for Stanford University, I was amazed at Stanford’s commute numbers (which excludes the student population). Already in 2002, Stanford’s commute program had yielded an above average number of commuters using alternative transportation at 28%.

Yet, Stanford had to shift even more commuters or it would be forced by Santa Clara County to make a huge investment in traffic mitigating infrastructure to support its expansion plans.

Since Stanford was committed to the environment and had a basic commute program in-place, the decision was made to increase its efforts to promote greater use of alternative commutes. By enhancing convenience and reducing costs for commuters, Stanford exceeded its goal and now 48% of Stanford’s commuters use alternative transportation.

Baseline Commute Program
In 2002, Stanford University had already implemented a solid commute program.

Commute Method	Incentive	Resolve adoption issues	2002
Drive Alone	Disincentive Charge for parking $54 - 391 annually		72%
All alternative commute services	"Clean air cash" - Up to $100 annually	Guaranteed ride home Shuttle service for campus	28%
Public	Pre-tax payroll deduction		8%
Car and van pool	Free parking Preferred parking Van pool subsidies		11%
Bike /walk		Showers and lockers	9%

The Plan

Brodie Hamilton and his team first focused on leveraging existing public transportation. In 2002, an average number of commuters (8%) used some type of public transportation. In 2008, that had grown a whooping 200% to 24% of all commuters. After careful study of point of origin commuter data, Stanford

Initiated special programs with the regional transit districts to fully fund the costs of commuting.
Supplied Stanford employees with transit passes to make it easy to board without the annoyance of purchasing tickets.
Expanded shuttles to transit pick-up and drop-off points since a frequent down-side of alternative commuting is being locked into a schedule. Now commuters can come and go as they please.
Offered on-site car rentals and zip cars for errands. (Vouchers provide several hours at no charge)
Developed a program to provide 100% subsidy for public transportation during a trial period for those drive-alone commuters that were hesitant to make a long term commitment

The data also showed that a number of employees lived close to campus. By expanding coverage of the existing Stanford shuttle to the outer campus areas, employees in nearby neighborhoods could then use the shuttle for their commute.

One other alternative that has increased significantly is biking. In 2002, biking enjoyed an above average use at 7%. By 2008, biking was close to 11%. Stanford was fortunate that the neighboring communities were bike friendly and continued to improve. In addition, Stanford enhanced biking amenities such as increasing the number of racks, providing subsidies for helmets and folding bikes (for those commuters who also use the train).

The transportation department also made driving alone more costly by increasing parking fees significantly. The savings from parking was then more advantageous for those committing to alternative commutes. At the same time, the cost of gasoline also increased, peaking in 2008.

As part of its comprehensive commuting program, Brodie Hamilton and his team defined a branded community for Stanford’s commuters by establishing the “Commute Club”. By joining the Commute Club, commuters receive extra benefits including a cash payment of up to $234 per year.

The Commute Club is part of a broader promotion program that announced the many new features of Stanford’s commute program and encouraged use of alternatives. Brodie Hamilton explained, “We were fortunate that over time we had three different people creating campaigns, which included an improved website, targeted marketing, banner messages, testimonials, refer-a-friend, trial period, contests and news articles.” Since its inception, Commute Club membership has grown over 90% from 3,700 employees to nearly 7,200.

THE RESULTS
The overall results have been tremendous with an increase of 70% in alternative transportation. Those services added since 2002 are highlighted in bold.

Commute Method	Incentive	Resolve adoption issues	2002	2008	% Chng
Drive Alone	Disincentive Increase cost of parking $234 - to $603 annually		72%	52%	-28%
All alternative commute services	"Clean air cash" - Double annual reward with up to $282 annually Create Commute Club	Guaranteed ride home Shuttle service for campus On-site car rental or zipcar subsidized with vouchers	28%	48%	71%
Public	Pre-tax payroll deduction Free boarding Try It, You'll Like It - 100% short-term subsidy	Shuttle service to transit Shuttle service routes expanded Longer hours and more frequent	8%	24%	200%
Car and van pool	Free parking Preferred parking Van pool subsidies Ride matching web service		11%	10%	-9%
Bike /walk	Subsidies for folding bikes Discounts for helmets	Showers and lockers More bike racks	9%	14%	36%

Brodie Hamilton shared “When I first started working on alternative commuting, I would receive a polite ‘Yes, BUT’ response …
Yes, BUT I need my car to run errands.
Yes, BUT I need my car to get home in case of an emergency.
Yes, BUT public transportation takes too long with all that standing around waiting for connections.
Yes, BUT I don’t have a place to store my bike safely.’

My goal has been to solve the issues preventing people from leaving their cars at home. That’s the only way we will change ‘Yes, BUT …’ to ‘YES!’ ”

References:
Stanford University Transportation website

Related Posts:

Parking Lot Funds Genentech Bus

Put Packaging On A Diet

2009-12-13T12:43:00.000-08:00

Are you frustrated with wasteful product packaging received from your IT equipment vendors? Then you share a concern voiced by most everyone I talk with. Yet zero waste packaging is achievable with a focused effort by our IT equipment suppliers to:

1. Eliminate unneeded items

2. Right-size the remaining packaging

3. Sustain with green packaging that is reused or recycled.

Voice of the Customer

"We have had to hire a prt time person one day a week just to dispose of this stuff in as green a manner as we can." Rick, Government Agency

"Software licenses were sent in a large box bubble wrapped inside a cardboard envelope! Surely in this digital age something like this could be communicated electronically?" Steve, IT Service Provider

"Plastic bubble wrap, empty cardboard spacers inside of cardboard boxes, surrounded by foam peanuts, and topped off with documentation that nobody will ever read or use - it's ridiculous! Maybe we need to start packing this excessive waste up and ship it back to the manufacturers just to make a point." Stephan, Large DC operator

"A typical server arrives with about five pounds of wasteful metal and paper. The extra manufacturing and shipping costs are extremely wasteful. If we, as customers, can figure out their motivation for adding these parts and not being more conscious of their packaging then we are more likely to be successful in pushing for a change." Simon, Financial Services

Letting the Bottom Line Go To Waste

Simon's comment --- The extra manufacturing and shipping costs are extremely wasteful --- is perceptive. If tracked in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, the impact of packaging waste to the equipment provider's bottom line should become painfully obvious. But often, the packaging costs are buried and invisible making change difficult to initiate. The good news is that once engaged, many IT equipment providers utilize Six Sigma or other process engineering practices which is perfect for resolving this packaging problem.

Zero Waste Best Practices

1. Eliminate unneeded items from the shipment

Deliver all items virtually wherever possible (documentation, shipment info, licensing, etc)
Allow customers to exclude from an order any items that the customer will discard such as consumable components including cabling, grounding straps, and power cords.

2. Right-size packaging

Consolidate items and shipments to reduce total amount of packaging. Some suppliers provide services to assemble pieces or consolidate orders. To be effective, the vendor should offer consolidation for small number of units.

Protect product without over-engineering the packaging. Many packaging engineers are confident that all the packaging is needed to protect products from damage. They correctly assert that a damaged product is also a type of waste that should be avoided. I agree, but suspect that there may be a bit more opportunity --- even if it is just educating those packing items to put items in the correct type of packaging and the smallest size package as possible. It would be great to never to see an item in too big of a container that then needs to be cushioned by extra materials. When assembling products in a rack, the rack itself provides protection and the standard packaging may be excessive. Static electricity protection bags (those pink bags) are redundant if using a static protecting box (or vice versa).

3. Sustain packaging

Use non-toxic materials that can be either continuously reused in primary commercial process without losing quality or composted to become nutrients for the soil. C2C (Cradle to Cradle) or similar certification.

Eliminate all packaging that cannot be recycled.

Consider packaging that can be reused. Most of the packaging is cardboard based, which has good recycling opportunities. But another approach is to use packaging that can be reused. A study found that a plastic crate that is reused has a much smaller carbon footprint then cardboard crate that was recycled.

Eliminate toxic chemicals used in manufacture of packaging such as glues and ink. For example, When cardboard is recycled, it first needs to go through a cleaning process to remove ink and other binding agents. Most traditional cardboard boxes use toxic inks and other agents and those toxic materials end up in the water. If the cardboard is not recycled --- about 35 percent of corrugated cardboard is not according to EPA studies --- it ends up either incinerated where those toxic chemicals are released into the air or in a landfill where those toxic chemicals leach into soil and ground water.

Increase amount of recycled product to 100%. Although cardboard can be recycled, even if a business or individual diligently puts in on the curb for recycling, it may not be recycled if there is not a market for it. By purchasing recycled cardboard, a business supports a viable market for recycled cardboard.

Help customers to reuse and recycle by

Making boxes and other packing materials easier to breakdown.

When processes are immature, work together with other technology vendors and recycling service providers to establish new recycling methods. For example, pallets are not mainstream and are sturdy enough to be reused often. Some technology providers provide packaging pick-up, but it is difficult for customers to sort and segregate each vendor's packaging. Another approach would be to uncrate when delivered so packaging is returned immediately for recycling.

Provide a mechanism for customers to provide feedback.

When reviewing options, we all need to ensure that environmental impact is reduced and not shifted to another process.

Next Steps

At my day job, I have partnered with the IT Director to work with our vendors. Stephan suggested that a dramatic act is required to get the vendor's attention --- Maybe we need to start packing this excessive waste up and ship it back to the manufacturers just to make a point. We agree that it is always effective to make an abstract concept concrete; so we plan to take pictures of the excessive waste as we receive orders and share those with the vendors. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine what is possible, so we are hoping to find examples of green packaging as well.

In addition to the individual follow-up with our vendors, my goal is to work with industry organizations to consolidate customer feedback, recommend best practices and share with IT vendors. Mark Thiele, Founder and President at Data Center Pulse, a non-profit focused on data center best practices, has agreed to help champion this with IT DC vendors.

For any IT vendor readers, I realize many are interested in improving packaging and some have started dealing seriously with this issue. The community would be thrilled to hear the results of your efforts and plans.

Join with me to share your stories and recommendations on how to improve packaging. Working together, we can achieve Zero Waste.
.
References:
Data Center Pulse An open source community where data center operators share best practices, work together to define innovative solutions to influence the broader community
Study comparing carbon footprint of plastic to cardboard
ZeroWaste organization

Related Posts:
eBay helps its sellers to green their packaging

Amazon thinks outside the box to eliminate "clamshell" and other excessive packaging

Parking Lot Funds Genentech Bus

2009-12-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

Are you finding it challenging to initiate sustainability projects focused on reducing carbon emissions? Although the reduction in carbon emissions benefits society, there are only so many goodwill projects most corporations are willing to fund. Yet Daniel McCoy, Transportation Director at Genentech persevered and found a way to provide hard benefits that corporations crave.

With solid ROI, the Genentech commuting program spends millions of dollars each year to provide a private bus service and encourage public transportation, car pooling and biking.

The breakthrough in negotiating funding was to realize that much less parking would be required should employees use alternative transportation rather than drive to work. Land and cost to develop parking is quite expensive in South San Francisco where Genentech was building. If the parking could be reduced significantly, then $75 million in savings over ten years could fund the dreamed of bus service and other commuting programs. Touchdown! Well not quite, only a first down.

The amount of parking associated with commercial structures is regulated by local governments. The next step was to convince the local government that a new approach to commuting could take enough cars off the road to justify much less parking. Since the local government was interested in sustainability and traffic congestion, they agreed. Second down for Genentech, but for many companies this victory would turn-out to be a dead-end.(Note 1)

With the agreement from the city planners and hard savings in land development costs, the new commuting program was approved by management. Third down, but still needed to ensure adoption by employees to reduce parking, driving and Ghg emissions. The program’s approach:

1. Set a goal – Genentech’s goal was 30% of all commutes would use alternate transportation.

2. Analyze – Map where employees live to identify key locations. Complete surveys to determine what employees most value in a program and what are impediments to adoption. During this stage, Genentech uncovered potential grant money. By sharing the Genentech shuttle service to / from public transportation, Genentech realized additional funding source.

3. Define and implement - A variety of services is required to satisfy the broad needs of its constituents. Dan McCoy has found that "Focusing on a single program is unlikely to shift enough people."(Note 2)

4. Market program – "A program without focused marketing is likely to fail." stated Dan McCoy. The first step at Genentech was to establish a program brand and tag line. Genentech’s was gRide whose tag line was “Get On Board”. (Note 3.)

5. Measure, provide feedback and adjust services - Make sure to share your employee’s personal contribution and appreciate the effort.(Note 4)

Touchdown

The use of alternative methods is 34% with over 1 million rides each year.

26 “GenenBuses” carried 628,000 passengers to work across the Bay Area.
More than half of the company’s 8,500 employees are registered in the program
13% decline in solo-driving
4,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions eliminated annually

Next Steps
The gRide program was justified due to cost avoidance of parking lots. Since then employee productivity has been identified as an area to capture further hard benefits. For example, Genentech found that even if only 20 percent of employees use Wi-Fi, the company benefited by $1.5 million of productive work.

Since its inception, anecdotal information has identified that employees love this program and that it contributes to successful recruiting and retention. Given the scientific culture of company and the newness of these programs, Dan McCoy described that "management feels most comfortable when data is available to back up claims of benefits”. Management agreed to invest in detailed surveys used extensively to measure HR programs called "HR Conjoint Study" to determine the importance of gRide to recruiting and retention. Dan McCoy hopes to share these results more broadly to encourage other companies who are standing by the sidelines to establish better commuting programs.

Conclusions
The approaches employed by Dan McCoy and Genentech can be applied more broadly to fund sustainability projects. First, Dan McCoy determined that commuting was a large contributor to Genentech's carbon footprint and consequently worth the effort to reduce. When he was rejected by management on his first proposal, he persisted. To find hard benefits, he zoomed out to review the entire value chain to understand what opportunities existed for efficiency. Linking solo driving to parking and parking to real estate was brilliant. Genentech then went on to convince other stakeholders to realign incentives to make the benefits realizable; specifically when local government agreed to change the parking requirements. Finally, Dan McCoy focused on program adoption to ensure that benefits could be achieved to maintain on-going funding.

Notes

Note 1: Commercial Buildings
Most commercial buildings in US are developed by a third party and not by the tenant. If Genentech had been working with a developer, most developers would be nervous to reduce parking given that they want the most flexible arrangement for future tenants. Genentech already had low employees per square foot since much of the facility was used for labs. Dan McCoy explained, "A developer would be concerned about insufficient parking in the future should a different type of business lease the space." For example, if the building were used as a call center, the people density would increase dramatically. Since developers are unlikely to run a bus service, they would likely balk at reducing parking. Developers overbuild parking lots since they want to appeal to the greatest variety or potential tenants. This adds to the sprawl which makes most public transportation ineffectual except for the busiest transportation corridors.

Note 2: gRide Program Summary

Service	Incentive	Resolve Adoption Issue
All	$4 per day	Guaranteed Ride Home Midday dasher for errands
Private bus	Wifi and other amenities	Pick-up in neighborhood Not public
Public Transportation	$120 / month provided, both pre and after tax	Genentech shuttle to / from public transportation
Car and van pooling	Preferred parking Stipend to cover costs of van	Ride planners and matching services
Biking		Showers and lockers

Note 3: gRide Marketing

Dan McCoy emphasized that ”It is essential to the success of the program to communicate reliability, convenience, fun, and even the success of the company.” For Genentech, the program enables the company to invest more in work facilities and less in parking garages.
Leverage related events to reinforce the program such as Bike to Work Day, Spare the Air days, and Earth Day.
Organize contests such as top departments
Outreach to share information about the program. Dan McCoy used "lunch and learn", cafeteria table events, a program website, and created a component in new employee orientation.
Take advantage of spikes in gas prices to start or boost such programs. For example, at Genentech, interest from employees and corporate leadership grew during last year’s spike in gas prices.

Note 4: gRide Management systems

Develop systems that can capture quantitative data over time to show the physical and financial impacts.
Provide employees with their personal information including reduction in carbon emission and gas money saved. Also share the broader impact from entire company.
Track how many people drive alone, carpool, ride shuttles and other alternative modes. Dan McCoy shared that "Genentech has a contractor counting people coming in/out of the campus twice a year. This is more accurate than using the data from the cash reimbursement program, because reimbursement data will be under-reported since some employees will not request reimbursements."
Calculate the greenhouse gas emissions from commutes and include in your organization’s sustainability report since commuting is typically a significant contributor to a company's greenhouse gases.

References

Genentech's Director of Transportation, Dan McCoy
Genentech Corporate Sustainability Report
Genentech won a number of awards for its innovative approach to transportation including Acterra 2007 Business Environmental Award and a 2009 Clean Air Award from Breathe California.

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Chevy Volt: An EV For Everyone?

2009-11-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

Will GM's next stage electric vehicle --- the Chevy Volt --- be embraced by enthusiasts, environmentalists and everyone else? YES!; according to John Ferris, Program Planning Manager, Global Electric Vehicles, for General Motors who met with me recently to discuss the Chevy Volt.

He explained that the Chevy Volt's strategy is to:

Wean us from fossil fuel --- most trips can be made on pure battery that is cleaner and cheaper
Ensure we are not stuck --- traditional fuel is back-up when battery is exhausted
Put us in a fun-to-drive vehicle --- its electric motor provides great acceleration at all speeds

Our interview covers three main topics:

EV landscape and where the Chevy Volt fits in. If you were wondering about the differences between HEV, PHEV, EREV, BEV, John Ferris defines the acronyms.
Marketing plans including how to overcome adoption issues such as cost, charge time, and more.
Vehicle design. Since better fuel efficiency increases miles per battery charge, decreases size of battery for same amount of miles and ultimately reduces cost of vehicle, John Ferris shares design improvements to enhance efficiency.

What is the Chevy Volt?

CG: There are a number of different EV (electric vehicle) options, please explain how the Volt fits in?

John Ferris: The Volt is an electric vehicle (EV) with extended range (ER) capability or an EREV. The Volt's lithium-ion battery powers the car for up to 40 miles without a drop of gasoline or any tailpipe emissions. Then the Volt continues driving for an additional 300 miles using gas or E85 ethanol.

Electricity always powers the Volt. Once the battery is discharged to a specific of charge level, its motor / generator kicks in using regular gasoline or E85 ethanol to create electricity to power the Volt's electric drive unit. The Volt's battery can be recharged by plugging into a standard 120V electrical outlet or 240V charging station / EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment). The battery will also recapture energy from the vehicle's regenerative braking system to help extend the Volt's battery-only range and increase battery usage [when powered by gasoline] during its extended range operation.

CG: How is it an improvement over hybrid electric (HEV)?

John Ferris: Unlike a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) that is powered by a traditional internal combustion engine using gasoline and only uses a battery and electric motor to improve fuel economy, the Volt provides up to 40 miles of gas-free, emissions-free driving using its lithium-ion battery.

CG: How is the Volt different from a plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV)?

John Ferris: The Volt uses electricity as its primary fuel and has full performance when operating solely using its lithium-ion battery. This is different from PHEV which uses gasoline as its primary fuel and has limited performance in electric mode.

CG: How does the Volt compare to a battery electric vehicle?

John Ferris: Unlike a pure battery electric vehicle (BEV) that is powered completely by a rechargeable battery and must be plugged-in once its battery is depleted, the Volt has the ability to continue driving using gas or E85 ethanol for an additional 300 miles. As a result, the Volt eliminates the range anxiety experienced by drivers of BEVs and will never leave the driver stranded or having to wait to recharge its battery.

Defining the Acronyms

Type of Vehicle	Gas Fuel	Electricity	Plug-in	Emissions
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)	Yes	None	No	Dirtiest
Hybrid (HEV)	Primary	Secondary: Small battery	No	Better than traditional internal combustion engine
Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV)	Primary	Secondary: Larger battery than HEV	Yes	Improves on hybrid since more fuel from cleaner electric sources
Extended Range (EREV)	Secondary: Generates electricity for electric motor	Primary: Larger battery than PHEV	Yes	When shorter trips that are fueled from battery, then as clean as BEV Otherwise similar to PHEV
Battery (BEV)	No	Primary: Largest battery	Yes	Cleanest

What are the Volt's marketing plans?

CG: Since the Volt is being released under the Chevy brand --- the middle America target --- what marketing approaches are planned to win over this segment?

John Ferris: Our approach is to provide a product that both the technology enthusiast, as well as, the mainstream market can embrace.

The big marketing push is yet to come, although we have started to mention the Volt in Chevy ads consistent with Chevy brand values and our "Gas-friendly, to gas-free" marketing campaign.

One major difference in this vehicle for GM and the car industry in general is the transparency that we have exhibited for this vehicle and its development. All facets of the Volt program's development have been shared in a very open and proactive way. In addition to traditional company websites and media events, a popular social networking site was also founded by an enthusiast (GM-Volt.com) to help educate consumers and provide updates on the progress we're making.

CG: Does GM expect to attract green segments that may have moved to other brands?

John Ferris: Yes! But our intent is to attract much more than green segment customers. Not only is the Volt an environmentally-friendly vehicle, but it is also a very fun to drive vehicle. Many consumers are pleasantly surprised at how quickly an electric motor accelerates.

CG: How many cars in its first release? Is this a pilot?

John Ferris: The Chevy Volt is planned to be a mass market vehicle versus a limited volume demonstration program. The program will need some time to ramp-up but consumer demand and plug-in vehicle incentives will ultimately drive the final production for the initial life-cycle.

CG: What other services will GM explore given the new technology – similar to OnStar?

John Ferris: We are at the point where cell phones were 15 – 20 years ago when manufacturers and consumers were looking at basic functions and now we have many new functions as epitomized by the iPhone and its related applications. New services in the EV space are likely to focus initially around charging (i.e., locating public charging stations and coordinating with the smart grid).

What about adoption issues?

CG: Costs? Batteries are a large component of the extra costs, but electricity is 4 times less expensive than gas ---- how can shifting the costs from small weekly increments (gas purchases) to one large payment up-front (extra cost of battery) be made palatable to the consumer?

John Ferris: Whatever battery purchase options are provided, it is critical to do a good job communicating to the consumer. Although costs are higher to purchase the operating costs are lower. We need to educate consumer that when running on battery energy the Volt costs less than $1 a gallon equivalent to operate.

GM is exploring different pricing / leasing options. Since traditional financing and leasing options are available already, these could be used to handle the extra upfront costs. Some type of subscription models may also work. Banks, however, may hesitate to finance a battery separate from the car.

CG: A top concern with electric vehicles is the limited range. We touched upon range anxiety, what other strategies is Volt providing to deal effectively with the range including getting the most range from the cleaner electric battery?

John Ferris: The goal is to provide the equivalent range as a typical vehicle. The battery will cover most daily trips and gasoline is there to handle longer trips. Recharging the battery twice a day effectively doubles the size of the battery without any increased cost, mass [weight] or vehicle packaging impacts.

CG: Time to recharge?

John Ferris: The Volt’s battery is 16 kwh. Using a 240V charging station, charge time = less than 3 hours. Using a standard 120V outlet, charge time = 8 hours. Since the Volt has a secondary fuel source, the batteries are much smaller than a pure battery electric vehicle (BEV). Hence the Volt has acceptable charge times at lower power levels.

CG: Battery life?

John Ferris: GM is engineering the battery to last up to 10 years / 150k miles. To achieve this goal, the battery is not allowed to drain to empty. Only ~50% of capacity is utilized to power vehicle and the purpose is to protect the battery life and maintain end of life performance. This is different than other manufacturers’ approach who drain the battery up to 80+%.

CG: Impact to the grid?

John Ferris: EREVs (like the Chevy Volt) and PHEVs will have much lower infrastructure requirements (vs. pure battery vehicles), especially at home and from a local grid perspective.

CG: What about the segment that doesn’t have easy access to garage / electricity to recharge?

John Ferris: GM is working with cities and businesses on readiness initiatives.

CG: What can be done to level the playing field to help EV gain a foothold?

John Ferris: Early on, government and public policy is needed to support the adoption of plug-in vehicles. Global markets with high fuel prices and other incentives are also starting to find plug-in vehicles (like the Chevy Volt) an increasingly attractive option.

The government has supported battery and electric drive unit R&D, but other specialized electric vehicle components could benefit from government support and additional research.

What are the design improvements for the Volt?

CG: Since the amount of fuel required and therefore battery size is also determined by how efficient the car is, how has the Volt team improved on the basic car design?

John Ferris: The Volt represents first generation electric vehicle technology and will be enhanced in subsequent generations. The production version of the Volt focused on optimizing aerodynamics while reducing electrical loads and mass.

The final production design has significantly enhanced aerodynamic performance compared to the “the expressive design” of the concept car with a drag coefficient approaching that of the Chevrolet Corvette.

In addition, a lighter car requires less energy to move, so we reduced the weight (mass) by reducing it from 5 to 4 passenger vehicle.

Finally, the typical car is loaded with features that consume electricity. We reviewed all opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce electrical loads. For example, we worked with Bose to provide low energy audio system that still rocks.

There is also an opportunity to harvest wasted energy. Regenerative braking will be available to capture energy from braking.

CG: What are the industry standards that have been agreed to for example, plugs to charge. Does GM support an open standard? What has it done to encourage open standard?

John Ferris: GM believes in standards. Standards drive down costs. GM has a history of collaborating in areas that are not key areas of competitive differentiation. For example, with transmissions, we worked with other auto manufacturers to lower development costs. It’s good for the auto industry and the consumer when we work together to establish early standards and drive down the development costs of advanced technology.

CG: What majavascript:void(0)kes up the other extra costs? It seems that the $40K (speculation on Volt cost) minus $10K battery that there are other costs as well that are higher for an e-car. What are they? And are those costs declining as well?

John Ferris: Other parts are a significant contributor. The reason the costs are higher is that the supplier network for electrical components (regenerative brakes, electric motors, power electronics, chargers, etc.) is still in its infancy. Some suppliers are start-ups with no or limited automotive experience. Learning (experience and design iteration), economies-of-scale, and competition will help drive down costs in these other areas. GM's intent is to drive down the costs of this technology which will support widespread adoption in the future.

References
Chevy Volt

Related Posts
Will Electricity Transform Cars?
Can the EV Do the Trip To Vegas?

Notes

John R. Ferris, Program Planning Manager, Global Electric Vehicles, GM
Ferris has over 20 years of experience in the automotive industry including multi-year assignments in corporate finance, corporate strategy, product planning and advanced vehicle development. Ferris was a member of the Chevrolet Volt Concept Team and was responsible for leading the Chevy Volt Program Execution Team through the architectural and program definition phases of General Motor’s global vehicle development process. He is currently managing go-to-market activities and electric infrastructure development for the Chevy Volt. Ferris started his GM career at Saturn Corporation and holds a MBA from the University of Chicago (Booth School of Business).

SUN's Virtually Carbon Free Commute

2009-11-23T19:38:00.000-08:00

What’s the largest component of your employee’s footprint? At SUN Microsystems, commuting contributes more than 90%.
SUN’s approach to a greener commute is telework enabled by its Open Work product.

Using more conservative figures compiled by the EPA, commuting still generates more than 80% for the average office worker’s total carbon emissions. [Note 1] This dramatic contribution should focus all employers and employees on making our commutes greener.

Recently I met with Ann Bamesberger, Sun Vice President of Open Work Services and her team to learn how SUN has achieved one of the highest rates of telework adoption. 56% of SUN's workforce is working away from the office at least one or two days a week.

The Opportunity – From Here to Jupiter

The typical US employee’s commute generates 26 pounds of CO2 and consumes 1.3 gallons of gas each day. If that typical employee were to telework 2 days per week, more than a ton of CO2 could be eliminated and 115 gallons of gas saved annually. If telework is expanded more broadly the impact will be enormous. For example, if 25% of the drive alone commuters teleworked two days per week, then the US would be able to stop 78 billion pounds of CO2 emissions and save 3 billion gallons of gas. On any given workday, the US could save enough gas to drive from the earth to Jupiter. [Note 2]

Green Grows Green
The other benefits to SUN include:

Reduced expenses. Open Work is credited for saving $70M annually due to reduced real estate and associated expenses. Specifically 30% less cost for each flexible worker (combination of in-office and telework).

Improved retention. Employees appreciate the time and financial savings with telework. 82% of its employees said they would recommend Sun because Its flexible work environment and attracting top talent.

Increased productivity. Of the time savings realized with the reduced commute, studies showed that a high percentage of the time saved is given back to the company in extra work by the employee. Telework also provides a great environment for focused heads-down work. This type of technology helps more than workers at home. The tools also support cross team collaboration at a client or remote office. Finally, these tools allow company to be prepared for disasters that make the office location unavailable.

Tools Plus New Approach to Work
To enable telework, specific tools are critical. Thankfully SUN and others have provided mature technology to facilitate remote communications and access to corporate resources. Open Work is the branded technology that SUN developed and refined over a decade. As Ann Bamesberger described, “Open Work enables a workstyle that emphasizes mobility and online collaboration and embodies Sun's vision of The Network Is the Computer.” But technology alone will not guarantee success, a different approach to work is required.

Telework for those of us still working in a traditional office environment is likely to require some adjustments. But those adjustments will enhance the work whether performed remotely or elbow-to-elbow. As Ann Bamesberger pithily observed, “Open work can shed light on poor management practices, such as managing by line of sight. It takes leadership and a results focus, both of which engender trust, to do it well.”

Managing by objectives
We all manage by objectives to some extent, yet sometimes we can be lulled by a false sense of control by observing. Most of us have experienced that teams were very busy yet still failing to meet schedules. Divorcing oneself from observing the level of effort, would force focus on the objectives objectively. Ann Bamesberger described the transition, “Open Work grew because it was endorsed and supported from the top. When we first started over 15 years ago, SUN provided training for both manager and employee to effectively transition to result-based work management — and online training is always available for both managers, new hires, and employees. It is now entrenched in how we work.”

What’s Next
SUN is not just focused on telework to enhance productivity and sustainability. Recently they have invested a great deal of effort in making the office more productive for local and remote collaboration. Like many companies, SUN’s facilities are configured with high-walled individual cubicles or offices that support heads-down work, but did little to engender spontaneous collaboration. The have developed a physical work environment that achieves what may be considered two opposing goals --- privacy for heads-down work and openness for collaboration. They have also paid special attention to technology to make remote colleagues a part of the day-to-day working team including a telepresence tool.

As Ann Bamesberger shared, “Everyone at Sun is an Open Worker. The program is not about working from home or working from the office. It’s about having the tools to work wherever skills and knowledge can be most effectively deployed.”

Related Posts
There are other methods to reduce impact of the commute including, encouraging employees to use public transportation or carpool. Some companies have also provided bus services or subsidized a van for a vanpool.

References
SUN's Open Work

Notes:
Note 1: 90% of SUN office worker footprint is due to the commute.

SUN’s sample group drove 45 miles round trip
4,000 watts per day for equipment, lighting and HVAC.
SUN’s detailed measurement and analysis, provides a useful methodology for estimating the footprint of workers in general. The examples provided in this post were more conservative and used EPA statistics:
32 miles roundtrip at 24 mpg

Note 2: Reduction GHG emissions

SUN in its study also found that there was a reduction in energy used for office equipment and HVAC. These savings were not included.
105 million drive alone commuters
9.6 million barrels of oil imported daily to US
20 gallons of gasoline per barrel of oil
Three billion gallons requires 150 million barrels of oil or almost 5% of our oil imports.
365 million miles to Jupiter requires 15 million gallons of gas or the average daily amount that could be saved by telecommuting 2 days per week.

Part 2:MINI E Marketing Analysis

2009-11-11T18:58:00.000-08:00

A personal test drive of the pilot MINI E helped to clarify my thoughts on the brand opportunities and pitfalls with the new MINI.

Will BMW attract buyers who are green but not necessarily BMW drivers? YES! There is a green segment --- me included --- who has been holding out for an option that allows us to “have our cake and eat it too”. Although the Prius and other hybrids are technologically impressive, they come across as practical.

Will BMW attract its traditional segment and steal from its direct competition? LIKELY! If it avoids marketing missteps.

Remember who you are. Luckily the MINI E is consistent with BMW’s and the MINI’s current marketing position. Fun driving with a coolness factor. Unless the e-car is an entirely new brand, it needs to remain consistent with its brand identity. The marketing of the MINI E, consequently, does not need to be green-oriented, true greens are already on the look-out for products. The marketing can focus on what MINI and BMW does best. Sell cars that are fun to drive. [Note 1]

Continue with the “you are special theme” of the pilot. MINI named its pilot a “Field Trial” and called its customers “Motoring Pioneers”. For those who doubt you can make a mass market feel special, remember Starbucks and its ability to teach America some Italian. The use of social media tools by BMW to reinforce is excellent.

Get ahead with a little help from your friends. Partner with the recharging companies such as Coulomb Technologies [Note 2] that are springing up to coordinate roll-out of cars and infrastructure. The MINI E target is a younger and urban owner, who may not have easy access to overnight charging,

Approaches discussed in the previous posts on the new e-car segment also apply. For easy reference those links are provided below. In the meantime BMW, I am intrigued...

Note 1: Remember who you are.
BMW has the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. For example, the “regenerative braking” that occurs when the fuel pedal is released has been criticized by some. It may take some getting used to. But its uniqueness can be emphasized as the stick shift feel without the extra work of a clutch and manual shift. Again this is consistent with BMW position in consumer’s minds – a car for the driving enthusiast.

BMW should always create names as good as the product. The program name for energy efficiency features is “minimalism”. It is a clever play on words which is intended to convey that MINI uses the minimum amount of resources. But if the consumer does not spend time to understand the concept, it could be negative. It strikes me as “environmental Puritanism” where sacrifice is required. Unfortunately too many consumers still think green is about sacrifice, so why reinforce that false stereotype? How about maximum acceleration (provided with the electric engine), maximum efficiency (regenerative braking, on-demand technologies) leading to maximum good clean fun.

I love the MINI website which explains its energy efficient technology in simple language. The site provides explanations depending on how much the visitor requests from 1 to 30 seconds. The presentation approach provides interesting techniques that any of us could leverage in our communications. It is worth a visit to see the difference from 2 second, 12 second or 30 second presentation or whatever time period you select.

Although BMW christens new features, the names are not always as exciting as the technology conceived. BMW developed a green feature, profiled in an earlier post, that leverages technology from NASA to capture lost heat to use as energy. How cool is that? They called it “turbo steamer.” It sounds like a carpet cleaner you rent at the grocery store.

Note 2: Get ahead with a little help from your friends

Coulomb Technology is one of the leading companies supporting the e-car revolution. Coulomb provides smart charging infrastructure for plug-in electric vehicles. Their network is branded as "ChargePoint Network". The ChargePoint Network provides convenient charging at public locations including curbside, workplace, apartment / condo and shopping centers.

Coulomb sells annual membership to consumers for access (they do not charge for electricity, just for access to the electricity). Those consumers who are casual chargers may also access the charging station with an RFID credit card or toll-free call to Coulomb.

The differentiator for Coulomb from other approaches is to provide networked charging stations. The networked approach allows for real time access to the charging stations. Consumers can locate nearby open charging stations, gain human support if required to facilitate the transaction, and then receive an update when charging is complete. In addition, Coulomb is able to communicate with utility companies to smooth electrical demands on the grid.

Related Posts:

References:

Part 1: MINI E Test Drive…

2009-11-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

#251 is not a new perfume from Channel. It is one of 500 MINI-E’s that is currently part of a year-long US pilot. I had the chance to take the MINI E for a test drive and it was peppy and maneuverable, just like its ICE (internal combustion engine) namesake.

The Test Drive.
#251 is out of its BMW sanctioned “hood” and can be seen frequenting the highways and byways of Silicon Valley. [Note 1] My host was Vice President of Sales at Coulomb Technology, Mike DiNucci.

The MINI E was parked at its reserved space and plugged into the Coulomb charging station. It looked like a traditional MINI E except for the “251” nameplate and “e” symbols. Inside, the front seat was also a MINI with one new dashboard gauge – fuel remaining in the battery. When I placed my handbag out of the way, it rested on the battery pack that took up the entire backseat.

The test drive started just like a test drive at the car dealership. Mike pulled the MINI E out of the Coulomb parking lot off Winchester Boulevard in Campbell. The engine was indeed quiet, but the quietness was difficult to appreciate. Being an unseasonably warm October afternoon, we had the a/c at full blast and Mike, a born sales guy, was enthusiastically pointing out features. We found a place to pull-over and traded places.

In the peak of rush hour traffic, I pulled onto CA-Interstate 85 going north and accelerated quickly --- experiencing the extra torque provided by the electric motor. The next part of the route was CA-Interstate 280 south through San Jose. As I approached heavier traffic, I eased off the fuel pedal (previously known as the gas pedal) and the car reacted as Mike DiNucci warned, it quickly slowed down. There is no coasting with the MINI E and it was equivalent to braking. Mike explained that the MINI E harvests the energy when slowing down to recharge the battery. Most traditional cars waste this energy, but other BMW’s and hybrids also use this technique.

My first attempt to leverage this new feature was herkey-jerkey and Mike gamely smiled through it all. I could see getting accustomed to it quickly as it reminded me of using the engine to brake when down-shifting in a manual transmission; my previous cars were stick. CA-Interstate 280 going south was clogged by commuters ready to start the weekend, but we had the benefit of the car pool lane. We then eased over to CA-Interstate 17 south and to our exit. Coming off the freeway provided some fun curves and using the braking feature of the fuel pedal allowed me to de-accelerate into the curve then accelerate out of the curve without my right foot dancing between 2 pedals. We returned the MINI E to its spot and plugged it into the recharging station after an exhilarating 20 mile trip.

Note 1: The story of #251.
BMW limited its pilot users to New York and Los Angeles to keep the cars close to its two engineering facilities. The leaser of #251 is Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb, the start-up working to fuel the e-car age. The CEO has a home in LA (and connections with BMW) while his company is headquartered in Silicon Valley. The MINI E #251 makes a great prop to the Coulomb’s charging station and hence lives mostly in Silicon Valley.

Read PART 2:The Marketing Analysis >>

Related Posts:

References:

EV Marketing Analysis

2009-10-27T22:04:00.001-07:00

Electric Vehicles: When, Where, & Who
This post considers the factors on timing (when), possible long-term winners (who) and geographic areas that may gravitate to electric vehicles EV (where).

WHEN?
Although EV is a solid concept, adoption could be delayed with products that are over-complicated. For example, it took PALM to create a simple and viable PDA that was accepted by the market after several failures, most notable Apple’s Newton.

Should gas prices remain low, the fuel efficiency benefit is less compelling.

Technology based products typically experience downward trend in costs which makes the product more attractive to more consumers. A great way to drive down costs in EV is to attract more suppliers. As Jon Ferris from GM pointed out, many of the parts in EV are new and the base of suppliers is small with limited experience in mass manufacturing. If the industry adopts open standard, it will attract more suppliers and more competition.

For example, a major cost component of EV is the battery. It could be analogous to a car stereo where the consumer can purchase the car manufacturers or from a third party.

Mike DiNucci, vice president of strategic accounts for Coulomb Technologies, which sells networked charging stations, shared that, “We strongly believe that any system that’s going to be adopted by the mass market has to be an open system. There has to be interoperability. You can’t lock people into a particular type of technology or a type of subscription model, or it’s not going to work.

Government may provide a nudge with an outright cash incentives or other benefits such as car pool lane access for extreme fuel efficiency. In California, this benefit gave the traditional segment (who may have had little interest in fuel economy or green benefits) a reason to buy the Prius.

WHO?
It is the rare firm that takes enough risks to kill its own cash cow. GM’s near death experience may make it a true believer.

Others such as BMW and Toyota seem to be taking the lessons of earlier tech giants who missed the next wave to become irrelevant.

Consequently, current auto leaders are investing their significant in-house engineering talent while reaching out to technical pioneers in the new space to develop EV and other low carbon vehicles.

China and developing world are also good candidates to take the leadership position since their auto industries are just developing and they have the least investment in traditional cars. They may find it easier to ramp up.

Early leaders don’t always finish first. Sometimes they are outmaneuvered by later entrants with a leapfrog technology or marketing and finance savvy.

WHERE?
Europe’s macro-economics are more favorable with higher fossil fuel prices and a more developed renewable energy generation that could leverage car battery as grid storage. Smaller geographies make it easier to achieve coverage of refueling points.

California’s most bought car in September 2009 is the Toyota Prius. Government may gave EV a boost by extending commute lane privileges to vehicles greater than 65 mpg (or the equivalent)

CONCLUSION
Thank goodness for early adopters who are willing to pay more, try new methods, live with some inconvenience, and are more understanding of quality issues.

In the early days of automobiles, the intrepid owner carried his own fuel, made his own repairs when the car broke down on the road, and dealt with limited infrastructure such as few roads, service stations, and maps.

Likewise the early cell phone range when outside of urban areas was poor, the cell phone was a brick and required more frequent and longer charging.

Hopefully EV will attract sufficient of early adopters to allow the industry to work out the kinks to make it attractive to traditional market.

Benefits of EV

2009-10-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

Summary of benefits that an electric vehicle (EV) provides:

A great driving experience – Some would say better given the acceleration and quietness. Many consumers are surprised and delighted at the acceleration available with electric motor.

3 Times Less expensive to operate – An analysis completed by EcoWorld (see references) found that EV will cost 3.4 cents per mile (when electricity 10 cents per kwh), while a car costs 11 cents per mile (when gas costs $3.30 per gallon)

Zero emission vehicle during operation and net positive even if the electricity is generated by coal. (As more renewable energy is used to generate electricity the emissions to charge will be reduced. Even so, the emissions from utilities to generate the electricity are less than emissions from fossil fueled car. Over time, there will be more renewable energy available. In some areas, renewable is available immediately if the owner has a green source available directly or from the utility.

Potentially a key contributor to a smart grid. In countries with more advanced renewable markets such as Denmark, the battery of EV car can be used to store electricity from wind sources that are more active at night and then harvested to support peak demand. Better Place is piloting in Denmark.

Will Electricity Transform Cars?

2009-10-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

Electric motors and batteries were available more than a century ago, but EV 1.0 lost the battle to the internal combustion engine (ICE). In this rematch, many of the same issues still challenge EV 2.0 – upfront costs, large batteries and refueling challenges. Will EV 2.0 drive car owners a new way?

My conclusion is unequivocally positive that EV will transform the industry. My rationale: There is sufficient market to support EV until the early adoption issues are resolved. Although the technology may not be ready for mass market, it is not a distant dream such as hydrogen. The issues facing EV are similar to other industries whose start-up challenges are now forgotten given their success. Finally, electricity is a superior fuel compared to fossil and hence will drive the innovation required to make EV work.

Is the e-car fundamentally better than alternatives in long-term?
Imagine all those pesky issues about battery size, cost, range etc are resolved. Is it better then? YES!   An electric vehicle is:
•    A great driving experience
•    3 Times Less expensive to operate
•    Zero emission vehicle during operation
•    Reduction in total emissions even if the electricity is generated by coal.
•    Potentially a key contributor to a smart grid.

Is it good enough now to attract a segment while the technology, infrastructure, costs, performance and other issues improve?
YES! There are good indicators that sufficient market to support in the interim.
•    Demand is brisk for fuel efficient cars including hybrids and clean diesel
•    Intrepid DIYer’s have modified traditional cars for electric motors
•    The number and variety of players legitimizes the EV.
•    Government support
•    Early adopters are willing to make some sacrifices

Are the issues solvable?
YES! A combination of technology breakthroughs, optimization and process changes will resolve the thorniest of EC issues.

Issue 1: Limited range

Smaller, greater capacity and cheaper is the trend. Breakthrough materials and processes will accelerate further. The amount of funds pouring into battery technology is impressive. It is in the billions of dollars.

In addition to battery technology improvements, if the car requires less fuel to operate, the battery will provide greater range. The amount of power required is influenced heavily by the car’s design. Many EV car manufactures have not redesigned the car from the bottom-up to work well with the new fuel. To get cars to market faster they are using many traditional designs and parts.
o    Physics – aerodynamics, weight of vehicle, rolling friction
o    Appliances inside the car such as the radio, heated seats
o    Functions consuming electricity such as power steering or A/C
o    Wasted energy due to idling
o    Lost energy that could be captured such as braking

The car manufacturers have incorporated some changes already and are planning the rest for next generations of EV. This is a double win --- many of the improvements will also increase efficiency of the traditional gas fueled car.

One other way to handle the battery range issue is to provide supplemental power for the occasional longer trip given current battery technology and lack of infrastructure. Some manufacturers --- such as Chevy Volt --- are providing e-car hybrid, where a battery is sized to cover most of the average driver’s daily mileage while gas fuel powers the electric motor for longer trips.

Issue 2: Recharging is not readily available
Not all cars have easy access to electricity and consequently some type of public recharging will be required. As Tom Gage CEO of AC Propulsion pointed out “What is more available than electricity? It is the ultimate commodity that exists everywhere that people live”

To develop a public electric recharging station (currently $3,000 – 5,000) is a rounding error compared to gas station ($3 to 5 million). It’s even cheap compared to a cell tower that requires at least $20,000 plus equipment. It only took a decade to achieve good coverage in most areas. There are now over 200,000 cell phone towers as estimated by CTIA, an industry group. To give EV recharging network a boost, our tax dollars will soon be put to work building 16,000 charging locations as part of the Obama Stimulus Program.

Issue 3: Recharging is Too slow
At 240v, current batteries require approximately 1 hour per 3+ kwh charged or 1 hour for every 12 – 16 miles of driving capacity. For a standard outlet at 110 v, charging slows down to 1 hour for every 4 – 5 miles.

Technology breakthroughs will accelerate charging. For example, Altairnano is adding a proprietary material to lithium batteries to reduce charge time to minutes rather than hours.

A process change may also dramatically decrease charging time. For example, to speed computer computations, IT uses massively parallel processing – where a problem is broken into small chunks and many individual processes work on bits of the problem simultaneously. To extend this analogy, EV battery would have multiple plugs. This is feasible, since the EV battery is made up of multiple batteries in a series.

Issue 4: Higher outlay than traditional ICE vehicles
Costs for EV components are reducing. Although the cost of a battery is often referenced there are many other new components in an EV that will also benefit from technology improvements, more scale and greater competition. Some of these other components include power train, regenerative braking, and charging hardware. Over time, industry experts forecast that the total cost will be on par.

In the meantime, there may be creative finance options that could make costs on par. As Jason Wolf from Better Place observed, the battery enables very inexpensive fueling options. It can be thought of as buying the fuel upfront. As Jason Wolf described, “A battery is like eight years worth of gasoline."

This got me thinking that an EV is analogous to an electric refrigerator that replaced the “ice box”. Before refrigerators, the housewife would buy ice weekly at a small cost. In comparison, the new refrigerator had a huge upfront cost. To overcome this barrier to sales, financing was offered to the consumer, which was also a new concept. It seems that some auto makers are exploring this concept. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive for Nissan-Renualt floated a cost of “just under 100 euros per month” (about US $150) for battery leasing. Using the same parameters as the earlier cost example, if e-car drives the average 1,000 miles per month, then the total costs would be $184 compared to $330 for traditional ICE car. Of course, any pricing needs to be understandable by the consumer. Otherwise it could be a determent to sales.

Conclusion

EV over ICE in no more than 3 rounds (generations).

EV Challenge	Technology Solution	Optimization Solution	Process Solution
Limited Range	More powerful battery for less $	Design energy efficient cars using known practices	Supplemental fuel

Recharging Limited Availability	Faster standard outlet (120v) charging	Manufacturing experience Competition	Public charging

Recharging Too Slow	Accelerate battery recharge		Parallel recharge

Higher Upfront Cost	Cheaper technology	Manufacturing experience Competition	Payment options

Related posts

For more details on EV benefits, read more now.
For more analysis, the next section considers the factors on timing (when), possible long-term winners (who) and geographic areas that may gravitate to e-cars (where). Read more.
Previous post - Can the EV Do the Trip to Vegas?
Previous post - The Road to Sustainable Cars is Thru Silicon Valley: Electrifying MINI E

References
EcoWorld - cost comparison of fueling an EV compared to traditional gas powered.

History of EV

Can the EV Do the Trip to Vegas?

2009-10-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Despite the exuberance surrounding the electric vehicle (EV), it has yet to earn its “badge of honor” on the American road. To make it real to many Americans, the electric vehicle (EV) must do more than schlep us to school and work, it needs to also hit the open road.

How close is the open road?

To share different strategies to overcome range and refueling issues, the German American Business Association hosted a panel discussion with electric vehicle (EV) representatives. The hurdles to adoption are:

Range. Although most drivers on any given day drive much less than the battery range, they still experience “range anxiety” given long recharge time and few places to recharge. And there are times when drivers need to take longer trips.
Recharging. In US, 1 in 5 cars don’t have a garage for recharging. Even in the suburbs, a quick look around the cul-de-sacs will confirm that many cars are parked outside and away from any convenient plug-in.

Three approaches were shared by the panel to resolve these two issues. The moderator was Thilo Koslowski, Vice President Automotive and Vehicle ICT, at Gartner.

1. e-car with supplemental gas motor to charge the battery once the battery has discharged

Presented by: Byron Shaw, Managing Director, General Motors Advanced Technology Silicon Valley Office
Background: General Motors will be releasing its Chevy Volt in 2011 which is targeted for Middle America car buyer.
Rationale: Taking no chances, GM is pragmatic that it may take some time to build-out the infrastructure to support recharging. They think “range anxiety” will likely be an inhibitor for first generation e-car buyers. Despite its current approach, GM appeared open to pure electric in the future.

2. Pure e-car. Start with home charging and expand to charge anywhere

Presented by Tom Gage, CEO, AC Propulsion
Background: AC Propulsion was a major technical contributor to BMW’s MINI E, which is currently in pilot with 500 US drivers. AC Propulsion was an early e-car pioneer in the 90’s.
Rationale: Like GM, AC Propulsion thinks that an infrastructure is not needed immediately and expects a strong niche for low mileage drivers with garages and secondary vehicles. The EV option to charge @ home is seen as a benefit to this segment. Once charging is more widespread, the market can grow.

3. e-car needs supplemental charging stations to gain traction
Presented by: Jason Wolf, Business Development, North America Better Place and Mike DiNucci, Vice President Sales, Coulomb Technologies, Inc.

Background: Both are start-ups focusing on providing public e-fuel facilities. Better Place has a battery swap business model while Coulomb Technologies, Inc. provides networked recharging stations.
Rationale: Their concerns are identical to GM that the largest segment don’t have a place to recharge and “range anxiety” is real. However, both companies believe that many auto makers will pursue pure EV. Also GM’s Volt can still benefit from an e-fuel station.

All three approaches support viable segments. With over 18 million new cars sold annually in the US, it’s a big opportunity for many creative players to work out the issues.

Thankfully, we are not that far off from enjoying a classic road trip in our EV. Mike DiNucci from Coloumb Technologies shared his recent road trip in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle --- a transition step from traditional to all electric. The non-stop journey was nearly 250 miles from San Jose to Chico California to close a deal with Sierra Nevada Brewery. After refreshing himself and the car, he drove back home.

BMW's Electrifying Mini E

2009-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Stephan Durach, who heads the BMW Silicon Valley Technology Office, shared his unit’s efforts:

Working with local universities
Forming partnerships to leverage new technologies
Using electricity as fuel
Integrating the car into the broader transportation network

These individual programs are part of his unit’s broader goal “to absorb Silicon Valley’s unique culture of innovation”.

During product development, research was conducted with UC Davis (Note 1) on the power train. BMW Silicon Valley office then forged a partnership with AC Propulsion to develop vehicle propulsion and battery technology. Five hundred test cars leveraging the existing Mini platform are currently in a year-long pilot. Rollout is expected in a few years. There are two test geographies --- in New York and Los Angeles --- both close to major BMW engineering facilities to make maintenance easy.

Stephan Durach reviewed how the year-long Field Trial that started in June was “an active pilot where customers are regularly interviewed to understand adoption and usage patterns and cars monitored for performance in the real world”. Key learning goals:

Charging: Where to charge when away from home? How owners without garages or access to 40 amps will charge?

Battery trade-off: Will consumers forgo some extra range to reduce battery cost?

Prior to the test, consumers experience “range anxiety” where they worry about the distance that can be covered and time to recharge. Studies have repeatedly shown that 75% of all trips are less than 10 miles and average commute is less than 20 miles each way. Consequently the range provided by Mini E should cover most scenarios. Early feedback from the test as reported by Stephan Durach is that “range anxiety diminishes dramatically after the first week”. He believes that over time these issues will become moot as more people have direct experience with the electric car.

Using electricity creates opportunities to provide new services such as utility management services. One such service would determine the best time to charge for most attractive rate. One other example is utilizing energy stored in battery to provide supplemental power and then recharging before the driver is ready for the next trip.

Harnessing the Silicon Valley Culture
I applaud BMW for releasing 500 Mini E electric cars for consumer test. But wonder if BMW can accelerate the broader adoption by embracing the ethos of the Silicon Valley culture. Specifically, the fundamental characteristic of that culture ---go fast, don’t wait until perfect. The Silicon Valley cycle is release, learn, improve, release with constant iteration.

I also appreciate that a car has a set of preconceived consumer expectations and BMW has its brand equity to protect. Within those constraints some ideas for BMW to consider:

Test using a statistically representative group.
A representative sample will likely illicit a broader range of feedback than a limited pool selected for its proximity to the two BMW engineering centers. It is also telling that BMW chose to stay close to home rather than go into the field. How can Peoria provide input?

Provide a new approach that compliments the new fuel.
Finding a way to consume much less power will make the battery issues of cost, range and recharge time easier to solve, since a smaller battery will be required. BMW’s approach to pilot an electric car using an existing Mini did allow the Mini E to be released quickly, but the next iteration should follow promptly that then makes other changes. Weight, for example, has been an easy way for auto manufacturers to convey substance and luxury, but requires a large amount of energy to move the vehicle. How can BMW transform light-weight nimbleness into a luxury in the consumer’s mind?

As Henry Ford aptly stated “If I had asked the customer, they would have asked for a faster horse.”

Rethink the car.
The big Silicon Valley success stories took a dramatically different approach to invent new categories. Apple, Google, and eBay are a few examples. Being tied to the automobile has the benefit of a built-in market, but also constrains creativity for designers. Consumers are also much more elastic in their thinking when interacting with a new category. Consumer testing and feedback are helpful to fine tune, but not very useful when defining new categories. How can BMW go beyond updating a product in an existing category to create a new category for the personal mobility market? (Note 2)

Given its German heritage for engineering perfection, BMW should continue to question if they are being prudent or overly cautious. If they are successful at combining the ying of perfection with the yang of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, BMW Group can claim to be the ultimate innovation machine.

Notes

University of California: An editorial comment, I am alarmed that the California budget cuts will destroy the knowledge factory of the UC system that provides basic research and a key source of engineering talent that built Silicon Valley. Sustaining intellectual capital is a critical issue.
New personal mobility category: One answer that BMW cheekily put forward on April Fool's Day was perpetual motion using a series of magnets in each of Mini E's four wheel hubs to both pull and push the wheels in the desired direction by exploiting the magnets' natural property to attract and repel. The major engineering challenge is controlling the speed which is nearly instantaneous and so fast that it is restricted only by wind resistance and drag of the car's body. BMW's annual tradition of ultimate spoofs is good fun and I hope they can find a real-world technology to reinvent the concept of personal mobility.

Related Post: Part 1 on BMW's Efficient Dynamics Program. Read more.

References

BMW's R&D Lab in Silicon Valley

2009-10-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

BMW Finds The Road to Sustainable Cars is Paved Through Silicon Valley: Legacy Platform
To help BMW maintain its status as the ultimate driving machine, BMW established a Silicon Valley Technology Office in 1998. A focus area is to make its traditional platforms as fuel efficient as possible while developing alternative approaches to transportation such as electrification, hybrid and hydrogen.

BMW has a huge influence on the “personal mobility” segment. It sells over 1.4 Million cars annually and has even broader influence since technological advancements are often introduced by high-end auto makers such as BMW that are then adopted by others in the industry.

I recently visited with Stephan Durach who heads this office and is on-loan from Germany to find out how BMW has forged a connection between automotive industry and the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. Stephan Durachshared more about his special unit:

“Our goal is to absorb Silicon Valley’s unique culture of innovation”.

The approach is to act as scouts for technology and network with Silicon Valley companies. They also leverage world class universities in the area and have ties to Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Davis. For promising technology, his team will complete a proof of feasibility which may lead to a technology transfer back to the BMW home office and formal partnerships with California companies.

The broad programs supported by Silicon Valley Technology Office are:

Open the car’s technology platform to embed software (s/w).
Leverage technology outside traditional automotive sectors
Use electricity as fuel
Integrate the personal vehicle into a larger transportation network
Incorporate trends such as social networking

During our discussion, we focused on BMW’s efforts in improving its fuel efficiency and reviewed its program “Efficient Dynamics.” Stephan Durach shared “The engineering challenge is to maintain the BMW experience while being fuel efficient”.

At this point in the lifecycle of the internal combustion engine, a single change is unable to achieve break-through benefits. The efficiency game will be won by a methodical review of each component and process to eek out smaller percentage gains. When added together, they make a significant difference. At the end of 2008, BMW Group reduced its carbon emissions in Europe by 25 percent from 1995 levels.

There were many improvements such as lighter materials, hybrid introduction, diesel engine improvements, aerodynamics that were made as part of “Efficient Dynamics”. The examples shared by Stephan Durach illustrate activities complimentary to Silicon Valley Technology Office goals – software (s/w), leveraging technology outside automotive industry and using electricity as a fuel.

Software
Use software (s/w) to manage components that where always on at full power even when power consumption needs were less.

Turn-off engine when fully stopped. While idling at a stop light, fuel is consumed. This is typically 5% of total driving. In fact, studies have shown that idling more than 30 seconds uses more fuel than restarting. BMW added s/w to detect and turns off and then restarts when driver presses accelerator. This is not as simple as turning off / on, the associated components such as the starter and battery were reviewed to ensure that these components could handle the higher frequency start / stop.

Stop electric generator when battery charged. Traditional electric generator is always running even when the battery is fully charged. This wastes fuel. SW to manage the battery charging process was developed to turn-off generator until needed.

Reduce engine revolution when in stop and go traffic. Idling 10 minutes is equivalent to traveling 5 miles.

Switch from “always on” hydraulic system to variable power electric system. Any hydraulic system requires pressure be maintained which requires energy and reduces overall fuel efficiency. To improve efficiency, BMW is switching from hydraulic to electric steering. The advantage compared to traditional hydraulic systems is that it only needs electricity when the car is actually changing direction. When the car is traveling in a straight line or rounding a corner at a constant angle, the electric motor is idle and does not draw any power.

Import Technology to Use Heat as Energy
BMW's next major break-throug was to recover heat generated to power the car using thermo electric energy technology, which has been named “turbo-steamer” by BMW.

Any mechanical device generates heat as a by-product and a car generates lots of heat. Keeping the engine cool, preventing heat from entering the cabin and eliminating heat through the exhaust pipe have been the traditional concerns of automotive design. The average car wastes two thirds of fuel consumed through heat loss.

Heat is also a form of energy and BMW posed the question:

How can this lost heat be used to power the car?

BMW focused on capturing heat from the exhaust pipe since it represents 30 -35% of lost heat energy. BMW found a device developed by aerospace industry and used by NASA for over 20 years that could be repurposed for the exhaust pipe. The technology generates electricity by leveraging the differential between the outside air and heat from the exhaust, which can reach 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Recovery of lost heat is estimated on average to improve fuel efficiency by 5 - 10% or 2 – 4 mpg. The recovered energy is being used to power A/C, entertainment, cabin controls, electronic steering. It could also be stored in a battery. Materials are expensive but should become more affordable over time while fuel costs are projected to rise making the economics more favorable

Application to Other Industries
Like the internal combustion engine, most technical processes waste a great deal of energy where 50% waste is not uncommon. The strategies BMW applied are consequently valuable for processes across all industries:

Review each individual component and process to uncover opportunities.
Seek methods and technologies to import from other industries.
Approach universities to guide and apply research.
Reduce load by reducing weight and friction
Recover lost energy and reuse
Use software to better manage processes
Ensure that energy consumed correlates to work performed. If work is variable make power variable and off when process is idle.
Use more sustainable sources for power.
Once individual enhancements are in-place, review the whole to reduce size of power generator if possible.

Part 2 explores BMW's entry of using electricity as fuel with its Mini E. Read more.

Social Marketing & Bottled Water

2009-09-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

You Can Lead A Horse To Water...
I was chatting with a sustainability leader at a high tech company and she shared the challenge of eliminating bottled water. That got me thinking about a way to engineer a campaign using principles from social marketing. The examples relate to switching from bottled water, but the principles apply to most change management activities.

A large part of becoming more sustainable is changing behavior and adopting of green practices. Even when well intentioned, making a change, whether at work or our personal lives, is challenging. This is regularly demonstrated each February when our new year’s resolutions start to wane.

Background
One of the company’s green projects is to significantly reduce bottled water, which the company provides free. The workforce consists of technical professionals. The culture is consensus driven with few top-down mandates. It was inappropriate in this culture to remove bottled water and hence promotion was the key to adoption.

Program To Date
Stainless steel canteens were distributed. The cost was justified due to the savings on bottled water reduction. A blind test taste by employees of filtered water and bottled water was held just prior to launch. Filtered tap water won. Despite these efforts, employees continued to drink bottled water.

Recommendations

The program launch was good --- a feeling of reciprocity was created by providing a high quality canteen free of charge. In the future, having the employees pledge to use canteens and order water pitchers for meetings may increase adoption. Rather than distribute anonymously, leverage employee interaction and ask the employee directly, “Will you use this canteen and order water pitchers?” In such circumstances, we of course will say “yes”, and the psychological benefit is that we become more committed. In addition to the verbal question, employees could complete a pledge by signing a form or electronically. See my earlier post on Hewlett-Packard adoption where a pledge process is an integral part of HP’s employee engagement process.

One other way to increase adoption is to ask employees why they think it is a good idea to switch to canteens. Those, who aren’t thrilled, are still able to share some reasons. With this approach, employees sell themselves. Publish the names of employees who committed to the new program to reinforce.

Changing the default to support the desired new process accelerates adoption. For example, assume employees when they order water for meetings want pitchers rather than bottled water. Currently, the employee needs to request a pitcher, and many who would want to participate may just forget. Should an employee want bottled water, the employee would need to request specifically. Then a gentle reminder would be provided on the benefits of filtered tap water.

The canteen offers a marketing opportunity since it makes visible who is participating in the program. This type of viral marketing is one of the reasons that bottled water became popular in the first place. People drinking bottled water provided advertising just by using the product.

But the canteen for the same reason can also cause negative reinforcement when few people are using. To avoid negative advertising, it is critical to recruit peer leader(s) to support the new canteen publicly. Peer leaders who are known to be green will make it believable. These individuals should not be from management – unless representing the management peer group. Depending on the mix of employees several peer leaders to represent different segments may be required. This is analogous to Nike recruiting sports professionals from many different types of sports.

Avoid emphasizing poor adoption since most people will want to behave like their peer group and some who have adopted will stop, creating a downward spiral. Highlight peer-leaders at the beginning of the campaign. Once positive adoption has occurred, then shift gears and promote that the desired practice is now “normal” to encourage laggards to join their peers. A campaign such as “How do you use your canteen…. “ will reinforce.

Some social marketers use personalized data to encourage adoption. An example for this case would be to share the percentage of meetings on this floor, department or building that have eliminated bottled water. The dynamic is again peer group encouragement, social proof and competition. Those that are doing well should be encouraged to keep up the good work so they don’t backslide.

The taste test was also a clever idea --- the employees had confirmed that filtered water was delicious. This was a good use of social proof. Unfortunately, taste may not be the primary driver for water selection. Recall that in the 80’s, despite exhaustive test tastes proving that new Coke tasted better than the original, new coke was not accepted.

I suspect that part of the adoption issue is convenience. A bottle is “grab & go” without any planning; while a canteen needs to be brought to the meeting and occasionally cleaned. Along with the pitcher, reusable glasses will likely increase usage. This suggestion does not promote canteens, but it does support filtered water and eliminating bottled water, which is the end goal.

This is the approach that Google took. Awhile back when I chatted with Lacy Caruthers from Google, she shared that Googlers had suggested eliminating bottled water but there was discussion about best methods. They settled on providing reusable glasses and filtered water. The disposable / reusable glass generated a passionate debate, with detailed testing on environmental impact to settle the issue.

If the previous ideas don’t change the adoption rates, then a focus group may be helpful to understand the underlying reason. Returning to the new Coke example, although customers said they choose by taste, in that case, there was a nostalgic bond to original Coke that was not easily severed. It may be necessary to do some digging to understand the motivations. Once the true adoption drivers are uncovered, make an adjustment in the message or approach.

Other companies, once the taste, safety, convenience and other requirements are satisfied, may find a top-down approach is effective. In that case, cancel the bottled water service and live with the grumbling through the change period. To maintain goodwill, some of the techniques mentioned previously could make employees more accepting, even when mandated. This is similar to HP’s approach. HP did some marketing prior to its elimination of Styrofoam.

Summary
Bottled water is just one example of adoption, but the marketing approaches can be used more broadly:

Adopter publicly declares to make the change. Adopter provides reasons why this is a good idea and how to get program to work

Adoption is visible

Peer leaders are recruited who are believable and represent different segments of the employee population

New method becomes default – adopters need to opt out

When adoption is starting to take hold, reinforce that new method is the new “normal”, praise the adopters and encourage the laggards to get on-board

An update on progress of the great water challenge will be provided in a few months. With a little patience and marketing, the horse will eventually get thirsty…
Resources:
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive –
Goldstein, Martin & Cialdini

Excellent summary of points

Cialdini sideshare persentation

Blog by Goldstein

Nudge – Improving Decision About Health, Wealth and Happiness Thaler and Sunstein

Marketing in the Public Sector – A roadmap for improved Performance
Kotler & Lee – Excellent academic book by world’s most influential marketer

Related Posts
HP Lives Green - More on change management and employee engagement

Juniper Sponsors Carbon Disclosure Project

2009-09-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Peter Drucker observed, “You can’t manage, what you don’t measure.” Wanting to better manage its environmental drivers, Juniper boldly started measuring its impact to the environment and reporting results to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) more than five years ago.

Brad Minnis, Director of Environmental, Health, Safety and Security at Juniper Networks explained that there were benefits for Juniper to complete the Carbon Disclosure Project’s detailed reporting since “it helped us better manage by highlighting where to focus our efforts”.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a global and standardized process for companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions to institutional investors. The reporting scope that Juniper Networks committed to is quite impressive. For example, only 27% of S&P 500 participates in Level 3 reporting. (See Note 1). From the start, over 5 years ago, Juniper reported on all three areas that Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) collects. Specifically those areas include:

Fuel combustion such as power generation and fuel used for company owned vehicles
Purchased electricity
Indirect emissions such as employee commute, business travel, supply chain, product use and disposal. Juniper identified that Scope 3 sources are the most significant area for the company.

Juniper measures all facilities with 100 or more employees. Smaller facilities are typically leased and most landlords do not maintain granular data by lessee. Brad Minnis shared that “Data at first was sketchy, but over time Juniper put processes in-place to capture more data.”

Rather than delay and wait until the data was perfect, Juniper started with what was available and improved each year.

The first learning was that “it is important to pick the appropriate metrics”. As a growing company – historically 30% year-over-year -- Juniper needed to track fine-grained data. Brad Minnis explained, “If Juniper had just looked at macro usage, we would have seen continued growth in GhG emissions to support our continued business growth”. In fact, during 2007 emissions grew by 25%, Consequently, Juniper also started to capture such metrics as “energy / emissions per employee” and “energy / emissions per square foot” by different types of facilities (office compared to lab / Data Center). When reviewing the more granular metrics as reported in Sept 2008; energy per square foot remained flat and a small increase in per employee of about 8% which was due to fuel issues in India and improved collection of data.

With data, Juniper could track progress and guide future initiatives for facilities, commuting, product design and business travel. (See Note 2). Lab and Data Center energy was a significant part of its financial and carbon footprint, which metrics highlighted. By focusing in this area, Juniper implemented a program to reduce its server footprint by 30% in its largest data center facility in Sunnyvale, which represents approximately 325 servers with an estimated payback in 18 months from reduced energy expenses. One other area that has been a major focus is commuting. As reviewed in a previous post, Juniper shifted 35% of California employees to better commuting options such as public transportation, carpooling, telework, compared to the state average of only 23%.

Product use is also part of CDP Scope 3 reporting. Focus on energy consumption of products have yielded design improvements such as consolidation, integration, acceleration & virtualization whose purpose is “to reduce the number of devices required to do the same job which will in turn reduce the number of devices drawing power and requiring cooling which reduces energy cost and carbon footprint.” Power supply utilization was significantly enhanced and is now 60% better than traditional power supplies. Another change was to rethink upgrades and instead of retiring old hardware, Juniper allows upgrades in place for some of its products to ensure hardware can be reused and waste reduced.

One area where data remained “sketchy” was the Supply Chain. About two years ago, Juniper, Wal-Mart, Dell and nine others founded the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Supply Chain initiative. The goal was to coordinate the collection of data from companies serving the supply chain so those companies would only need to respond once rather than receive duplicate requests for data.

"Our analysis suggests that for consumer goods makers, high-tech players, and other manufacturers, between 40 and 60 percent of a company’s carbon footprint resides upstream in its supply chain.”
The McKinsey Quarterly, July 2008

Juniper has more than 1,000 contract suppliers, but the top 50 suppliers represent 80 – 90% of the equipment manufactured for Juniper. Juniper invited a subset of its suppliers to participate. Only 17% of the suppliers participated the first year and by the second year the participation had increased to 57%. (See Note 3). Although more are now reporting the level of detail still needs to be refined.

Juniper’s expectation for itself and its suppliers is that sustainability is a journey where progress is guided by consistent measurement and on-going transparency. As the next step in its journey, Juniper announced earlier this week that it will be a sponsor of the Seventh Annual Carbon Disclosure Project. In addition, Juniper will be highlighted in the CDP’s Annual Global 500 and S&P 500 Reports. As Peter Drucker said, “Knowledge [information] has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or its value vanishes.”

Notes:

Reporting Statistics: Scope 1 for FTSE 350 companies is 73% – S&P 500 68% – and Global 500 77%. Scope 2 – FTSE 350 68% - S&P 500 63% - and Global 500 72%. Scope 3 – FTSE 350 50% - S&P 500 27% - and Global 500 47%.
Detailed Data: Juniper continues to refine data gathering and is working to implement a sophisticated program for tracking energy use that will greatly improve its ability to develop and implement energy savings policies, programs and plans to reduce its footprint and establish realistic target reductions. The new program is expected to be in place the first of the year.
Supplier Participation: The number of suppliers invited to participate for 2009 consisted of 35 companies. Of the 35 suppliers invited to participate this year 26 activated their account, 25 logged in, and 20 completed the questionnaire. This works out to a positive response rate of 57%.

References:

Related Post:

Juniper's Commuters Go Public

With Employee Engagement, HP Lives Green

2009-09-17T02:57:00.001-07:00

Applying Marketing 101 to Employee Engagement
Recently I spoke with HP's Debbie Ledbetter, who in her role as marketing manager increased employee engagement for HP's corporate initiative, "Live Green". Live Green is an active out-reach and education program on energy conservation and environmental impact reduction.

The Corporate Social and Environment Responsibility group was delivering environmental tips on an ad-hoc schedule, which were often lost in the plethora of other corporate communications. They also wondered just how effective the program was. Debbie Ledbetter, took on this challenge a few years ago when she was HP Marketing Manager for Environmental Responsibility. To establish easy recognition by employees, environmental communications are now branded with the Live Green logo. A consistent monthly schedule is followed with a few high level themes covered throughout the year. For each theme, a tag line is developed. For example, “Go reusable, Stop Disposable” was used on all related communications and activities to encourage reuse. All Live Green tips are carefully researched to provide best practices. Outside speakers are often engaged who are recognized experts on a particular topic.

Whenever possible, an appropriate tie-in to the current theme is created. When eliminating Styrofoam containers at the Palo Alto offices, hundreds of ceramic cups were given away. Debbie Ledbetter credits “the up-front education and gift for eliminating any grumbling from employees.”

A more significant tie-in was offered in late 2007 shortly after HP deployed 5,000 solar panels or 1 mega-watt system at its San Diego campus. The company extended to its employees and retirees easy access to HP’s solar supplier. To encourage participation, HP also offered an employee discount that was funded equally by HP and the solar provider. Debbie Ledbetter shared that “One lesson learned, since a commercial provider was used, they were slightly more expensive than some residential suppliers.” There was a rational reason: commercial buildings require greater efficiency in panels for roof space covered given that an office has much higher energy consumption compared to a home. HP resolved this cost issue by providing a second supplier who typically services the residential market.

Like any good marketing program, the final step in the Live Green process is to “close the deal.” In this case, closing the deal translates to an employee changing behavior. As Debbie Ledbetter explained, “To encourage employees, HP includes a “pledge” button at the end of the Live Green electronic communication. For other communications, we reference the pledge site.” The participation is approximately 56,000 pledges annually from an employee base of approximately 320,000. Now that’s a good sales job!

With marketing savvy, the efforts already being made on employee engagement programs can achieve even greater pay-back.

HP found that:

Branding its environmental program made messaging easy to spot and more frequently consumed
Aligning information and activities by broader themes reinforced the message
Sharing a gift creates an attitude of reciprocity that makes change easier
Providing a financial incentive can make a sale
Encouraging employees to pledge increases their commitment

Notes:
Debbie Ledbetter is currently working in a supply chain role for HP, but continues in a volunteer capacity as Global Lead for HP’s employee led environmental efforts called the “Sustainability Network”.

eBay Helps Partners Go To Green Packaging

2009-09-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

Transportation and the packaging of products is a large part of eBay’s supply chain, both environmentally and financially. With nearly 100 shipments per second, the impact of eBay and its partners is substantial.

Transportation
Libby Reder, Head of Environmental Initiatives at eBay shared "the first step was providing easy-to-understand education for partners to make them aware of more sustainable options both environmentally and financially”. Those greener options include:

Ground transportation, which is on average seven times less damaging to the environment then shipping by air. Air is also much more expensive than ground in most situations.

Right-sized packaging, which allows more items to be shipped on the same vehicle.

eBay had already selected transportation companies that are committed to improving efficiency and the mileage per ton delivered. eBay partners with UPS who operates the largest private alternative fuel vehicle fleet in the US. USPS is its other partner, who pledges to reduced its environmental impact by 30% by 2015.

Packaging
The branded eBay box was completely redesigned to be fully sustainable using “Cradle to Cradle” (C2C) design philosophy. In the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) model, all materials used in commercial processes are non-toxic and can be either:

Continuously reused in the primary commercial process without losing quality. Recycling one ton of cardboard which is about 4,000 boxes saves three tons of wood pulp or 17 trees. It saves the equivalent of 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity or 23% of the energy needed to process one ton of corrugated cardboard from fresh wood pulp.

Composted to become nutrients for the soil. Paper fibers do eventually break down, but may be recycled up to 8 times. When finally disposed of, C2C cardboard will decompose quickly and be free of containments.

The eBay boxes are made from recycled materials and all materials are harmless to the environment. This effort, as Libby Reder explained “took eBay several months to design”. eBay worked with its partner at USPS who earned C2C certification for the new eBay co-branded packaging. Although, eBay did not design new cushioning or tape, they provide practical and easy tips and sources to make these packaging related items more sustainable.

Given that cardboard is already one of the most popular items to recycle, some may not fully appreciate the benefits of eBay’s program. Although cardboard can be recycled, even if a business or individual diligently puts in on the curb for recycling, it may not be recycled if there is not a market for it. By purchasing recycled cardboard, eBay supports a part of the supply chain indirectly connected to it and helps to create a sustainable market for recycled cardboard. In a down economy, less cardboard is required by manufacturers and traditional retailers, making cardboard less attractive to recycle. But eBay does better in a down economy and helps to even out demand.

When cardboard is recycled, it first needs to go through a cleaning process to remove ink and other binding agents. Most traditional cardboard boxes use toxic inks and other agents and those toxic materials end up in the water. If the cardboard is not recycled --- about 35 percent of corrugated cardboard is not according to EPA studies --- it ends up either incinerated where those toxic chemicals are released into the air or in a landfill where those toxic chemicals leach into soil and ground water.

A Cradle to Cradle (C2C) design sets off a chain reaction, where each material and process contributing to a product or activity must be analyzed. This is dramatically different from the traditional supply chain. The traditional supply chain is often treated as “loosely coupled” and independent links where each party focuses on its business and parties only come together to exchange goods and services. This exchange is usually at the direct connection points and activities beyond direct connections are rarely considered.

Loosely coupled supply chains are efficient when there are mature processes and widespread best practices. In that case, market forces can be relied upon to weed out poor performers. But sustainability is an evolving area, where the requirements of buyers and methods used by providers are immature. It often takes a leader --- who does not always directly own, but can influence --- to step in and take action.

eBay was thrilled by partner response. “Partners were enthusiastic and loved that eBay was working on these sustainability initiatives”, asserted Libby Reder. The new C2C boxes are free through USPS and are the only ones carried by eBay. Partners may of course choose from other packaging suppliers, but adoption has been good. Since the program started in mid-2007, more than 20 million eBay partners have ordered the new C2C packaging.

References
eBay seller’s resources

UPS green shipping resources

USPS mailer’s resources

Cradle to cradle Design Philosophy

C2C Certification

SUN's Efficient Data Centers

2009-09-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

SUN Microsystems completed a major consolidation of its global data centers --- nearly 40% reduction in space. A green benefit was an impressive reduction in energy consumption.

SUN’s strategy was to define and deploy a standardized and modular data center computing unit. A single design effectively scales-up to handle a broad range of profiles from small lab to mega data center.

Dean Nelson, Sr. Director of Global Lab & Datacenter Design Services provided me a tour and tutorial recently. Dean and his team have generously shared their best practices, which are available for free download from the SUN site. A few may also be found in the resource section at the end of this post.

The technical concepts are highlighted by a gray box and may be skipped without diminishing one's understanding of the business approach and benefits.

Goals
SUN started on its data center journey about five years ago. The primary goals were to

Reduce operating expenses: Use less real estate and less energy
Enhance flexibility: Eliminate the data center “speed bump” that keeps the business from rapidly deploying equipment to satisfy changing business requirements
Future-proof: Ensure DC infrastructure can grow to handle two times the load.

New technical strategy needed
SUN realized that the traditional data center approach had served its useful life since

Raised floor cooling was unable to deal with higher heat loads created by more powerful computers.

Adding equipment or reconfiguring was difficult, slow and expensive.

Upgrading data center infrastructure such as power, cooling, or other environmental equipment was usually prohibitive, which was a major factor in the proliferation of data center spaces in the first place.

The traditional data center design could no longer be enhanced, a new approach was required.

Modular DC
As with all elegant designs, the new design is deceptively simple. SUN created a modular data center design by deploying standardized “pods”. As Dean Nelson, explained “A pod is an energy-efficient building block that can be duplicated easily to create a data center of any size in any location.”

Modular Data Center Specs

Group 20 – 24 servers together to create a computing unit or POD.

Move cooling to the POD. SUN continues with air cooling, the raised floor is eliminated. A/C is delivered from above the POD or integrated within the pod next to the servers. Raised floor can still be accommodated, but is not necessary for this design.

Provide flexible and dynamic shared infrastructure for power. Different power requirements are built into the infrastructure upfront. To change the power to the pod / server rack, it is simply plugged into a different circuit without any downtime.

Move patch panels and cabling to the pod.

Standardize the design

Improve server utilization

Build infrastructure to 50% capacity to allow for 3 tech refreshes

Virtualize applications

Implementation
SUN made a sizable investment of $250 million over several years, or approximately $300 per square foot average across new and existing space which included server upgrades, environmental and power infrastructure equipment and improved server utilization.

Year 1: Understanding the portfolio (over 1M square feet with a variety of computing needs), take baseline measurements and invent a new way to build data centers
Year 2: Complete smaller projects around the world. Perfect the design and create the deployment strategy.
Year 3 -5: Execute on the major consolidations. California and Colorado being the largest efforts.

BENEFITS

Less real estate
As part of the consolidation, servers were upgraded to gain more compute power in a much smaller footprint. From 2,000 the average compute power has tripled.

In addition to DC plant improvements, SUN looked at the server utilization since it drives the number of servers required which in turn drives the size of the DC. Better utilization results in less real estate and less energy. A recent McKinsey study confirms that server utilization is still abysmal at most data centers and improvements can yield 20 – 30% return.

Results

In the U.K. data center, real estate was cut by more than half
60% reduction of real estate was achieved in the California consolidation
Overall, real estate was reduced by 40%. From 1.4 million square feet to 860,000 square feet.

Energy Efficiency
Next generation servers use less energy for comparable amount of work, but they provide a great deal more compute power. As compute power increases, more heat is generated in a smaller area. Consequently the heat gain is more sizable and the cooling more challenging. This is analogous to a space heater that is more effective in a small room than a larger one.

Without dramatic changes in cooling strategy, the energy consumed for cooling the identical compute power would have been greater. Rather than cool the entire data center as one unit, the cooling break-through was to decentralize cooling and cool each POD individually. Dean Nelson explained that “the POD improves cold air delivery and allows the DC to operate at higher temperatures”.

Equipment - technical approach
Infrastructure was upgraded to the most energy efficient available. Enhancements included a flywheel as an uninterruptedly power supply (UPS) systems, energy-efficient transformers, and a variable primary chiller plant.

Results:

In California, SUN lowered data center utility costs by a remarkable 50% and reduced Sun's global carbon emissions by over 1% in just three months. As a result of this effort, Sun received $1.2 million in energy rebates plus a $250,000 "Innovation Award" from its local utility, Silicon Valley Power.
In the U.K. data center, Sun cut energy consumption by 70%.

DC Efficiency Metric
More of the energy in the DC is now used to power the equipment rather than expended on cooling and other activities. A typical DC according to Department of Energy consumes 53% of its energy in cooling, other environmental conditioning and lost power. SUN is now only consuming 22% for these other activities which is 58% better than average. (Some statistics for the DC operators: Average PUE 2.13; SUN’s PUE 1.28)

Flexibility
One other benefit of the modular data center design is faster and less expensive installation to handle on-going changes to servers and racks. Dean Nelson reviewed how “It is now much less expensive to “snap-in” extra compute power since the power infrastructure was pre-configured to handle a range of power requirements.”

Results:

It took just 6 hours to install 3,000 servers in San Jose facility
Since SUN maintains the variety of equipment for testing of current customer install base and new products, there is constant reconfiguration of equipment. This activity once required weeks and with modular DC, it is just hours to reconfigure.

Future-proof
Traditional data centers usually build out the power and cooling for the maximum forecasted load. Dean Nelson shared that SUN took a different approach where “the infrastructure is also modular allowing it to grow to satisfy new requirements. This saves both capital and operating expenses.”

Results:

The implementation includes the ability to easily double average compute power within the existing footprint.
Planned ahead for potential new power and cooling approaches
SUN has already added 30 kw server racks without engineering work; they were simply snapped into place.

Technical Details on building for the future

Double the average density, power, cooling, and cabling requirements.

Server electrical requirements range for 1 to 30 KW

Change power distribution including three-phase power supply.

Incorporate new cooling designs such as systems integrated directly into racks. The chilled water or refrigerant lines are already running to SUN’s pods

Conclusion
Now that SUN has worked out the kinks, these strategies and techniques can be used for any size data center with any computing profile. Not only new data centers, but an existing data center can benefit.

SUN’s Bangalore data center is such a scenario. As Dean Nelson reviewed, “Bangalore presented the challenge of working within the existing office building’s power, space and cooling . Also no servers were replaced during the project. Despite these constraints, we were still able to reduce our space consumption by slightly more than half while reducing our power use by 17 percent.”

Even more benefits could be achieved if combined with a tech refresh. A business is then able to extend the life of its current data center and operate it at a lower cost.

Resources:

Aligning Business Organizations – Sun’s approach to building energy efficient data centers
Video on California consolidation - Project approach plus great footage of DC
The Role of Modularity in Datacenter Design – White paper
Solution briefs

Juniper's Commuters Go Public

2009-09-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

In the San Francisco Bay Area, transportation contributes 50% of the GhG (greenhouse gas) and nearly 30% for U.S. Consequently commuting is an important component for any company's sustainability program. Juniper was recognized in 2008 for its improvement of commuting by Acterra. The strategies deployed by Juniper are simple and available to any business.

Each day, more than 250,000 cars travel the Highway 101 and 237 interchange at Moffett Park, Sunnyvale California where Juniper Networks is headquartered. With its multi-pronged approach on commuting, Juniper has dramatically reduced those Juniper commuters driving solo from 77 percent to 65 percent; more than 15 percent improvement.

In late August, I spoke with Brad Minnis, Director of Environmental, Health, Safety and Security at Juniper Networks. Brad Minnis reviewed that “The first step in Juniper’s strategy was to complete an annual accounting by each employee on commute patterns.” Juniper was already doing this as part of its participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). For those that find that an overwhelming prospect, a random survey (Note 1) is easier to implement yet provides excellent results. Juniper also completes an annual zip code analysis to understand where employees are located. This sort of data should be readily available from a company’s HR system. From metrics and employee distribution, Juniper can then determine how to enhance its programs to get more cars off the road.

Each of the standard commuting methods (Notes 2,3, and 4) is reviewed. Although the specific strategies and results are for Juniper’s Sunnyvale location, it deploys similar programs for all of its facilities. The Santa Clara county statistics that are referenced are comparable to California and national averages for commuting.

Public Transportation
As part of its real estate criteria, Brad Minnis explained that “Juniper evaluates sites based on the proximity to public transport (walking distance) and its employee base”. Its current location is on a Santa Clara light rail and bus stop.

The old real estate adage on "Location, Location, Location" holds true for encouraging employees to use public transport; specifically for employer's location to be within walking distance of public transportation. A bit of green in the form of financial incentives is major factor as well.

Juniper then provides financial incentives to employees to use public transport by providing a pass for Santa Clara county or up to $45 each month for other public transportation options. A pre-tax commute spending account is also available to employees. All of these tactics are easy to implement by other businesses.

Public Transportation Metrics:
Average 4% of commuters in Santa Clara Valley
Juniper 14% or 350% better

Car Pool
Juniper uses outside services to help employees connect with others. One program was established with 511.org where employees can find others in the general area while the second program with another organization is focused on just Juniper employees. Juniper also provides special preferred parking for car poolers. This is a good start, but some companies have gone further with company sponsored van pools, for example.

Car Pool Metrics:
Average 12% of commuters in Santa Clara Valley
Juniper 13% or average

Tele-work
Not surprising for a network company, Juniper encourages employees to telecommute. Over 90% of Juniper’s employees telecommute at some time during the year. As Brad stated. “we drink our own champagne”. With the pervasiveness of networking equipment, most companies have the technology to do the same.

Tele-work metrcis:
Average 3% of commuters in Santa Clara Valley
Juniper 6% or 200% better

Walk / bike
The Moffett Park location was advantageous for public transportation, but was detrimental for walking and biking. Brad Minnis shared that “Moffett Park is at the intersection of two busy freeways and when we first opened the facility had no safe access for walkers or bikers.” Juniper made bicycle (and pedestrian) access possible working with other employers in area to encourage construction of bike lanes and bridges. Specifically, the Moffett Park Business and Transportation Authority advocated with local and state agencies. Prior to construction, biking was negligible, and since then it has jumped to two percent. This initiative also made biking available to the broader community

A good first step is to recruit biking enthusiast employees to test various routes to ensure that biking is viable. If work is required on the bike access, it is likely that other local businesses have the same needs.

Walk / bike Metrics
Average 3% of commuters in Santa Clara Valley
Juniper 2% or average.

Summary

Method	Average	Juniper	Strategy
Solo	77%	65%	Complete annual detailed survey and review of strategies.
Public	4%	14%	Locate next to transit stop; Provide financial incentives.
Car Pool	12%	13%	Provide service to match employees for convenient car pooling
Tele-work	3%	6%	Define policy that encourages tele-work
Walk/bike	3%	2%	Work with other businesses to advocate for building of bike / pedestrian lanes

Notes

Random Sample – Remember to keep the sample truly random, otherwise results will be skewed. A small sample size of less than 1% is sufficient when a large population.
Commute Method – Established by US Census
Average – Based on Santa Clara County 2000 Census
Juniper – Based on 2008 Survey completed for Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)

References
2008 Commute Award – Juniper news release
Moffett Park Business and Transportation Authority – Business organization in Sunnyvale California
511.org - Services to help plan a better commute in San Francisco Bay Area

Cisco is an EPA Climate Leader: Part 3 Transportation

2009-08-25T20:31:00.001-07:00

Transportation is reviewed in part three of Cisco’s experiences with the EPA Climate Leaders program. Some of the themes reviewed with John Hailey, Cisco’s Senior Manager of Workplace Resources and Sustainable Development include:

Sustainability metrics are still evolving.

Most changes that are focused on ROI benefit the environment. Sometimes when comparing two options, a dirtier approach may be less costly when compared to its greener counterpart. Making other changes in the value chain can still reduce costs of the overall process and the savings can then fund greener alternatives.

If an in-house activity can be made into a product or service, adoption is accelerated.

Improving metrics for Airline Travel
Cisco partnered with TRX, an airline industry service agent, and went a step further when measuring GhG (Greenhouse Gas) for its airline travel. John Hailey explained, “The typical allowable measurement approach was to simply count total airline miles traveled. TRX offers a more accurate assessment by counting trip legs and identifying specific aircraft to determine exactly how much GhG is produced.” Since older aircraft emits dirtier emissions, and direction-dependant headwinds require more fuel, multiple legs measurement offers a truer reflection of total GhG emissions.

Driving down costs may lead to sub-optimal green practices
With its aggressive expense management, Cisco has traditionally focused on the cost side of travel equation when negotiating standard fares, and the assumption was that the less spent on travel the more its GhG numbers would improve. What Cisco found was that just using price as a surrogate for GhG reduction was not accurate. The lower prices translated into flights on aging aircraft, which are inherently less energy efficient. Finding that its airline travel emissions were above the industry average,John Hailey shared that “Cisco now negotiates improved GhG performance in addition to favorable price discounts.”

Use savings from one activity to fund more expensive greener options
Cisco set an aggressive airline mileage reduction goal since the introduction of its TelePresence product, which allows high definition conference room meetings around the globe. Cisco has reduced its GhG emissions by over 11%, reports John Hailey, and has set aggressive new goals to reduce airline travel by up to 40%, thus taking full advantage of TelePresence product. Cisco held its most recent annual sales meeting using TelePresence and reduced GhG emissions since it avoided extensive travel to bring employees across the globe to a single location.

Fleet management goals leverage EU standards
Cisco’s fleet is mostly in Europe where the standard is to provide a company car for managers and above. EU also has more stringent guidelines for businesses with regard to controls on GhG emissions. Cisco is thus providing higher mpg or alternative fuel vehicles options for participants.

Cisco is not yet considering addressing commuting or business travel by employee’s personal car, although that is an option available to EPA Climate Leaders participants when setting new goals.

Conclusions
Cisco’s learning in transportation are include:

Dig deeper to understand the full implications of its airline travel to include aircraft and individual trip legs.
Cost is not always a good substitute for GhG emissions since cheaper does not always equate to greener.
Since Cisco saved a great deal of money by reducing airline travel, those savings could fund the slightly higher cost of greener flights when required while still reducing overall business travel costs.
By leveraging its own TelePresence product, Cisco found that TelePresence was embraced enthusiastically as a method to achieve its green goals.

Notes:
Cisco’s 25% reduction from 2007 baseline in five years equates to nearly 165,000 metric tons. Based on the EPA Carbon calculator; 165,000 metric tons of GhG is the equivalent annual emissions from 110,806 cars.

From the EPA website, “Climate Leaders is an EPA industry-government partnership that works with companies to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. Partner companies commit to reducing their impact on the global environment by completing a corporate-wide inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions based on a quality management system, setting aggressive reduction goals, and annually reporting their progress to EPA.” Learn more about EPA Climate Leaders Program >>.

Cisco EPA Climate Leader: Computing

2009-08-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

The strategies that Cisco deployed in the computing facilities area included:

Providing services tailored to the specific needs rather than over-engineer to handle a few exceptions

Adding green criteria when purchasing that also considers the supplier’s value chain to understand the total environmental impact

Personalize to reduce resource utilization
Of the different types of facilities that Cisco manages, labs are the single largest users of electricity. Previously, Cisco kept its labs extra cool to prevent “hot spots” that could cause equipment to overheat and malfunction. John Hailey of Cisco’s Sustainable Development explained, “In essence, the total lab square footage was overcooled to address specific hot spot problems that occurred in only a few locations in the lab. With today’s technology, Cisco can monitor the cooling conditions of every location in the lab and each piece of equipment. If a hot spot is detected, it can be resolved by moving the gear to a different lab location or changing the air flow in the lab so colder air is directed where it is needed most”. This capability now allows Cisco to raise lab temperature resulting in a great deal of energy savings while making the lab more comfortable for its human occupants.

Understand the supplier’s value chain
Green considerations are also playing a role in facilities location. When selecting a new facility, such as a data center or lab, historically a dozen attributes were evaluated, including the cost and reliability of energy sources. Now that new green criteria has been added to the mix, location decisions also consider how much GhG (greenhouse gas) will be produced at the new location. Much of this is determined by what fuel sources are used by the utilities to generate electricity. For example, a coal-dependant utility is much more likely to generate “dirty” electricity than a utility that is able to tap into hydro, nuclear, geothermal or other renewable resources. John Hailey shared, “Whereas India may have been seen as the ideal location for new labs in the past, today companies recognize there is a price to pay to locate energy-intensive facilities there – high kWh costs, poor electrical reliability, and poor GhG emissions.” California turns out to be a better location than India given its relatively clean sources of electricity (geothermal, hydro, nuclear and a growing alternative energy sector), lower electricity costs, and excellent reliability. Canada is also a promising location for the same reasons but with an additional benefit; Canada provides many more free cooling days where outside air can be used to cool equipment.

Conclusions
Cisco is on-track to achieving its Climate Leader commitment and facilities is an major contributor to its reductions. The specific activities and general strategies that were employed by Cisco were:
• Provide AC to equipment as required rather than chilling the entire area.
• Review utilities energy sources to determine their GhG contribution.

Part 3 and the final in the Cisco Climate Leader series reviews its progress in transportation. Read Part 3 >>

Notes:
Cisco’s 25% reduction from 2007 baseline in five years equates to nearly 165,000 metric tons. Based on the EPA Carbon calculator; 165,000 metric tons of GhG is the equivalent annual emissions from 110,806 cars.

From the EPA website, “Climate Leaders is an EPA industry-government partnership that works with companies to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. Partner companies commit to reducing their impact on the global environment by completing a corporate-wide inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions based on a quality management system, setting aggressive reduction goals, and annually reporting their progress to EPA.” Learn more about EPA Climate Leaders Program >>.

Cisco EPA Climate Leader: Greener Facilities

2009-08-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

For many engineering and service companies, Cisco included, facilities /computing is the largest part of their operational footprint. For example, Cisco’s energy costs are $130 M annually and electric energy use is the largest component of its overall GhG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions.

There are some excellent strategic lessons to be learned from Cisco’s experiences in the facilities area:

Measure and set goals
Keep equipment well maintained to achieve optimum resource utilization
As green technology continues to improve and evolve, plan on more frequent upgrades

Baseline audit and set goals
The first activity that Cisco undertook was to understand the details of its footprint for owned and leased facilities. Cisco developed a tool to capture data to first provide a baseline and then on-going to measure progress. John Hailey explained the goals of data collection process were to

Ensure consistency across geographies
Keep it simple – no expert teams; no expert tools
Involve local Cisco representatives
Automate wherever possible

As part of the Climate Leaders program, the EPA encourages companies to share best practices and Cisco has made its tool available to other companies. Cisco has also acquired a product from SAS to report on utilization.

Maintain equipment
From a purely operational perspective, Cisco is adopting a retro-commissioning program which involves a more frequent review of facility operations and adjustment to systems. John Hailey provided an analogy; “This is something akin to performing a tune-up continuously on your car. It means fewer breakdowns and much better equipment performance over time.“ This also ensures that as a building’s usage changes over time ---- such as changes in density, seasonal changes in weather --- that equipment is tuned to run optimally.

Leverage continuing improvements in green technologies
As buildings age and new technologies emerge, there is an opportunity to exploit new energy saving alternatives. In its initial construction for its San Jose Campus, Cisco specified window tinting for exterior glazing to reduce heat gain. Today, window film technology is quite sophisticated and much more can be saved using new window film technology. And when that technology is combined with other new technologies, such as programmable LED lighting, lighting energy can be reduced by capturing daylight penetration without the attendant heat gain.

Even if there are improvements in an area, some “strategic procrastination” may be in order when a new evolutionary technology is close to reaching the mainstream market. John Hailey thinks general lighting may be one such area. Cisco currently has the relatively efficient T8 fluorescent lamps, but is now evaluating whether to upgrade to the more efficient T5 lamps, or wait until LED lighting technologies reach the market. The efficiencies of LED lighting and lighting controls, in combination with other technologies, such as window films, offer savings more than twice as attractive. Another one of these technologies is solar, where panel efficiencies per square inch continue to improve with time, making deployment on limited available roof space more attractive.

Conclusions
The specific activities and general strategies that were employed by Cisco were:

When completing baseline measurement, a tool to capture data easily will make analysis for goal-setting and on-going tracking easier.
Maintain and adjust equipment to achieve best operating performance.
Plan on continued upgrades as emerging technologies provide significant additional benefits. Monitor trends and time purchases to take advantage of evolutionary leaps in technology.

A subset of facilities, computing (labs and data centers) is over half of Cisco's electrical energy use. Consequently, computing center improvements were important part of the EPA Climate Leader program. Read more in Part 2 >>

Notes:
Cisco’s 25% reduction from 2007 baseline in five years equates to nearly 165,000 metric tons. Based on the EPA Carbon calculator; 165,000 metric tons of GhG is the equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 110,000 cars.

From the EPA website, “Climate Leaders is an EPA industry-government partnership that works with companies to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. Partner companies commit to reducing their impact on the global environment by completing a corporate-wide inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions based on a quality management system, setting aggressive reduction goals, and annually reporting their progress to EPA.” Learn more about EPA Climate Leaders Program >>.

eBay's Sustainable Data Center

2009-08-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

Recently I sat down with eBay’s dynamic Olivier Sanche who is responsible for all of eBay’s data centers. Read his Top 5 activities to cut operating expenses while improving the environment by reducing energy consumption.

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Green is part of eBay’s DNA
Sustainability at eBay is a strong part of its culture. Its basic business model is all about sustainability, since it encourages reuse by establishing markets for used products.

Continuing the sustainability theme in its operations, both grass roots employee initiatives and broader corporate programs have been launched. Some of these programs include:

Employee-led initiatives: Planting organic gardens to supply the campus cafes, banning Styrofoam, and creating rideshare programs.

Management-led initiatives: Constructing state-of-the-art green office buildings. For example, its LEED certified building in San Jose is currently the city’s largest solar installation.

Given eBay’s green culture, they were eager to tackle the largest portion of their carbon footprint, the data centers (DC). eBay has set a goal that by 2012, it will reduce emissions by 15% from its 2008 baseline regardless of how much the company grows between 2008 and 2012. They recognized that improving data center emissions will be critical to achieving this goal.

Although eBay is motivated to improve its carbon footprint, it is equally motivated by financial considerations. The improvements implemented by Olivier Sanche and his team have slashed energy costs which are attractive to any company. The activities recommended in the “Top 5” are also appropriate for any size data center in any industry.

eBay’s Olivier Sanche “Top 5” to enhance Data Center sustainability

1) Research best practices.
There are many excellent resources available including Climate Savers (eBay is a sponsor), Green Grid, and Data Center Pulse. Such resources can help a business determine which activities provide the biggest improvements, learn how to implement current best practices, understand trends to plan accordingly, and connect with other data center professionals interested in sustainability.

2) Baseline current energy costs, apply appropriate metrics and break-down silos.
If not already part of the data center budget, DC energy costs should be moved to the DC budget to provide the necessary visibility to manage.

To improve energy utilization, DC’s usually focus on making the plant and equipment more efficient, but it is just as important to understand how the equipment is used. To illustrate his point, Olivier shared an analogy. When comparing a Hummer and a Prius when looking at mpg, the Prius wins. But if the Hummer is carrying eight people and the Prius is only carrying one person, the person-miles per gallon makes the Hummer more efficient. To understand an analogous person-miles per gallon at the data center, an important metric is “computing per watt”.

It is necessary to partner with application delivery, engineering, architecture and operations to enhance the computing per watt metric. According to Olivier, “a major problem is that a DC is typically siloed from other parts of the organization.” Olivier made the effort to seek out his partners to share the data on energy use and then work together across the organization to find creative solutions.

Without data and metrics, each department will likely focus on their activities and sub-optimize to the determent of the overall goal of sustainability. Armed with the end-to-end view, increasing utilization became a critical goal. The next step was to fine-tune applications, middleware, network, o/s to work better together to perform a function or service or eliminate unneeded code to further drive down energy use. Combining energy reduction for both the equipment and services using the equipment is comparable to using two Prius’s to transport eight passengers and abandoning the Hummer altogether.

3) Live inside Moore’s law.
Olivier Sanche recommends that “Data Centers upgrade server technology continuously to gain more potential computing power per watt.” Historically, there had been little emphasis by the industry on power consumption.

As Olivier pointed out, “Some older style servers use nearly as much energy doing nothing as operating at full capacity.” But many computer suppliers now include energy considerations in the product design leading to impressive improvements in compute power per watt. Some of the areas of improvement include variable power supplies to provide energy efficiency across a range of server utilization, better on-board cooling, and more efficient chips. A good place to start when upgrading is to specify Energy Star equipment.

Given the current pace of improvement in power consumption, eBay has accelerated its technology recycle and now plans to upgrade its gear every two to three years. The economic benefits are very attractive when looking at TCO (Total Cost of Ownership); especially if cheap but energy hungry servers were deployed. As Olivier pointed out, “a cheap server, if not energy efficient, is likely to be expensive over its life.” As reported by eBay in the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Project, "We performed a technology refresh in our data centers in 2007 that resulted in a 25% improvement in energy efficiency."

4) Implement cooling best practices.
Cooling is, for most DC’s, an area where huge benefits may be achieved since the industry average is to expend as much energy cooling a server as operating it.

In traditional data centers, hot and cold air are usually mixed, which is analogous to opening the windows on a hot day. Consequently the A/C needs to work harder. To get the most cooling from the cold air being pumped into the data center, it is critical to segregate the cold air for cooling the equipment from the hot air being created by the equipment.

Once the basic data center air flow has been corrected, the DC may be operated at a warmer temperature rather than the usual “meat locker”. Numerous studies have confirmed that operating at higher temps is safe for equipment.

Finally with these other enhancements in-place, it becomes possible to use outside air for cooling on all but the hottest days when air conditioning can be used to supplement the cooling.

5) Accelerate innovation by sharing with the community.
Share experiences and learning – both success and those activities that were less useful --- with the community and be available to your colleagues to answer questions. Like many companies, eBay had not taken the time and was a bit reluctant to share much about its data centers.

As reported by his colleagues, Olivier has encouraged eBay to “open the kimono” when it comes to sustainability. Olivier was quick to point out that other companies such as Google and Microsoft were also at the forefront of sharing goals, targets and best practices.

This is a good start, but we will need more action from the entire data center community. A recent McKinsey report found that data center emissions are expected to quadruple by 2020 - an issue that will take the industry working together to solve - not just individual companies.