Conscious Choice: Nice Save

April 2008 | Art & Soul

Nice Save

From green TVs for enviro-couch potatoes to power plants that function like the Internet, energy efficiency is proving the most powerful eco-innovation yet

If global warming is the question, then the answer — according to Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp — is entrepreneurship and innovation. In contrast to the hand wringing, fear mongering style of some environmentalists, Krupp is a firm believer in tackling the climate crisis with a healthy dose of capitalist principles and a pinch of good ol’ American ingenuity — an approach which he says will generate new industries, create new jobs and, in the process, probably make a few lucky investors very rich.

Krupp’s new book Earth: The Sequel (co-authored with journalist Miriam Horn) details the doings of some of the world’s most forward thinking energy innovators, such as three young scientists who genetically engineer yeast so it can ferment sugar into green fuel; a bioengineer who redesigns viruses so that they assemble themselves into batteries; and a frontiersman who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs. It’s this kind of innovation, Krupp argues, plus private capital — not government funding — that will spare the future of humanity.

But eco-yeast and energizer viruses aside, sometimes the simplest ideas have the biggest impact. In the following excerpt, Krupp identifies the profound energy resource right at our fingertips: efficiency.

Sometimes called the “first fuel” (before coal, gas and nuclear), efficiency is without question the cleanest, cheapest energy resource we have. While it costs six to eight cents to generate a kilowatt-hour from new coal or nuclear plants, plus another two to four cents to move that power through the grid, saving that same kilowatt-hour costs just three to four cents.

The list of energy-saving opportunities grows longer by the day. Cities replacing incandescent bulbs with light-emitting diodes have cut energy use in traffic signals by 92 percent. By installing skylights, sensors to dim in-store lights, doors on its refrigerated display cases and dozens of other seemingly small improvements, Wal-Mart has cut energy use by 20 percent in existing stores, 50 percent at a few demonstration stores. In May 2006 the company installed auxiliary power units — small, efficient diesel engines — on all Wal-Mart trucks that make overnight trips. Rather than letting the big truck engines idle during breaks, drivers can turn them off and use the little auxiliary unit to warm or cool the cabin and run communication systems. In a single year, that one change saved Wal-Mart $25 million and eliminated 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

But the opportunities for innovation are far from spent, and dozens of start-ups are devising new ways to save energy.

Some are focused on individual products. A Silicon Valley company called Spudnik, for instance, is making energy-efficient flat-screen TVs for environmentally conscious couch potatoes. Minnesota-based SAGE Electrochromics makes windows that change color in intense sunlight, without losing transparency, to keep heat out and reduce air-conditioning loads.

Others are devising ways to make efficiency more automatic, without the individual, daily effort that often gets lost in the face of life’s many distractions. A Seattle company called Verdiem, launched in 2001, makes software that allows schools, businesses and government agencies to power down idle computers throughout their networks. By the summer of 2008 it projects that its customers will have cumulatively saved over 482 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and more than $48 million, achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equal to conserving 31 million gallons of gasoline.

Still others are plugging the big energy leaks built into existing systems. Nextek Power Systems on Long Island makes a device that connects renewable energy sources that generate DC power directly with electronic devices and data centers that use DC, avoiding the energy losses in converting into and out of AC. Google and Intel are leading a coalition working to replace current computer power supplies, which lose about 50 percent of incoming energy, with a new 90 percent efficient global standard. That switch, they calculate, would save $5.5 billion worth of energy a year.

The biggest arena of innovation may be “energy intelligence,” which in 2006 attracted more than $450 million in venture capital. The idea is to build the energy equivalent of the Internet: a sophisticated web that draws electricity from where it is abundant and sends it to where it is needed; such a system reduces the need to add new plants in order to meet peak demand requirements. Some of the companies involved are focused on the supply side: developing systems to manage the emerging multidirectional network of distributed power-generating facilities (including intermittent generators, like rooftop solar arrays). Others are focused on the demand side: adjusting consumption levels minute by minute in response to dips in supplies or spikes in price.

GridPoint, a company based in Washington, D.C., combines the two. It has developed a refrigerator-sized device that is essentially a very smart battery, which utilities install in customers’ basements. At times of excess supply, coming either from centralized power plants or from renewable systems, the system puts energy into the battery; when demand climbs or generation falls off (the wind stops blowing; the sun doesn’t shine), it takes energy back out again. GridPoint also provides the utility and homeowners with control systems, enabling them to remotely adjust thermostats and appliances.

When he founded GridPoint in 2003, CEO Peter Corsell called it “TiVo for electricity.” As the company’s ambitions and financing have grown (it had raised $88 million by late 2007), Corsell has renamed it a “virtual peaking power plant” — that is, a way to meet peak demand with advanced information technology rather than new boilers and turbines. The system is also designed to accommodate new technologies as they emerge, including plug-in hybrid cars and fuel cells.

Reprinted with permission from Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn

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