Green Business

Biking is a great way to stay in shape, go green, and avoid traffic. With its latest beta feature, Google Maps wants to help you find the best way to your destination while pedaling two wheels. It’s a great idea and Google Maps has a basic model working. The routes it chooses are another matter though as they often direct users through parks, off-limits areas and unpaved roads busy with other traffic.

To try it out out head to Google Maps and enter in a couple of destinations as normal, then choose “Bicycling” from the drop-down below the final address. The engine will jump to work and in a few informal tests brought back some solid new ideas for routes between home and work.

The Academy Awards are now known as much for fashion as the nominated movies. You may not remember some of the flicks but you do remember fashion like the dress made out of American Express cards or Bjork’s infamous swan. Suzy Amis Cameron, wife of Avatar director Jim Cameron, decided that sustainable fashion should be the “in” thing at this year’s Oscars.

Soon after the release of Avatar, she knew that she could harness the global attention the film was generating. She dreamt up a contest called “Red Carpet Green Dress” as a design competition that focused on sustainable fashion. Suzy would wear the winning dress design to the 82nd Academy Awards.

Global warming is a contentious issue again because skeptics have pointed out inconsistencies with the data scientists are using to measure how much humans are impacting the environment. Setting that debate aside for a moment, scientists have discovered that somewhere around 7 teragrams of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, has been released each year from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. That’s around 7.7 million tons of methane, and the data was aggregated from 5,000 locations. Sound credible?

In a situation like this the argument over who is causing global warming – man or nature – becomes almost irrelevant. It’s important for us to understand how that much greenhouse gas drifting into the atmosphere will affect the climate. Our ability to adapt or prevent that shift in climate may determine the next step in our collective bloodline.

DTE is a fixture in supplying energy for consumers and businesses in many parts of Michigan, including parts of the upper peninsula. That’s why it’s exciting to see one of its subsidiaries, Detroit Edison, taking definite steps toward renewable energy. Detroit Edison is paying environmental consulting firm Nova Consultants $18 million to analyze the potential of adding 3 megawatts in solar power to southeast Michigan.

This is one of potentially 10 different projects that could each produce 500 kilowatts of solar power each. Detroit Edison needed approval from the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) to proceed because its rates are regulated and this initiative had to fit within those budget constraints. Right now this won’t mean any rate hikes for end consumers, but the company wants to charge more in some form of “recovery fee”.

Recently the CEO of Sprint, Dan Hesse, presented some of his company’s green priorities to a committee in Washington. While the news isn’t as exciting as the buzz flying around about the HTC SuperSonic potentially hitting Sprint’s WiMax network, it’s good to know that the company is taking sustainability seriously by empowering its customers to easily recycle their old phones.

Sprint already had a phone buyback program in place but has expanded the number of devices it will accept. As an example I have an HTC Hero and I’m able to score a $121.87 account credit. Granted, with an HTC Hero that’s in good working condition eBay would probably provide a greater return in cash but that takes the gumption to set up a listing and ship it.

The UK is already the world leader in offshore wind power with 600 megawatts of wind capacity and an industry that employs five thousand people. A new partnership with Mitsubishi will add to their clout and has the potential to create thousands of green jobs.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe (MPSE) announced plans this week to invest £100m  in a new research and development facility for offshore wind power in Britain. The government made it clear to MPSE that they were dead serious about promoting corporate investment in green energy by kicking in a £30m grant to help them get started. The money comes from a fund dedicated to industrial innovation, job creation, and growth.

Bloom Energy has enjoyed a burst of buzz with the unveiling of its Bloom Energy Server product, which essentially puts fuel cells to work generating electricity by combining natural gas or biogas with oxygen. The company claims a 2 to 1 efficiency over traditional power companies and puts energy production on the properties business owners. That certainly doesn’t render the existing power grid obsolete, and established power companies may actually stand to gain from the Bloom Energy Server.

It’s a global trend. More people are getting mobile phones and more people are getting computers every day. That’s great because it means all of us are more connected and essentially able to communicate with the broader world, right? Sure, so what’s the problem?

Everybody’s mobile phone and computer eventually becomes garbage. Manufacturers are making efforts to reduce the amount of hazardous materials contained in electronics but that’s only half of the battle because even safer materials are reusable and we need to reclaim them to reduce our environmental footprint. Developing nations like China, India, Mexico, and Brazil all are rapidly increasing their adoption of electronic goods but don’t have an infrastructure or regulations in place to foster sound recycling processes.

Sweeping energy promises from an ultra-secretive company sound familiar? It would if you’ve followed Eestor’s claims that it can produce the world’s next generation ultracapacitor batteries. The Bloom Box from Bloom Energy seems to be following in those footsteps with its recent coverage on 60 Minutes, and it places just enough facts in the public sphere to leave us salivating but skeptical.

An example? eBay CEO John Donahoe walking around on his campus claiming that 5 Bloom Boxes have saved his company over $100,000 in 9 months (video below). What he doesn’t mention though is how much of an investment those Bloom Boxes required, which according to data from the company would be conservatively $700,000 a piece or $3.5 million.

Texas is making more noise about the threat of tougher emissions standards than a trampled rodeo clown.

The Lone Star state filed a petition in federal court this week, arguing the government has no right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The message is loud and clear: Don’t mess with big business in Texas, or you’ll have a fight on your hand.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says the regulations will sacrifice jobs and hurt the energy industry. According to the EPA, Texas and other Region 6 states are responsible for 35 percent of greenhouse gases emitted by industrial sources. But that doesn’t mean much in Texas.