Interview: Google’s Green Energy Czar

  • Bill Weihl is currently working on clean energy at Google. Before joining Google in early 2006, he was CTO at Akamai Technologies. (Photo courtesy of Google)

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Transcript

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Lester Graham: Last year, a report indicated performing two Google searches from a desktop computer could generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. How true is that?

Bill Weihl: We think, as, in fact, does the scientist who was behind most of the data there, that that report was actually off – that you, in fact, could do several hundred Google searches, if not more, for the emissions that are involved in boiling enough water to make a cup of tea.

Graham: What is Google doing to reduce energy consumption, or, at least, reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Weihl: We have cut our energy consumption in our data centers – data centers are the, you know, big facilities that contain lots and lots of servers. We have cut the energy usage in those facilities by over 50%.

Graham: Is there anything we can do so that when we do use Google we’re being as energy efficient as possible?

Weihl: If you’re buying a new computer, look for one that’s energy efficient. And in the US that means look for one, at a minimum, that’s Energy Star compliant. Laptops also tend to be more energy efficient than desktops, in part because just to make the battery last long enough to be useful, they have to work really hard in designing them to make them energy efficient. The second thing you can do is when you’re not using your system, when it’s sitting there idle, you can set it so that it will go to sleep automatically, or manually, if for some reason it doesn’t go to sleep automatically, you can very easily tell it to go to sleep. That’s much more convenient, obviously, that shutting it down, having to reboot, and restart everything. And it uses about the same energy in stand-by mode as it does when it’s off – which is, in the order of 1 to 5 watts, far less than it uses when it’s just sitting there idle with the screen on and doing nothing.

Graham: Let’s look beyond the world of computers. Google has invested in research for energy efficiency in cars and electric generation. You have a program that’s called ‘R.E. is less than C’ or ‘renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.’ That’s ambitious. Is it realistic?

Weihl: First of all, it’s hugely ambitious. Secondly, I believe it is realistic. And third, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Today, coal is, by far, the cheapest form of energy, or electrical energy, that we consume, except perhaps for hydroelectric power, which is comparable in cost. But at least in this country, and most of the developed world, we’re not going to be building large amounts of new hydroelectric generating capacity. We’ve already dammed most of the rivers that are worth damming. We are, however, still building new coal plants. And coal is not only very cheap, but also it is, by far, the dirtiest, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of any of the sources of energy that we use. So I think it is necessary, in terms of dealing with the climate crisis that we are facing, to find a way to, over time, replace coal with cleaner sources of energy. And the only way, as a society, I think that we’re going to do that is if it makes economic sense. So that’s why we really started to focus on this initiative we call ‘R.E. less than C’ – to really try to drive innovation as rapidly as possible on the technology for generating renewable power to try to drive its cost down very quickly.

Graham: Bill Weihl is the Green Energy Czar for Google. Thanks very much for your time, I appreciate it.

Weihl: My pleasure. Thank you.

Related Links

Recession Proof Construction

  • One company created a website that acts as kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials (Photo courtesy of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction)

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

Transcript

In the middle of a recession that’s

crippling the construction field,

there’s at least one sector of

industry that’s doing pretty well.

That’s “material reuse.” Taking pieces

of old buildings and using them in

new ones. Advocates say used materials

could save developers a heap of money.

Samara Freemark has the

story of one re-use company that’s both

green and in the black:

You’ve probably heard what’s going on in the construction industry
these days.

(news montage of housing crisis)

But in middle of all that bad news, there might be one bright spot.

“We’ve actually been expanding quite a bit. I guess it’s one of the
only times I’ve heard
of where that’s the case.”

That’s architect Brad Hardin.

He got interested in reusing building materials pretty early in his career.
He likes the way
the old stuff looked. And he likes the idea of saving resources. And
he’s also kind of
horrified by the tens of millions of tons of construction waste that get
tossed into landfills
every year.

But actually getting his hands on used materials, so that he could reuse
them- that turned
out to be a real pain in the butt.

“You know you’ll be literally going out to someone’s yard and getting
rained on, or
sorting through someone’s basement– it was kind of a hit and miss
process.”

A big part of the problem was simple logistics. Imagine you’re knocking
down an old
house to build a new one. You’d like to sell off whatever pieces of the
old building you
can. But how do you find someone to buy all that stuff? Where do you store
it while you
look for a buyer? And how do you ship the materials?

Harry Giles is a professor of green architecture at the University of
Michigan.

He says most developers don’t want to bother with all that hassle. In the
end, they usually
just end up bulldozing everything. Giles says that’s because there’s no
real secondhand
market for used construction materials- not like there is in a lot of other
industries.

“If you take the car industry, a lot of it is geared around the reuse of
materials. Not just
taking the car and crushing it, but taking it apart and finding useful
components on it.”

You know, like a salvage yard.

And that was the problem Brad Hardin wanted to solve – how to create a
secondhand
market for spare building parts. He figured that if he could do that,
reusing building
materials could actually end up profitable.

So last year he started a company called Planet ReUse. The company’s
website acts as
kind of a Craigslist just for reclaimed building materials. Buyers and
sellers can find each
other on the ‘net.

And Planet ReUse tests all material to make sure it’s up to code. That
way the buyer
doesn’t end up with, say, eight tons of rotten planking. And Planet ReUse
arranges all the
shipping- trying to hook up sellers to nearby buyers. That saves money and
fuel.

By removing those basic barriers, Hardin says his buyers save about 20%
compared to
buying new. And Planet ReUse still makes a profit.

And it’s also a start to reducing those millions of tons of landfill
waste.

So, what kind of stuff does he sell on the site?

“How much time do you have? Steel, flooring…”

It turns out there’s money in just about everything you can salvage from
a building.

Harry Giles says that cash is the key to cutting down waste.

“If people see that it’s a lucrative business to actually salvage
materials, that will drive it
much faster than concern for the environment.”

And it’s not just buildings. Remember President Obama’s inauguration
stage? Well, that
got torn down, and Planet ReUse is trying to get the pieces to New Orleans.
They’ll be
used to rebuild houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

It’s just one more way for Planet ReUse to prove that you can do good, be
green, and
make a little money too.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Saving Energy in Online Activities

  • Servers at Expedient data center in Garfield Heights, near Cleveland, Ohio (Photo by Julie Grant)

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

Transcript

One industry that’s not suffering in the economic downturn is information technology. The demand for IT keeps growing. But that worries some people. Our growing number of internet searches and data storage is using a lot of energy. Julie Grant reports on how some companies are making their IT more environmentally friendly – and saving money in the process:

(sound of an internet search with a tea kettle)

By some estimates, two Google searches create the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling water for a cup of tea.

Most people don’t think about the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their internet use. But there are about 200-million
searches globally each day – and each search kicks a lot of servers into gear. It adds up.

Albert Esser is an IT expert with Dell Computers. He says
in just a few years internet use could use 3% of the nation’s energy supply. That’s a lot of carbon pollution.

“From a global greenhouse perspective, that’s about the same as the airline industry will cost.”

But Esser says computers don’t need to use that much energy. Most computer systems are so
in-efficient today – that they’re wasting more than 90% of the energy they use.

(sound of a data center)

This is a data center. It’s filled with racks and racks of servers.

A hundred different companies rent space here. Each company has its own set of servers – to coordinate its email systems, word processing, online credit card transactions – all kinds of programs its employees and customers use.

But data centers can be real energy hogs. They need electricity to run all those servers. That creates a lot of heat, so they also need air conditioning. One data center can use as much electricity as a good-sized town.

(sound of electricity in the data center)

“You can hear the electricity, in here. The piles of batteries you see are attached to the uninterruptable power supply.”

Bryan Smith is marketing director for Expedient, which runs this and other data centers around the country. His customers want their computers to be fast, and that takes a lot of power.

But Smith says the data center does everything it can to cut down on energy usage.

“It’s obviously in our best interest to be energy efficient, because we’re the ones paying the power bill.”

So, they’ve set up the server racks to make them easier to cool. They’re also building a system to pull in cool air from the outside, instead of using so much air conditioning.

Some companies that use the data center are also starting to use software to create what are called virtual servers.

“This rack here is a virtualization rack, so you’ve for one rack here that has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 computers in it. Right? So each one of these servers is equal to 16 physical servers.”

And so for each of those ‘virtual servers’ they can turn off
15 actual servers.

But, even with all that saved space and energy, Expedient’s data centers are growing faster than they ever anticipated.

This one built in Cleveland only two years ago is just about sold out of space – so Expedient is building another data center next door.

Albert Esser at Dell says the most environmentally friendly way to build data center is not to build one at all.

He says making better use of old centers, with virtual computers and other energy efficiency measures, produces a lot less pollution. And it saves money.

“I think the economic downturn, as harsh as it sounds, is the best thing which could ever happen to green IT. Because the economic pressures will make people think much harder to just build a new data center without changing the way they operate it.”

So IT is learning what a lot of companies are learning – that going green can mean saving energy – and that’s better for the bottom line.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Sushi Sustainability Guide

  • blueocean.org has created a guide that ranks sushi on how sustainable it is (Source: Hatago at Wikimedia Commons)

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

Transcript

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

You can download this sushi guide, print it out and carry it around with you if you
want, but Kate McLaughlin with the Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Program says
you could just look at it on your mobile device next time you go to a sushi bar.

“You can download a PDA formatted copy of the guide to your mobile device. Or
text the word ‘fish’ and then the name of the fish in question. Pretty much
immediately you get a response with the ranking.”

And it will tell you things like popular sushi such as bluefin tuna and farmed salmon
are on the “red” list, which means they’re either over-fished or farmed with
aquaculture methods that pollute the ocean.

You can get the guide at blueocean.org.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Facebook for Farmers’ Food

  • Bob Gavlak and his partners organize freshly-harvested produce in their cooling truck. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Most twenty year olds use online
networking sites. But most farmers don’t.
Until now. A team of recent college grads
is using their internet savvy to connect
farms and restaurants. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Most twenty year olds use online
networking sites. But most farmers don’t.
Until now. A team of recent college grads
is using their internet savvy to connect
farms and restaurants. Julie Grant reports:

Last summer Matt Szugye entered a college business school
competition. His team needed to make a plan for a new
business. They started throwing around ideas.

“It just happened, that the night before I was at a restaurant
talking with an owner, and they were telling me about the
trials and tribulations of starting their restaurant with the idea
that they would serve seasonal, local produce.”

But the restaurant owner couldn’t get food like onions,
zucchini or tomatoes directly from local farms. Szugye’s
team studied the idea. Lots of people in the food business
were saying the same things. Things like this:

“So I’m getting things shipped in from other states.”

That’s Donna Chriszt. She’s the owner and chef at Dish Deli
and Catering. It’s a small, gourmet deli in a downtown
Cleveland neighborhood.

“And the amount of fossil fuels that are coming out of that,
we hated. So, it’s not what I wanted to do for my
community.”

So now that the college team knew there was demand for a
product, they contacted farmers. Eureka. There was also a
supply. Lots of farmers wanted new ways to sell their fruits
and vegetables locally.

The team put together a plan for a distribution business – to
pickup produce from farms and deliver it to nearby
restaurants.

They decided they could use the internet.

It would work a little like an online dating service. Each
farmer could list what’s available and set the price. The
restaurant owners could browse through the list and place
their orders. The college students’ business plan would be
the match-maker.

The team won their business school contest.

After graduation this Spring, they launched an actual
business based on their model.

They call it Fresh Fork.

Donna Chriszt was thrilled.

“I was like hallelujah. Thank God someone will be able to
help a small place like me by doing all the foot work.”

(sound of a factory)

After picking up produce from farmers, Fresh Fork Team
member Bob Gavlak is finally getting back to the distribution
center. It’s 10 p.m. It could have gone a lot sooner, but he
got caught up talking with the farmers about what they’re
growing and how their kids are doing, you know, forging
relationships.

(sound of a cooling truck)

The team now has to move racks of produce in a cooling
truck. Then they organize it all.

“This is where we’re going tomorrow, is Dish Deli and
Catering. And you can see Knoble Farms. They have some
corn.”

When Gavlak and his partners started planning this
business, they didn’t quite get why there was such a fuss
about local food.

They were still college students fueled by Ramen and fast
food.

So they spent some time on the food prep line at an upscale
local restaurant – cutting onions, stirring soup – for hours.
Not pouring soup out of a bag like a lot of places. Gavlak
says he started to understand.

“I would go to the store and I’d have strawberries, and I’d be
like, ‘oh, these are so good’. But then, when we had
strawberries here in the spring and early summer, it’s like I’d
never had a strawberry before. It’s just seeing the difference
that happens between a product that’s fresh and homegrown
and the product that isn’t.”

The team finishes sorting all their fresh produce at midnight.
They’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to deliver to 8
restaurants, a grocery store, and a hospital.

(sound of Dish Deli)

When Gavlak brings her order, deli owner Donna Chriszt
inspects the cucumbers, rhubarb, and red skin potatoes.

“And our big bushel of corn. And everything looks great. It’s
always exciting when it comes in, because we’re like, ‘what
are we going to do with this?’”

This week, they’re planning rhubarb cobbler, potato salad
and fresh pickles for a neighborhood festival.

Gavlak smiles. He’s says it makes him feel good that the
business he and his college buddies designed, Fresh Fork,
is connecting farms and restaurants and getting people
fresh, locally grown food.

He finishes the order, and then walks into Chriszt’s deli to
have some lunch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Online Hitchhiking

  • ZimRide allows people to find rides online (Photo by Ed Edahl, courtesy of FEMA)

If you’re really trying to save on
gas you might like to know that there’s a
new way to hitchhike. Rebecca Williams
reports on a new online carpooling network:

Transcript

If you’re really trying to save on
gas you might like to know that there’s a
new way to hitchhike. Rebecca Williams
reports on a new online carpooling network:

It’s called Zimride. What you do is log on, create an account, and then type in
where you want to go. Then you can catch a ride with other people headed across
town or across the country.

It’s not the first online carpooling network. You can catch rides on Craigslist and
other sites.

But cofounder John Zimmer says what’s missing from those other sites is trust.

He says Zimride is safer because it’s linked up with Facebook.

“So that before you get in the car you can see what you have in common with the
person you can see a picture of the person. You can see if you have similar
political beliefs or interests. Really what we want to do is build a community so
that people can feel more comfortable sharing rides.”

But like online dating – you never know exactly what you’re gonna get. John
Zimmer says that’s why they built in a feedback function. So if you have a really
awkward road trip with someone, you can warn other people away.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

On the Lookout for Fireflies

  • Researchers have started a project to document firefly sightings (Photo by Don Salvatore, courtesy of Museum of Science, Boston)

Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:

Transcript

Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:

People often ask, ‘Why don’t we see as many fireflies anymore?’

Don Salvatore is an educator at Boston’s Museum of Science. He says he and other
researchers don’t have a good answer. They don’t even know whether there are fewer
fireflies or not.

So Salvatore and a few bug scientists started up the Firefly Watch Project. They’re
asking people to help them out by spending a few minutes in their backyard.

“So what we want them to do is to go outside at night and then for a ten second period
count the number of fireflies they see. As well as that we ask them to just key in on a
couple of fireflies and give us just a little information.”

Salvatore says they hope to discover whether thinks like frequent lawn mowing, light
pollution, and pesticides are harming firefly numbers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

INTERVIEW: creativecitizen.com CREATORS

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet,
you probably know about MySpace, and Facebook, and
maybe you use Wikipedia to look up things quickly.
Well a couple of guys in California are combining
social networking, web content, and citizen action
to make a green website called Creative Citizen-dot-
com. Lester Graham spoke with Scott Badnoch and Argum DerHartunian:

Transcript

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet,
you probably know about MySpace, and Facebook, and
maybe you use Wikipedia to look up things quickly.
Well a couple of guys in California are combining
social networking, web content, and citizen action
to make a green website called Creative Citizen-dot-
com. Lester Graham spoke with Scott Badnoch and Argum DerHartunian:

Scott Badnoch and Argum DerHartunian: “CreativeCitizen-dot-com is based on the idea that we need
to infuse action into people’s lives when it comes to the green movement. So, we call ourselves
the action-based green community. And it’s essentially where Wiki meets social networks. So,
we’ve taken the best of both worlds and put them together. And so, instead of trying to be a static
content provider, what we do is we open up the playing field for the entire community to be
involved.”

Lester Graham: “Now, when you’re talking about opening up to the whole community, that just
seems you’re asking for a lot of misinformation to be passed around. Who’s monitoring this to
make sure that you ensure accuracy on this thing?”

Badnoch and DerHartunian: “It’s very rare that people provide things that are absolutely incorrect.
Now, at the same time, we also have experts. And I’d also like to add that our experts really guide
the process. They show people where to go to find more information, so then more eyes are
actually looking at it, and making sure the information is actually accurate and effective in the real
world.”

Graham: “Well, even among the experts there’s an amazing amount of confusion about everything
from everyday questions like ‘paper or plastic?’, to lawn care, purchases we make – how do you
plan to get around some of those complicated issues that might depend on where you live, or other
circumstances of your locale or your lifestyle?”

Badnoch and DerHartunian : “We’re not saying we are the sort of all-knowing Gods of green, but, in
reality, we’re saying ‘hey, we don’t know’, and neither does the vast majority of people. So let’s all
contribute, and put the knowledge that we do have together, so we can actually get a more clear
understanding of what this green-thing is.”

Graham: “Your CreativeCitizen-dot-com site seems like it might just be the perfect opportunity for
some of these corporations to come in and really spin things for systems that might not be that
great. How will you compete with corporate green-washing you might see on your site?”

Badnoch and DerHartunian: “On CreativeCitizen-dot-com, we’ve created an organic R&D system,
where each creative solution is uniform in a sense, and users can come and comment on
solutions, and edit them. And companies are really putting themselves out there by saying ‘this
product or service really has this benefit or savings’. And people can say, ‘well, I’ve tried this at
home and it doesn’t have these savings’, ‘I’ve researched this product and you’re using these types
of methods to produce this and manufacture this product and it’s not good for the environment’.
Or, vise-versa, saying that this is good, and really bringing the real green products that are not
green-washed to the forefront.”

Graham: “What have you learned on CreativeCitizen-dot-com that made you a more
environmentally responsible person?”

Badnoch and DerHartunian: “Well, I’ve transformed my entire life since the process of really
understanding sustainability. But one of the main things is really understanding that efficient living
and sustainable living is not about a sacrifice. It’s about really putting in these little acts into your
daily lifestyle that really make you happier as a person, more efficient – not only in a personal
sense but in a global sense. So, one of the most simple things is recycling laundry water. I’ve built
a system in my house where I can just put the laundry water in a bin and feed it to my garden,
using waste-water that is actually more nutritious for the plants because of the minerals in the wash
cycle. I like to call it ‘optimize without sacrifice’ – that’s actually from Amory Lovins. Green is really
about optimizing your life, and making life better for you, and then the result, fortunately, is that life
is better for the whole planet.”

Graham: “Alright guys, thank-you very much.”

Badnoch and DerHartunian: “Thank you, Lester.”

Related Links

Website to Calculate Value of Nature

Researchers are putting together an online service
that will help determine nature’s contributions to the economy.
The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports the economic benefits
of the natural system aren’t always considered when developers
start building:

Transcript

Researchers are putting together an online service that will help determine nature’s contributions to the economy. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports the economic benefits of the natural system aren’t always considered when developers start building:


We don’t get a bill from wetlands for purifying our water, but scientists say we might pay
more in our utility bills if wetlands weren’t there to clean up the water.


Bob Costanza directs the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. He and his colleagues are
building computer models that will be turned into an interactive website. He says the website
will put a price on the services things such as wetlands and forests provide:


“If you are gonna, you know, put a new housing development or shopping center, what are
you losing in terms of ecosystem services and where could you put those things that would
lose as little as possible?”


Kostanza says the website will be live in about a year and a half. It will be open
to the public so you’ll be able to get a better sense of what your local pond and forest
are doing for you.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Great Lakes Town Hall Goes Online

A "town hall" type forum on Great Lakes issues is now as
close as your nearest computer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A “town hall” type forum on Great Lakes issues is now as
close as your nearest computer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chuck Quirmbach reports:


There are forty-two million people in the Great Lakes region and it’s
a little hard getting them all in the same room, but now, you can go to
a computer website for discussions about Great Lakes issues, and to
share your favorite Lakes experience.


The Wisconsin-based Biodiversity Project has set up the interactive site,
great lakes town hall dot org. Jeffery Potter is a spokesperson
for the Project.


“When it came to the Great Lakes Town Hall, we wanted to create a
resource where people across the region could come together, share
their ideas in an inclusive environment, and really talk about and get
more engaged in issues that are vital to protect the Great Lakes as a
resource for all of us.”


Potter says the website features a weekly guest expert, and there’s
a moderator on duty. Anyone can look at the site, but you’ll be asked
to register in order to make comments.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links