This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Globe and Mail: Only radical thinking will solve environmental problems
The Globe and Mail has a good article on why we need to get away from our traditional thinking in terms of addressing climate change:
“The World Bank estimates that a more conservative 200-million new cars will be on the road in India by 2040, meaning that a new car enters the system every five seconds. In contrast, Mr. Condon considered his recent LEED Gold project, four years in the making, which saves an impressive 450 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Every eight minutes, that accomplishment is cancelled out by the CO2 output of new cars in India. “In the time I’ve been speaking to you, four years of efforts at reducing greenhouse emissions from one project have gone,” he says.”
Although there are some worthy attempts at energy efficiency, most people don’t understand unless we find solutions that enable the developing world – particularly India and China- reduce their emissions, then pretty well anything we do in the developed world is meaningless. But we also need to understand that we need to “sequester” carbon. Building more energy efficient cars or avoiding travel in the developed world does not or slow down the rate of GHG emissions in the developing world.
I was recently at an ITU sponsored Green ICT where I heard the usual platitudes from various well meaning people on how they were going to reduce emissions. One speaker from a major telco mentioned how their organization had saved millions liters of transport gasoline and hundreds of millions of air travel through the use of tele-commuting and video-conferencing. The telco falsely claims they have saved thousands of tons of CO2. I asked where are those millions of litres of gasoline and the empty planes sitting on tarmacs as a result of these policies? If you can’t sequester the carbon then that means those millions litres of gasoline and empty seats can be resold to someone else ( perhaps at a cheaper price) and the CO2 impact remains the same.
That is why I argue that only meaningful measurement standard to genuinely prove that you are helping the environment is ISO 14064. With ISO 14064 you must go through a rigorous process to prove carbon sequestration. And that is why, to date, virtually no “energy efficiency” project, or applications such as video conferencing, telecommuting etc has been able to meet the ISO 14064 requirements.
In the ICT world there have been some incredible claims by SMART 2020 and IEA that ICT can save 15-20% of all CO2 emissions – but with no rigorous ISO 14064 methodology. I suspect, as with most other such energy efficiency claims these will all turn out to be bogus. If we continue on our current path ICT is not going to be a green champion but the ultimate environmental bad boy. It is already the fastest growing sector in terms of GHG emissions.
It is also interesting to note that the Carbon Disclosure Project estimates that collectively corporations and governments spend $690 billion per year mostly on energy efficiency and yet global GHG emissions continue not only to rise, but are now accelerating.
There is a message here.
We have to stop this mantra of green washing and tokenism of energy efficiency. We need to focus on radical solutions that genuinely can be measured and certified to reduce or eliminate GHG emissions. That means we have to focus on the real problem – which is the type of energy we use and not how much we consume. It is dirty energy that produces CO2. That is why we need ICT solutions that will only use renewable energy. The Greenstar project is one great example. Using eVehicles for energy transport and building Energy Internet is another. For more examples please see.
Globe and Mail: Only radical thinking will solve environmental problems
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/growth/only-radical-thinking-will-solve-environmental-problems/article2447562/print/
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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro