January 22, 2009 at 2:37 am · Filed under Energy, Environment, Solar
Larry Kazmerski, from the National Research Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, CO was the keynote speaker at this month’s Night with a Futurist put on by The DaVinci Institute. Kazmerski entertained the largest crowd to attend a Night with a Futurist event throughout his lecture while hitting on these 5 key points:
- Solar is real – now
- Investment in Policy and R&D are priorities
- Cutting time from lab to manufacturing is key
- Significant increase in science and technical workforce is needed
- Balancing near and longterm R&D must be maintained
The highlight of the evening was a story from Kazmerski’s early days at NREL. A local newspaper reporter seemed uninterested in his description of the energy conversion properties of some of the PV cells they were testing. When the talk turned to the government officials visiting from Saudi Arabia, Kazmerski convinced the reporter the Saudi’s were investing heavily in solar energy and that they planned to sell the US sand for silicon production at $40 per barrel. This appeared in the the paper the following week and Kazmerski claims he still holds the record for fewest seconds between arrival at NREL and a summons to the director’s office.
January 13, 2009 at 11:56 am · Filed under Efficiency, Energy, Technology
So, how many Google searches produce the equivalent CO2 emissions as boiling a cup of water?
A confusing question unless you been following the stream of posts generated by the Sunday Times of London quoting (or misquoting) Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross‘ study on the energy used by view webpages. IN the story, the Times reporters stated “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” This seems to equate to about 7 grams of CO2.
Google immediately responded in a blog post stating “we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal suggesting the number is closer to 0.02 grams per search.” And went on to state the energy used by the PC performing the search is greater than the search itself.
Meanwhile according to Tech News World, Wissner-Gross claims neither he nor the study mentioned Google or had anything to do with Google and certainly not with tea kettles. “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.
And in response to these back and forth discussions, more than a few bloggers have decided to weigh in:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090112-carbon-internet.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/seven-grams-per-google-search.php
So what do you think? How much water could you boil while searching for the amount of CO2 emitted from a Google Search? or something like that?