Recently in Calulators and Metrics Category
"While most executives agree that a green strategy is a good idea, few know how to value or prioritize their initiatives," said Kimberly Knickle, Practice Director, Emerging Agenda, Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company. "They struggle with the business case, waiting to implement strategies until outcomes can be predicted more reliably."
According to a McKinsey survey [1] , environmental issues including climate change top the agenda in executive suites worldwide. But measuring and managing environmental impact is difficult, intricate work that stretches across an organization's operations.
Causal relationships connecting issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, use of scarce resources, ethical sourcing and regulatory compliance make it extremely complex to invest in green technology and expand sales of products and services with measurably better environmental performance.
"Lessening our impact on the environment and mitigating the future risk of depleting our planet's natural resources is becoming a priority in shaping every organization's strategy," said Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. "With SAS, organizations can optimize business strategies for minimizing risks and costs, developing new lines of business, and improving resource use, environmental or otherwise."
Cisco is using SAS to support its sustainability efforts. "Cisco believes that new innovative technologies and the power of collaboration are keys to achieving our sustainability goals and minimizing our impact on the environment," said Laura Ipsen, Co-chair of Cisco's EcoBoard and Senior Vice President of Cisco Global Policy and Government Affairs. "By partnering with SAS and utilizing SAS for Sustainability Management, Cisco can better prioritize projects and resources that create a positive return for the environment, shareholders, and our employees. The SAS solution will enable us to simulate the impact on carbon footprint, waste reduction targets, greenhouse gas emissions and other goals so we can more effectively predict and manage the impact of our operations on the environment."
SAS for Sustainability Management, based on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, uses the Global Reporting Initiative
framework to report on Triple Bottom Line indicators. These indicators
relate to the three spheres of sustainability – environmental, social,
and economic, using SAS' predictive abilities to validate strategies,
identify causal relationships, forecast improvement scenarios and drive
innovation.
The SAS Corporate Social Responsibility Report (PDF) conforms to the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines developed by the Global Reporting Initiative.
Your PC Can Save CO2 by Reducing Electricity
With Free Tool
that manages your computer's power
usage when it's idle,
saving energy and decreasing the demand on your power utility.
Save Computer Power Every Day! When a computer is running, energy providers supplying power to it are burning fossil fuels and emitting harmful Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Although CO2 is a normal component of the atmosphere, elevated levels of it are likely to cause future climate change (global warming). Although there are other types of emissions from burning fossil fuels, CO2 makes up over 99.6% of emissions by weight.
So...the less electricity produced, the fewer harmful emissions and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are released into the atmosphere.
The green-conscious folks at Snap.com developed this handy little tool and is giving it away to help reduce CO2 emissions.
- It's quick to download
- Windows XP and Vista compatible
- Works on desktops and laptops
- Displays savings in US or Metric
- No spyware or adware...just a helping hand for you and Mother Earth!
In a matter of seconds you can reduce the amount of energy your computer and monitor use when they are idle and prevent extra CO2 emissions from being generated. What's more, CO2 Saver shows you the amount of CO2 you've saved single-handedly, as well as all other CO2 Saver users combined!
Because each computer is different, we currently use averages. CO2 Saver detects the type of computer you're using (for example, desktop vs. laptop) and uses that information to help calculate how much energy it normally uses (and how much the program will save).
In the Options menu under "Computer Details," you have the ability to enter more information about your computer and monitor(s) so this can be taken into account, as power consumption also varies widely across monitor types and sizes. In the future, the developers plan to allow more precise measurements, and they're working on those features now.
Download CO2 Saver
More info...and download CO2 Saver at:co2saver.snap.com
 |
ENERGY-RICH
VIBRATIONS. Engineer Paul Wright and his students put this temperature
sensor under a wooden stairway, where it scavenged all the energy it
needed from vibrations generated by students clomping up and down. |
ENERGY-RICH VIBRATIONS. Engineer Paul Wright and his students put this temperature sensor under a wooden stairway, where it scavenged all the energy it needed from vibrations generated by students clomping up and down. Wright The sensor, which was about the size of a quarter, had no power cord or batteries. Instead, the device extracted the energy it needed from the vibrations that shook the wooden staircase as students clomped up and down between classes.
"The 1990s marked this very interesting period in which devices for computing, communication, and sensing all became much cheaper and much, much smaller," explains Wright. He's an engineer who has worked in robotics and computer science and is currently chief scientist at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interests of Society, a multicampus program supported by the state of California.
The most obvious result of the miniaturization was a wild proliferation of cell phones, personal digital assistants, MP3 players, and other portable gadgets. But in parallel, Wright says, "researchers were led to this picture of wireless sensor networks everywhere"—in effect, an electronic nervous system that reports on both the built environment and the natural landscape.
In the not-so-distant future, for example, bridges could tell us whether they had been damaged in an earthquake.
Office buildings could track the locations of their occupants, automatically adjusting the lights and air conditioning for maximum comfort and minimum energy use. Automobiles could talk to each other—and to the road—in an effort to avoid both accidents and traffic jams. Implantable sensors could continuously monitor blood-glucose levels and a host of other medical conditions. And webs of environmental sensors could monitor the health of remote ecosystems, tracking moisture, temperature, micronutrients, pollutants, and many other variables. All these developments would rely on networks of minuscule sensors
Energy scavenging is not a new idea. Self-winding wristwatches, in which a tiny mechanical oscillator extracts energy from the wearer's arm movements, first appeared in the 1920s. And, of course, windmills and water wheels have been harvesting natural energy for thousands of years. But the current wave of interest in energy scavenging for microelectronics began in the late 1990s—initially because researchers were looking for a better way to power the newly devised portable devices.
Energy-scavenging researchers turned their focus from relatively power-hungry portable electronic devices to a new generation of far-more-thrifty gadgets made with microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology.
From an energy-scavenging standpoint, the great advantage of MEMS sensors is that they typically require only about 100 microwatts of power—a thousandth of what portable consumer electronic devices typically need. Such minuscule quantities of energy abound in the environment: in vibrations, temperature gradients, sunlight, and so on.
The challenge is to make effective use of that energy. The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no all-purpose solution.
SOURCE: Read the entire fascinating article at ScienceNews.org
CALIFORNIA RESOURCE:
Paul K. Wright
5133 Etcheverry Hall, Mail Stop 1740
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740
The new portal, found at http://www.CoolCalifornia.org , is the only "carbon footprint calculator" that can be used to evaluate both direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases related to individual lifestyle choices.
It provides localized emissions estimates for transportation, housing, food, goods and services, as well as resources that can help users make more climate-friendly choices.
The calculator was designed by researchers at the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, in partnership with the California Air Resources Board, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the California Energy Commission, and the independent, nonpartisan organization Next 10.
Researchers expect the tool to play an important role in changing the way Californians think about, monitor and address their personal climate footprints. For more information, contact director of public affairs for the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources Cyril Manning, (510) 643-1722, cyril@berkeley.edu.
