Operation Green
Expert insight on the latest GREEN trends, products and news from the professionals within the manufacturing industry.
Georgia Tech takes on multidisciplinary hurdles in Green IT
A new initiative from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is taking on the multidisciplinary challenges involved in creating and running energy efficient data centers. The effort–dubbed Green IT–considers power consumption across the entire “energy stack,” ranging from the power consumed by multi-core platforms, to the board and rack levels, to the entire ...... Read More
Comments (0)Ethanol's second act
Perhaps the most maligned alternative fuel technology in recent years–and in some ways rightly so–has been corn-based ethanol. Most of you know the criticisms–the raw material source drives up the price of food, and its energy balance–meaning how much bang we get from the fuel versus the energy spent to produce it–isn’t very good. While proponents of corn ...... Read More
Comments (4)Walmart's bigger challenge: a meaningful index
In my last post, I gave an update on Walmart’s efforts to survey its supply base about their progress with sustainability. But that survey effort was only one aspect of Walmart’s July sustainability announcement–the main component being the retailer’s support of the development of a green product index. By working with academic researchers and other entities via the Sus ...... Read More
Comments (1)Walmart's sustainability survey: it's about trust, not a set of questions
When Walmart announced a sustainability index initiative in July, one of the retailer’s related actions was to announce a sustainability survey for its suppliers. With a goal of getting its top-tier suppliers in the U.S. to respond by October, Walmart put forth a set of 15 questions related to various aspects of sustainability, from greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement to social responsibility. ...... Read More
Comments (0)Plant-focused software vendors correlating energy with production management
The last few days have seen more announcements from plant automation software vendors that point to growing interest in correlating energy with production management. While the idea of using software to match real-time energy trends with production trends isn’t exactly new (OSIsoft began talking about this nearly 10 years ago), it seems that vendors are accelerating the move toward prepacka ...... Read More
Comments (0)With government help, even some big Green projects in U.S. plants move forward
As we slowly climb out of recession, it’s still the case that getting the green light for bigger ticket energy efficiency investments is tough to do. That’s why I was pleased to see a list of fairly ambitious projects under way, thanks in part to government funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). According to a recent Department of Energy press release, $155 ...... Read More
Comments (1)Schneider Electric's "Energy" University tops 3,300 users
Launched in June of 2009, Schneider Electric’s Energy University–a Web-based learning program focused on energy management and efficiency–is growing in attendance, with more than 3,300 active users over the past five months. While I had heard of the e-learning initiative not too long after its announcement, it was only recently that I got the chance to check it out personally ...... Read More
Comments (0)Tech giants push the green data center
In catching up on Green IT news the other day, I came across an announcement about a data center of the future project from T-systems and Intel. T-Systems, a division of Deutsche Telekom, and Intel, have dubbed the project DataCenter 2020. The partners aim to improve data center energy and cooling efficiency by measuring variables in this test setting. The data center has sophisticated ...... Read More
Comments (2)Green building features can make sense, even for smaller operations
One of the last places you’d expect to find a good-sized array of solar panels is on a modest industrial building in Little Suamico, Wisconsin, just a short drive north of Green Bay. Sure, global corporations with sustainability programs and shiny corporate campuses in places like Silicon Valley have installed plenty of solar panels, but you don’t expect to find solar on a small indu ...... Read More
Comments (1)Why efficiency remains low-cost path to Green gains
In reading over a report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) about industrial efficiency programs, I came across a compelling statistic for efficiency measures in industrial plants. According to the report (Industrial Energy Efficiency Programs: Identifying Today’s Leaders and Tomorrow’s Needs), the average industrial facility can achieve energy savings ...... Read More
Comments (0)The software needs of the Smart Grid
The Smart Grid–the moniker for the next generation of electric utility infrastructure that will enable utilities and their customers to dynamically manage energy supply and demand–is not all about newfangled meters, sensors, or other technology hardware. Software also will play a role in the Smart Grid, say vendors such as GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms. GE Fanuc Intelligent Platform ...... Read More
Comments (1)Green measures, slower economy, lead to drop in carbon emissions
In the couple of weeks break I’ve taken from the blog to recuperate from knee surgery, I’ve been following sustainability-related news. One item that caught my eye was news of a study from the Earth Policy Institute that carbon emissions have dropped significantly in the U.S. over the past couple of years, in part due to the slower economy, but also because of gains in efficiency and ...... Read More
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