Tag: water

Reflection of a wind turbine in an office window
Internet of Things (IoT)

How IoT Helps Fight Climate Change


The internet of things, or “IoT,” is a system of connected devices that share data and work together to achieve a common goal. By 2025, it’s estimated that there will be 75 billion IoT devices in use worldwide. That represents a major opportunity to reduce carbon emissions and make our economy more sustainable. Here’s how IoT is already reducing carbon emissions, and how it can do even more in the future.

Monitoring and reducing energy usage: One of the most direct ways IoT is reducing carbon emissions is by monitoring and reducing energy usage. Connected devices can track everything from how much electricity a building is using to how much water a factory is consuming. This data can be used to make real-time adjustments that result in significant reductions in energy usage. In some cases, these reductions can be as much as 30%.

Improving transportation: Another way IoT is reducing carbon emissions is by improving transportation. Connected devices can be used to optimize shipping routes and traffic patterns. This results in fewer vehicles on the road and less congestion. Additionally, IoT can be used to develop new alternative fuel sources like electric vehicles.

Increasing green energy use: In addition to reducing energy consumption, IoT can also be used to increase the use of renewable energy sources. For example, wind turbines and solar panels can be outfitted with sensors that allow them to adjust their output based on real-time conditions. This ensures that they’re always operating at maximum efficiency, which reduces the need for traditional (and emitting) forms of energy generation.

IoT presents a major opportunity to reduce carbon emissions and make our economy more sustainable. By monitoring energy usage, improving transportation, and increasing green energy use, IoT is already having a positive impact on the environment. As the number of connected devices continues to grow, so too will the potential for even greater reductions in carbon emissions.

If you’d like to know more about successful climate emissions reduction strategies, don’t forget to check out my weekly Climate 21 podcast. With roughly 100 episodes published, you’ll be sure to find lots of learnings there.

Technology / Software

How SAP achieved LEED Platinum certification for their headquarters in Pennsylvania

As I was in Pennsylvania to attend SAP’s Analyst’s Base Camp event earlier this year, I took the opportunity to get a tour of the new LEED Platinum certified Headquarters building. I was shown around the building by the facilities manager, Jim Dodd, who informed me of the different steps taken to enable the structure to achieve its an impressive LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

I videoed the tour and see below for a transcription of it:

Tom Raftery: Hey everyone! Welcome to GreenMonk TV, I am here in New Town Square at SAP Headquarters. I am with –

Jim Dodd: Jim Dodd.

Tom Raftery: Jim, you are –

Jim Dodd: The Facilities Manager for the campus.

Tom Raftery: Okay, now we are standing on a — we are in the new building in New Town Square.

Jim Dodd: The new LEED Platinum Headquarters’ building, right.

Tom Raftery: Okay, and can you tell me about the floor that we are standing on?

Jim Dodd: In comparison to the floor in the headquarters’ old building, where we used marble that was imported from Italy, what we wanted to do was to reduce that cost and do a sustainable floor. And so this floor is a concrete floor, and it has a mixture of seashells and glass in it on a terrazzo finish and then we polished it and honed it up, so it would be nice and shiny. But it’s considerably less expensive obviously than the marble floor in the main building and we use it in the atrium area in a radiant floor which we’ll talk about in a minute.

But it’s a less expensive solution and yet it’s a very attractive solution in terms of the flooring for both the link to the new building and the atrium that runs the full length of the floor downstairs on the promenade.

Tom Raftery: So, Jim, tell me about the floor.

Jim Dodd: Okay. In the promenade area, below us here, is a radiant floor, we have pipes that run through that floor and we have ten geothermal wells that are drilled in the back of our property. We take the water out of the ground where it comes as a constant temperature and we pump it through the piping on the concrete floor downstairs and the floor radiates heat or air-conditioning depending on what time of the year it is. And it helps to keep this big atrium very comfortable without having to use large amounts of air-conditioning or heating.

Tom Raftery: So it’s just using natural heat or cooling from the earth.

Jim Dodd: That’s correct, yes. So the water really comes out about 55 degrees out of the ground and we can pump that through the floor and that cools the concrete and radiates coolness in the summer time, and then in the winter time what we got to do is heat that water up to about 72 degrees and then we pump that through the floor and it heats the concrete and it radiates heat off the floor, and because it’s on the floor, it affects the employees immediately and it keeps the atrium very, very, very comfortable.

Tom Raftery: Okay, and you’ve got these nice banisters.

Jim Dodd: Yes, it’s an interesting situation here. When the original site survey was done for this building, it would have wiped out of a grove of the mature Chinese chestnut trees that are absolutely beautiful and are part of the aesthetics of the campus. So we moved the building in order to save half of those chestnut trees, but the chestnut trees that we did have to harvest in order to put the building here, we had them milled into handrails for the whole building.

About 90% of what’s in this building to construct it was sourced locally within 500 miles of the building and that’s a sustainability feature again, it provides points on the LEED scale because it cuts down on your carbon output because you are not exporting things from thousands and thousands of miles away.

Tom Raftery: So Jim, tell me about the under floor?

Jim Dodd: Yeah, the difference — the primary difference between the original building and the new building is in the original building the air distribution comes down from the ceiling plenum, and of course, that’s not very efficient because heat rises, so if you are trying to get heat down to where the people sit, it’s not in a very efficient approach. In this building, we use an under floor distribution where the air comes up through the floor and it’s controlled in each location with a vent, so people can control the amount of air coming in their space and by coming up from the floor, the treated air gets to the employee immediately and there is an immediate reaction to that temperature adjustment.

In the other building of course the hot air comes down but it turns around and goes right back up, so it’s not as efficient as this underfloor system is in this building here. We have a wood feature in each of our hallways that separate the neighborhoods and it’s made from bamboo. Again a sustainable wood that’s renewable every seven years in comparison to oak or walnut or some other wood that takes 40 or 50 years to mature. We decided to use bamboo in this building because it’s sustainable.

Tom Raftery: So, tell me about the carpets.

Jim Dodd: So the carpet, in most instances when you install large amounts of carpet, there is volatile organic chemicals in the carpet like formaldehyde that require you to aerate the building for a period of time before you can occupy it. We work with the manufacturer of this particular carpet to reduce or eliminate VOCs in it. So we did not have to ventilate the building for a period of time prior to occupancy.
And it makes for a cleaner environment for the employees overall without the organic chemicals off gassing from the carpet.

Tom Raftery: So what have we got beside us, Jim?

Jim Dodd: This is a filter water system that we put in. A number of years ago we used to provide bottled water for the employees and then we realized how much plastic waste was being generated, and even though it was being recycled. We decided to eliminate bottled water from the campus and we installed one of these Innowave water systems in each of our pantries. It’s filtered and it also cools the water and heats the water. So if you want to make tea, you can get hot water, and if you want cold water, you can get cold water.

But it reduced our cost by over $120,000 on bottled water, and got rid of the plastic issue.

Tom Raftery: So, Jim, where are we now?

Jim Dodd: We are in the chiller room of the new building of the Platinum LEED building and what we do that’s unique in this building in comparison to other buildings is we actually make ice at night and store it in these very big tanks behind me, and we use the system because at night the electricity is less expensive and the pressure on the grid is lower. So we don’t have to run the chiller during the day, because what we do is, we melt the ice during the day when we need air-conditioning and then we use that to cool the building and we don’t have to use our chiller during the day, when the grid is being stressed by everyone else, wanting air conditioning.

Tom Raftery: So Jim, tell me about this garden, where are we?

Jim Dodd: We are on the roof of the new building, believe it or not, and this is a green roof, this is a very unique approach to maintaining constant temperatures in the building. By having a green roof we keep the building cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
The other unique thing about this, as you can see we have to mow grass and we didn’t want to have to store gasoline up here, because it’s a hazardous flammable material. So we sought out a company that made a very good electric lawnmower and we mow the grass up here with electric lawnmower. In that way, we don’t have to store any gasoline up here, and it’s quite and it doesn’t just dirt people when they are working, it’s just a very unique approach to roof construction.

Tom Raftery: Jim, what have we behind this?

Jim Dodd: Behind this is the meadow as a part of our 102 acres of property here, and what we did this year, was working with the Triskeles Foundation and One Village, One Farm, these are non-profit organizations; we agree to put in an organic garden. We have enough room. So we put in a 100×50 organic garden with 22 raised beds and we’ll donate the food at the end of this year to all the local food banks.

We expect to produce hundreds of pounds of produce in this garden, and working with organic, no pesticides or anything like that, all natural ingredients to keep the bugs off, and then there is a 6 foot deer fence around it, because we have a lot of deer on the property and the garden would just get eaten to nothing. So we put a fence around it to protect it from the deer.

So we’re doing cucumbers, summer squash, tomatoes and peppers, and then, we’ll have a fall planting as well, and all of that food will go to the local food banks.

We have 80 volunteers that have volunteered to take care of the garden. So we have plenty of people to take care of it, and it’s going to work out really, really well, and it’s another sustainable aspect of the property.

We also have two beehives on the property as well. We have a beekeeper that works for SAP and he had asked us if he could put beehives on the property. And we agreed to do that, because we felt that that was another sustainable issue in terms of pollinating and protecting the bees.

There has been a degeneration of bee colonies around the world and so having good bee colonies is very important to the propagation of all the different plant life that we have on the campus. So we decided to put the beehives here as well.

Tom Raftery: So what have we behind us, Sir Jim?

Jim Dodd: Okay, what you see behind us here is a 60,000 gallon cistern, buried in the ground, and we collect our rainwater in that cistern and then we use the rainwater for irrigation and flushing toilets, you know what, they call brown water or gray water, and with all the rain that we’ve had it’s full.

But it’s another way for us to get LEED points, but it’s also a better way to manage our water consumption on campus because we can use that rainwater to irrigate. We have a beautiful courtyard in between the two buildings and we irrigate that with that water. We also irrigate the green roof that you’ve seen with the cistern water. So it all goes into that 2 million gallons of savings of water per year.

Tom Raftery: So why are we standing beside this artwork, Jim?

Jim Dodd: This is part of our social sustainability program where we work with local non-profits to do certain things. In this particular case, we work with a non-profit called Fresh Artists. These are young children, these are not adults, these are children who have painted this artwork that you see behind you.

We make a donation, substantial donation to fresh artists, so they can buy supplies and easels and paints and brushes for their children, and then we in turn purchase their artwork to hang in this building.

So except on the executive floor, all other floors of this building have examples of this artwork from these young children and some of them are quite attractive and fun. But it’s a social sustainability thing as a part of our work with the community.

And the IT systems?

Jim Dodd: It’s a dashboard.

Tom Raftery: Right.

Jim Dodd: And it tells you the consumption of electricity in this building, the consumption of electricity in the other building, and it tells me what my PUE is in my data center, which is a –

Tom Raftery: I know PUE.

Jim Dodd: Okay, you know what that is. So it tells me how we’re operating, whether there’s some kind of anomaly, we’re using more electricity than usual. We can get just a quick glimpse of how the building is functioning, and what its consumption rates are in both buildings.

But then they go far beyond that and they can drill down to an individual air handler, right to the motor and determine if it’s running, how fast it’s going, how much power it’s using. We monitor over 10,000 points of information of data on all the systems in the building.

Full disclosure – SAP paid my travel and expenses to attend the SAP Analysts Base Camp

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Technology / Software

IBM tackling water issues globally


Home electricity consumption

Water, water everywhere…

Water is becoming scarce resource globally – even more-so in rapidly growing urban environments.In fact, according to the UN, water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population growth in the last century. – See more at: http://www.unwater.org/statistics_use.html#sthash.SVRxbpoE.dpuf Also, increased droughts, and flash floods are not helping matters.

To help alleviate this, it is great to see IBM stepping up to the challenge and helping with the issue in various communities:

  1. In London for example IBM announced that it will be working with Thames Water to improve operations and customer interaction. According to the announcement, the alliance will analyse big data and social media to boost “safety, reducing total expenditure and environmental impact alongside lowering energy and chemical costs”. This is important as Thames Water ramps up to meet the obligations of the next regulatory period (Asset Management Programme 6 – AMP6) from 2015-2020.
  2. IBM are also using big data and analytics to help the Arad Group process water consumption data of water meters. The Arad Group has water utility customers in 50 countries worldwide who could potentially benefit from this getting quick insights into water losses in its system. This solution also reduces by around the number of technician visits required by about 50%, freeing up those hours for more valuable work.
  3. IBM and Waterfund LLC, have signed up the Ministry of Water and Environment of Uganda to become the first African nation to become a member of the Water Cost Index (WCI). The Water Cost Index calculates the unsubsidised cost of freshwater production, to bring financial transparency to investors in water infrastructure. The hope is that this will help Uganda attract private sector funding and facilitate Uganda in the provision of clean and safe freshwater for its citizens.
  4. In South Bend, Indiana, federal requirements to change the way the sewer systems work meant that this small city (pop. 100,000) was going to be faced with a bill in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

    To avoid this they instrumented their sewers, and wirelessly piped the information from these sewers to IBM’s Intelligent Operation Center (IOC). South Bend now has the most instrumented sewer system in the world, reducing the number of waste water overflows and keeping the local water system cleaner. The system saves South Bend $100m in water capacity and reduces the number of fines South Bend would have been subject to by $600,000
  5. IBM has worked with partners to manage Lake George, one of New York’s most pristine natural ecosystems. This project aims to create a sophisticated lake environmental monitoring and prediction system giving scientists and the community a real-time picture of the health of the lake. The hope being that the software and lessons learned can ultimately be used to help other lake systems worldwide.
  6. And, IBM worked with the Dutch Ministry of Water (Rijkswaterstaat) on a project called Digital Delta. Theis project aims to provide realtime information on water quality, the impact of extreme weather events, and the risk of floods or droughts. It will enable relevant agencies to share this information quickly so response efforts can be quickly coordinated.

Ready access to water has been an issue for mankind since the dawn of time. With our ever growing global population, water is going to become an ever more pressing concern. Companies like IBM who can help alleviate some of these issues will no doubt have a ready market for the foreseeable future.

Image credit Tom Raftery.

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Trends & Concepts

Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 03/26/2010

Green numbers
Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Trends & Concepts

IBM Global Eco-Efficiency Jam Day 2

IBM Eco Jam Screenshot

Today is the final day of IBM’s Global Eco-efficiency Jam (it finishes at 6pm CET today) and it has been awesome.

There have been hundreds of discussions on all manner of Eco-related topics – everything from LEED certification, to Green software engineering, to Energy Efficiency certificates to Smart cities and collaboration.

People have been asking questions like:

If environmental reporting and efficiency actions becomes the norm, what kinds of incentives and rebates are available to help improve the time to value and return on investments?

Currently this question has had 8 replies.

The question with the most replies (right now) is –

Would you use a mobility car service – like the bicycle rental scheme in Paris but with a small, probably electric vehicle – rather than public transportation or a taxi?

and so far it has had 78 responses!

Often answers to questions directly contradict one another – such as the following answers to the mobility question above:

Yes, I would. But more for fun or visiting a city. Visiting clients on e-bike wearing business dress is difficult

and

When Montreal introduced its version of Vélib, called Bixi, most people anticipated tourists would be the prime users. But looking around the city on a nice summer day, most the bikes are used by men and women in business suits, going from one building to the next. For short rides of 2-4 km, you needn’t even break a sweat.

These kind of contradictory answers are inevitable when the participants come from over 100 countries reflecting their country’s culture and infrastructure.

Other discussions were more straightforward

Looking beyond basic power policies on the operating system, do you have any form of PC power management operating on your PC at home or at work?

There is plenty of discussion on water as well with people discussing the merits of water metering, water harvesting and town/city water policies.

While I am contributing a bit to the discussions (I have added 39 posts and had 37 replies so far), I am learning a huge amount and coming into contact with participants I might never otherwise have met.

IBM should make this a regular event, no question.

[Disclosure] IBM asked me not to use the names of Jam participants in any blog posts I make here because IBM hadn’t sought their permission so I removed the names from the image above and didn’t credit people quoted above. If I have used your content and you are happy to have me credit you, let me know in the comments or by email (tom@redmonk.com) and I’m more than happy to do so.

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Trends & Concepts

The day that we see all devices which consume water having networked flow meters is still a ways off

atr
Photo credit Hypergurl – Tanya Ann

I wrote a post a couple of days ago asking the question How long until all devices which consume water have networked flow meters? after talking to Oracle VP Industry Strategy, Guerry Waters about Oracle’s recently released “Testing the Water: Smart Metering for Water Utilities” study.

Having put the question out there, I’m now going to discuss some of the factors which will influence the answer!

The first thing to realise from the Oracle data is that 76% of homeowners in the US are concerned with the need to conserve water in their community and 71% believe that having access to detailed consumption data would encourage them to take steps to lower their water use. So barring and big PR disasters like the PG&E Smart electricity Meter fiasco in Bakersfield, it would seem that the vast majority of consumers are bought into the idea of having smart meters to help lower water consumption.

How about the utilities? It looks like if they do decide to rollout smart water meters, they’ll very much be pushing an open door.

Funnily enough this is where it starts to get a bit nuanced!

First off, 83% of utilities who have conducted a cost-benefit analysis (n=86) support the adoption of smart meter technology, so that’s a good start, right?

Well, yes, but what are the motivations of the utilities?

It turns out that they are far more interested in using smart meters to enable early leak detection than in supplying customers with tools to monitor/reduce their consumption!

Right away this is problematic, if the aims of the utilities and their customers are not aligned, then this will greatly complicate any rollouts. Also, if the utilities are not strongly focussed on providing consumers with tools to reduce their consumption, any such tools which are provided to homeowners would most likely be sub-optimal (an after-thought).

Then, when asked what they perceived as roadblocks, the water utilities cited the lack of cost recovery or measurable ROI as well as the up-front utility expenses required – in fact, 64% of utilities are not even currently considering a smart meter program!

So, until the water utilities are as enthusiastic to roll out smart meters as their counterparts in the electrical utilities are, then the day that we see all devices which consume water having networked flow meters is still a ways off.

Of course, in the case of the electric utilities, their enthusiasm is certainly not hurt by the amount of recovery act monies being pored into smart grids!

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Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts

How long until all devices which consume water have networked flow meters?

atr
Photo credit bmitchellw

Oracle published the results of a very interesting study recently called Testing the Water: Smart Metering for Water Utilities.

Now, we have all heard about the compelling case for Smart Meters for electrical consumption (I have written and spoken about it extensively) but in this study Oracle asked utilities and their customers about the benefits of rolling out Smart Meters for managing water consumption.

Part of the reason for undertaking this study was that water shortages are already being seen in the South East United States, Western Canada, and Southern California.

In fact, according to the EPA’s WaterSense site:

  • At least 36 states are projecting water shortages between now and 2013.
  • Each American uses an average of 100 gallons of water a day at home.
  • Approximately 5 to 10 percent of American homes have water leaks that drip away 90 gallons a day or more! Many of these leaks reside in old fixtures such as leaky toilets and faucets. If the 5 percent of American homes that leak the most corrected those leaks—it could save more than 177 billion gallons of water annually!
  • The average [US] household spends as much as $500 per year on their water and sewer bill and can save about $170 per year by installing water-efficient fixtures and appliances.

Some of the results of the Oracle water study show that:

  • 68% of water utility managers believe it is critical that water utilities adopt smart meter technologies
  • 76% of consumers are concerned about the need to conserve water in their community
  • 69% of consumers believe they could reduce their personal water use
  • 71% of consumers believe receiving more detailed information on their water consumption would encourage them to take steps to lower their water use
  • 83% of water utilities who have completed a cost- benefit analysis support the adoption of smart meter technology

So, the public is concerned about water conservation and believes that more information would help them reduce their consumption of water. The majority of utility managers also believe smart meter technologies are critical, so things are looking rosy so far.

The data output from smart electricity meters is extremely granular and yields very specific energy footprints. With this data it is trivial to identify the devices using the energy down to make and model of the machine. However, this is not the case for smart water meters. Their output is far less granular – it will be quite difficult to map water consumption data from smart meters to individual devices within the house (unless there are flow meters attached to all the devices using water, for example).

What if though, you could tie-in the output of your electrical smart meter and your water smart meters? Analysing the data from the two meters it should be possible to identify at least some of the devices using water (fridge, dish washer, electric shower, etc.). Having this information tied-in to make and model of device would be extremely useful to help identify more water efficient appliances.

Because, for the most part, your water and electricity utilities are separate companies (or different business units within a utility), this is not a solution they are likely to pursue. However, there has been a surge in the number of 3rd party companies working on Home Management Software applications/devices.

Most recently we’ve seen that Apple are looking into the home energy management space, but others big names already involved include Google, Microsoft, Intel and Panasonic to name but a few.

With consumer’s actively interested in receiving more information about their energy and water usage and with the value that this data has, it is a no-brainer that Home Management Software will manage water consumption as well as energy in time.

How long before it is mandatory that all devices which consume water have networked flow meters and all homes have smart water meters?

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Business

IBM’s John Soyring talks about IBM’s Smart Planet initiatives around water

I posted my video interview with IBM’s John Soyring previously as part of a round-up of my impressions of the IBM Connect09 event. I have since had the interview transcribed so I thought I’d post it once more as a stand-alone post, with the transcription – the content is that good.

Transcription:
Tom Raftery:

Hi, everyone and welcome to GreenMonkTV. My guest in the show today is John Soyring from IBM. John you are a part of the IBM Software Group and we are at the Connect 09 Conference today and we are talking a lot about the Smarter Planet initiative from IBM. So IBM has traditionally been known as Big Blue. Are you guys now going to rebrand as Big Green?

John Soyring:

Well, certainly someone referred to that, but blue is important too because of the color that water appears to many peoples as well and water is part of our projects.

Tom Raftery:

The Blue Marble.

John Soyring:

It is.

Tom Raftery:

So tell us about some of the stuff you are doing around water, for instance, since you brought that out.

John Soyring:

Yeah, I would be happy to. So we have selected water because we know that there is already a shortage, globally, of the amount of potable water available to people and the lack of potable water is a major cause of health problems in parts of the world and has adverse impacts on economy; so right now is a problem already, a pretty severe problem.

Secondly as you look at supply and demand the amount of fresh water on the face of the earth or drinkable water or water that’s easily purified to be drinkable is finite in nature, it hasn’t changed over centuries really and the total amount – it is a very significant amount.

Yet, the demand with population growth and with the growth of certain economies around the world where more and more people are demanding water not only for their own personal use, but also for commercial use – there is an increased stress on the system. So we look at it from a macroeconomic standpoint and say there’s has got to be something we could do to help here.

So this team got together and said how could we apply technology to help all of the world of water, whether it’s managing water resources or helping people to better distribute the water or very importantly how to make more intelligent decisions on how to consume water.

So if I use one example as representative and I won’t give out their specific numbers because they share them on confidence with me of what they are doing, but as an example the country of Malta we were very fortunate to work with them, because of the work they were already doing and recognizing that water is extremely important to the people, the citizens of Malta and the visitors, but very importantly as they continue to grow their economy an increased availability of water is going to be critical to that.

What they told me, 100% of the water comes from rain catchments that’s about 55-60% of the total supply and about 40% or 50%, it varies, I believe, during the year is seawater from the Mediterranean Sea that’s desalinated, purified, and then distributed. Now, as I had the benefit of coming and visiting some of their desalination centers and purification centers, and they were already using state-of-the-art technology.

Now in the future will there be a better technology with nanotechnology and other on filtration systems? Very likely; so it’s great to be able to work with some people who already on the leading edge of pushing the technology to it’s boundaries.

The second is how you would distribute that water, because today water in almost all cities and regions of the world or countries in the world is heavily subsidized by tax payers. Consumers don’t really realize the true cost of water because the price…

Tom Raftery:

Water is free. You just turn the tap and there it is.

John Soyring:

It is so inexpensive the monthly bill that people perceive it to be free, but in reality the cost is much higher that what they are being charged. With governments – city, regional, federal governments around the world being stressed because there’s a gap between the taxes they collect and the amount that they are spending is not a sustainable economic model.

So eventually water will have more and more market prices and for decades, now I have been projecting personally. This is my own personal opinion that the price of a barrel of water will far exceed the price of a barrel of oil. And what’s important is we can live without a barrel of oil, we’ve got alternatives to oil. It’s going to take a while to develop those, but we don’t know really have alternatives to water that we have to drink and survive whether it’s animals or human beings in that category.

Tom Raftery:

Because I saw in a statistic recently that it takes 16,000 liters of water to produce one kilo a beef.

John Soyring:

It is expensive and the other thing I found recently and it takes quite a few liters of water to produce a one liter of beer.

Tom Raftery:

I’ll give up the beef, I won’t give up with the beer.

John Soyring:

I happen to be a real big fan of one of your Irish beverages.

Tom Raftery:

Guinness?

John Soyring:

Yes, the Guinness is just absolutely wonderful, but think about this and Malta is pretty representative of many other countries. We create this purified drinkable water very expensively on a per liter basis, we distribute it, our water systems are very old, many times measured in centuries not just decades.

There’s leaks in the system, so there’s loss of water in the distribution system, loss of water when they get in to the buildings – the residential homes or commercial buildings, loss in the building is pretty bad also from a health standpoint because it creates mould which has adverse affect on the living beings that are in that home or that commercial building; but, very importantly when you think about we designed our plumbing systems that assume as you pointed out water is free.

So we use it for all sorts and I was shocked as I talked to the CEOs of different water utility companies around the world that’s a very higher percentage of water that’s just flushed down the toilet; a very significant part and that when you look at the majority of it that’s actually going for irrigation for the grasses and lawns, or for the flowerbeds, for vegetable gardens, for trees, for irrigation, for farms, it’s a very high percentage. None of it really needs the quality of potable water that we have.

Tom Raftery:

So there’s a disconnect there between the amount that’s flushed down the toilet and what could be used for irrigation purposes?

John Soyring:

And the interesting thing, as I was in Malta meeting with some of the government leaders and the business leaders in Malta and on my flight back to the United States the airline had copies of the Financial Times and I was reading through a section and it was a Middle East country, I believe it was Qatar back in about April had a paid section that they put in and talked about the different parts the government one of which is water management.

I taught that it was just absolutely visionary what they are doing because the leaders in Qatar were setting goals for the future, they wanted to able to — every time they created a liter of a drinkable water, they want to able to use that liter seven times before they dispose of that.

Tom Raftery:

Wow!

John Soyring:

Now, so that’s a great vision. Now the question is from our system today that use the water once in 95% plus of the cases, how can we get to a case where we are satisfy a vision like Qatar has of using it seven times?

Certainly a new plumping system would do, but another thing is if we have the intelligent sensors of where the water is being used, then we can people aware of their consumption habits are we’ve certainly seen that in hybrid vehicles that when they no what their patrol consumption is they try to optimize that and change behavior.

Now if we can make that information available to the consuming public and also if they know what the real cost of water is and the benefits, we think we can precipitate some of that change.

So that’s what we are doing and for the smart water grid in Malta, we’ve signed several other deals and just issued press release earlier this week, one for the lower Colorado River Authority, which is a watershed in Texas supplying water to central Texas.

One is in Japan with a water utility, one is in Australia, and then there’s a variety of other projects anywhere from working on the Hudson River in New York, which has in its 1960s and 1970s, unfortunately, became very polluted.

Tom Raftery:

Sure.

John Soyring:

To be able to place sensors through the river to identify when various chemicals – whether it’s agricultural runoff, industrial chemicals, personal use chemicals, because people are using medications, but they eventually flow out of you body, usually get flushed down the toilet, but they end up not being separated during the water purification process for sewage, and when they do the sewage processes it mixes in the river.

So if we put sensors in the river, we can identify the source and start to mitigate the pollution problem by hitting it at the source as soon as possible.

Tom Raftery:

You did a project in Galway Bay in Ireland as well.

John Soyring:

Yeah, absolutely, and as you know being Irish the Bay in Galway is probably the major source of economic growth for the city of Galway and the surrounding region, whether it’s the fisheries which depend on the quality of the water, they have better catches if the water quality is better; to Galway is one of the major import and export centers, the ports in Ireland so the commerce of the country of Ireland is very dependent upon the success of it.

Vacationers, people like to bathe in Galway Bay, so by putting sensors throughout on buoys throughout the Bay we are able to capture information and help Ireland be the first country to start satisfying a European regulation where this data has to be captured and made available to the public immediately, so they can make decisions. One of the things that we measure is E. coli high concentrations.

Tom Raftery:

Right.

John Soyring:

If the concentration level is below what the Health Department determines is acceptable or the EPA in Ireland they say bathers feel free to go in. Now people can make that decision rather than waiting for a notice and perhaps missing it in the newspaper, going swimming, and then ending up with some health problems.

Tom Raftery:

John, that’s been great. Thanks, for taking the time to come on the show.

John Soyring:

Oh! It’s a pleasure. Thank you for coming here to this event.

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Business

IBM’s Software Analyst Connect event, Smarter Planet and sustainability

I attended IBM’s eighth annual Software Analyst Connect (#Connect09) last week in Connecticut. The theme of the event was “IBM Software for a Smarter Planet”.

You have to admire IBM for coming up with the Smart Planet branding strategy. Now anything Smart (Smart Cities, Smart Water even Smart Work) is automatically, subconsciously associated with IBM.

The Connect 09 event itself was superb. The delegates were all analysts and I was humbled to be in the company of so many really bright people.

It was a two day affair broken up into a healthy mix of keynotes, breakout sessions, round tables, an appliance showcase and chats with experts. The content level was very high and the networking opportunities were off the charts (I had face time with Steve Mills, Al Zollar, Sandy Carter and John Soyring (in the video above) to name-drop but a few).

The breakout sessions had titles like:

  • IBM’s Industry Frameworks and Solutions for a Smarter Planet
  • Driving Smarter Business Outcomes with Analytics and Information and
  • Smart Work and Dynamically Adaptive Collaboration

So while the content was quite in-depth and at times extremely technical, unfortunately there wasn’t a strong emphasis on sustainability. This is no big surprise as this was never billed as a sustainability-related event.

Having said that IBM’s larger Smarter Planet strategy talks very much to the Internet of Things vision where everything is instrumented with RFID tags or sensors and inter-connected which has massive potential implications for making the world more sustainable.

Then the talks from Steve Mills referenced IBM’s work with utilities in the Smart Grid arena and the development of the SAFE Framework while John Soyring talked up IBM’s work around the world on Smart Water initiatives.

The one use of the Smart X lingo which IBM use and I do object to is Smart Oilfields. The thinking goes that Smart Oilfields are ones that extract oil more efficiently from the ground. I’m sorry, but CO2 is a pollutant which is endangering all life on this planet. Anything which helps put more CO2 into the atmosphere, cannot be very smart.

It was spectacular to get a chance to record my chat with John Soyring about IBM’s work on water globally. Take 10 minutes to watch the video above. You’ll be glad you did.

Full disclosure, IBM is a client and paid my airfare (economy) to attend the event, accommodation and all delegates received a gift of a solar phone charger.

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Trends & Concepts

Never run a conference at a venue that can’t provide water dispensing machines, instead of bottled water

Bottled water is bad

I attend a lot of conferences.

The two most recent ones I was at were both run by SAP. The first was the International SAP for Utilities conference in Munich, the second was the SAP TechEd conference in Vienna. Both events were very interesting for a variety of reasons but both conferences left a nasty (dry) taste in my mouth because the only water available to drink was bottled water!

What is the big deal about using bottled water, you ask?
Well, according to Food and Water Watch:

Bottled water wastes fossil fuels and water in production and transport, and when the water is drunk the bottles become a major source of waste. It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Each one of those bottles required nearly five times its volume in water to manufacture the plastic and may have caused the release of nickel, ethylene oxide, and benzene. Then, rather than being recycled, 86 percent of them are thrown away. Breaking down these plastics can take thousands of years, while their components seep into our water supplies.

And don’t just take their word for it, check out the NRDC’s page on bottled water. See also Lighterfootstep.com’s 5 Reasons not to drink Bottled Water and even Wikipedia’s entry on bottled water vs tap water, which tells us amongst other things that:

In the United States, bottled water costs between $0.25 and $2 per bottle while tap water costs less than US$0.01. In 1999, according to a NRDC study, U.S. consumers paid between 240 and 10,000 times more per unit volume for bottled water than for tap water. According to Bottledwaterblues.com, about 90% of manufacturer’s costs is from making the bottle, label, and cap.

What’s worse, a significant proportion of bottled water is simply tap water which has been bottled! No, really. Both Aquafina from PepsiCo and Dasani from The Coca-Cola Company originate from municipal water systems, for example!

Despite all that, an estimated 50 billion bottles of water are consumed per annum in the US and around 200 billion bottles globally.

Come on SAP. You are working hard on improving your sustainability message. And by and large are doing a good job at it but really, bottled water? In 2009?

Here’s my challenge to SAP (and all conference organisers) – make commitment that you will never again run a conference at a venue that can’t provide water dispensing machines, instead of bottled water.

Seriously, if you are negotiating with a venue about holding your event and you mention that that is a dealbreaker, they’ll provide the machines.

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