by Timothy B. Hurst

If electric cars are going to ever capture anything more than a tiny sliver of the U.S. auto market, not only does a robust EV charging infrastructure need to be developed, there has to be an easy way to find those stations. Until recently, there has only been a fragmented collection of maps, usually based on charging networks or business and association partnerships. But as of last week, you can now get the location of EV charging stations on the Google Maps platform.

In partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and using data from the Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center, you can now locate over 600 stations nationally by typing "EV charging station near [city/location]". The station locations are pinpointed and listed in the viewing pane to the left of the map, just like any other Google Maps search result.

In the U.S. all the search results we tested had phone numbers and were explicitly categorized as an "Electric Vehicle Charging Station," an official category that previously did not exist in Google Maps.  The locator also works in London, UK but not in the four other major European cities I tested.

"We’d like to continue adding more charging stations to Google Maps, so we’re excited that our friends over at the the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working to make more data available," writes Cynthia Yeung of Google's Strategic Partner Development Team at the Google Lat Long Blog. "We’ll be adding more EV charging locations to Google Maps as their database, and others, are updated," she writes.

The new EV charging station locator, which will obviously be accessible via smartphone (and especially useful if it has turn-by-turn navigation), was announced just two days after a California startup released an iPhone app called PlugShare that allows EV users to locate charging stations, both public and private, check their availability and also share the location of their own at-home chargers.

Another new project, Electric Car Stations, which also uses the Google Maps platform, feels and behaves more like a wiki, giving community members the ability to add/edit stations and updating listings with more information like photos, tips, hours, phone numbers, etc.

Reprinted with permission from Earth & Industry

Xatori, Inc., a software company based in Palo Alto, California, has created an online community and mobile app for electric vehicle owners and enthusiasts who want to share their electric outlets with one another.

The PlugShare app aims to create a community-driven electric vehicle (EV) charging network that allows iPhone and iPod touch owners in the United States to share their outlets. PlugShare users can choose to share 240v J1772 plugs (compatible with the latest generation of EVs, such as the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt) or standard 120v outlets. PlugShare also includes an up-to-date listing of public charging stations.

In addition to sharing electricity, PlugShare users can browse a listing of public charging stations; view profiles of other PlugShare members; call or text other PlugShare members; and get directions to shared outlets or charging stations.

Users can freely browse the map of PlugShare members and charging stations, but must create a PlugShare account to view address and profile information. Users do not need a special outlet or an electric vehicle to sign up.

By crowd-sourcing the EV charging infrastructure problem, PlugShare hopes to reduce "range anxiety" or the possibility of running out of power; a common concern associated with EV ownership. PlugShare also offers a direct communication channel for EV owners and enthusiasts interested in accelerating EV adoption and ushering in the new era of oil-free transportation.

"Many people won't have EVs right away, but everyone has an electrical outlet," said Forrest North, CEO. "Sharing electricity from a standard outlet only costs about $0.15 an hour, a small price to lessen our dependence on oil."

North was previously founder and CEO at Mission Motors and an engineer at Tesla Motors. CTO Armen Petrosian was previously an engineer at Amprius and on the Stanford Solar Car team. Advisors include Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal and Slide) and Marc Tarpenning (co-founder of Tesla Motors). Xatori is based in Palo Alto, California.

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from Sustainable Business

by James Pomfret and Kelvin Soh

iPhone maker Apple was criticized by Chinese green groups for lax corporate oversight of its suppliers in China, leading to poor environmental and work safety standards that poisoned dozens of factory workers.

Apple, which announced blockbuster profits and a dazzling outlook for iPhone and iPad sales earlier this week, continues to be dogged by accusations of aggressive pricing and secretive supply chain management in Chinese factories where they now assemble most of their products.

"We've found that Apple isn't honoring its commitment in ensuring its supply chain's work safety and environmental responsibility and giving dignity and respect to the workers," said Ma Jun, of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) which published a detailed report on Apple supply chain malpractice Thursday, in conjunction with other green groups.

"(Apple) only care about the price and quality (of their products) and not the environmental and social responsibility issues. In some ways they drive the suppliers to cut corners to win their contracts," Ma said.

Apple said it had a rigorous auditing regime and all its suppliers were monitored and investigated regularly.

"Our supplier responsibility reports document the progress of our extensive auditing program since 2006," an Apple spokeswoman said.

Foxconn Suicides

Last year, Apple's main China supplier Foxconn was hit by over a dozen worker suicides that critics blamed on harsh factory conditions and a militaristic culture. Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has denied the allegations, saying that Foxconn is not a sweatshop.

Many Western multinationals -- including toymaker Mattel which suffered a toxic lead paint scandal in 2007 -- have struggled to regulate product quality across scores of suppliers in knotted Chinese supply chains, but the report said Apple's standards fell far short of its status as a leading global brand.

"It's not easy to control (the supply chain) but peer brands are doing a lot more (than Apple) to deal with this," said Ma.

The nine-month survey "The other face of Apple" found that at least 49 factory workers in eastern China working in factories assembling products for Apple, had fallen ill.

Lianjian Technology in the eastern city of Suzhou which the green group claims is one of Apple's major touchscreen suppliers, was accused of using N-Hexane, a toxic solvent, to clean touch screens, leading to at least 47 factory workers being poisoned.

Another company named by the green group as a user of N-Hexane was Taiwan-based touchscreen chip maker Wintek. A Wintek spokesman said it had stopped using the chemical and all its employees had recovered.

"Apple's lack of responsiveness eventually made us quite shocked. It's the whole complacency that it doesn't have to be accountable to the NGOs, to the communities, even to the poisoned workers," Ma told Reuters.

Reprinted with permission from Reuters

by Pete Danko

Twenty-five million hours of computer time? That’s a lot of “Call of Duty: Black Ops” gaming. Then again, a better use might be what Paul Fischer, a senior computational scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has in mind — conducting simulations and analysis of advanced nuclear reactor designs.

Fischer is one of the scientists benefiting from the largest ever awarding of DOE supercomputing time, announced this week by Secretary Steven Chu. Fifty-seven research projects won a total of 1.7 billion processor hours on what the DOE calls two world-leading supercomputers: the IBM Blue Gene/P (aka, “Intrepid”) at the Argonne lab in Illinois and the Cray XT5 (“Jaguar“) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

To put the power of these machines in perspective, the DOE notes “Jaguar’s computational capacity is roughly equivalent to 109,000 laptops all working together to solve the same problem.” Intrepid checks in at 26,000 laptops.

The department said the projects selected in a competitive, peer-reviewed process “include both academic and commercial research, including partnerships with companies such as GE and Boeing to use sophisticated computer modeling in the development of better wind turbines and jet engines.” Other areas of focus: the roles of ocean, atmosphere, land, and ice in climate change; advanced materials for lithium air batteries, solar cells and superconductors; fusion energy systems; fuel-efficient, near-zero-emissions systems; and carbon sequestration.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

The latest version of Google Earth provides a 3D view of trees, an innovation that Google officials say will emerge as a forestry planning tool for governments, environmentalists, and indigenous peoples. While earlier versions of the software showed forest cover from a bird’s eye view worldwide, Google Earth 6 takes users beneath the canopy level to explore more than 50 different tree species, from olive groves in Greece to patches of bamboo in the Amazon.

Google officials say they are working with different groups to use the software in conservation and reforestation projects, including efforts to map coastal mangrove forests in Mexico and the modeling of forest restoration projects in Kenya. “We want to make sure we’re adding in more information to make the planet more alive and more complete,” Peter Birch, Google Earth product manager, told Reuters. So far, Google has mapped 80 million trees in seven cities worldwide — including San Francisco, Chicago, Tokyo, and Athens — and in a section of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Susan DeFreitas

E-mail, content sharing and customer relationship management–if your business is currently running any of these applications on its own infrastructure, it could cut its computing carbon footprint by at much as 30 percent by moving operations to “the cloud,” according to a new study commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by Accenture and WSP Environment & Energy.

Cloud computing works, essentially, by allowing users to stop running computing applications on their own computers and have them run, instead, by large data centers which benefit from economies of scale. These data centers, according to Microsoft, achieve operational efficiencies beyond what even large corporate IT departments can achieve–and the smaller the business, the more it energy it can save.

The study assessed the carbon footprint of server, networking and storage infrastructure for three different deployment sizes (100, 1,000 and 10,000 users). For large corporations, the study showed typical savings of 30 percent or more in energy consumption and carbon emissions using cloud applications, while small organizations (100 users) showed a effective carbon footprint reduction of as much as 90 percent, simply by using a shared cloud environment instead of their own servers.

Microsoft calls this an opportunity for businesses to effectively ‘outsource’ their IT efficiency investments while working towards achieving sustainability goals. The complete white paper is available online.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

by Nino Marchetti

A class of Stanford University graduate students recently created a prototype of a computer laptop which can much more easily be broken down for recycling than notebook computers on the market today. The Bloom laptop, as it is called, earned the students an Autodesk Inventor of the Month award for October, as the students designed the laptop concept using Autodesk software.

The students, as part of Stanford’s ME310 course, wanted to tackle a problem around e-waste that, for example, saw 1.9 to 2.2 million tons of electronics becoming obsolete in 2005, with only 345,000 to 379,000 tons of it being recycled. The task assigned to these students by their professor was to “create a recyclable consumer electronics product that makes electronics recycling a simpler, more effective and engaging process.” This laptop concept effectively does this, sporting a modular design that can easily be separated into different material types – such as plastics, metals and circuitry – for easier recycling.

It is said the Bloom laptop idea “can be disassembled in just two minutes, without tools and in just 10 steps. By comparison, a commercially available laptop takes about 45 minutes to disassemble, requires three separate tools and involves as many as 120 steps.”

Also of note with this easy-to-dissemble design is a keyboard and track pad that can be detached to allow for improved ergonomics; and also an easier process “to repair and upgrade components over the lifetime of the product, so that buying a computer is no longer a singular investment, but a longer-term relationship between the consumer and the service provider.”

“Consumer electronics waste is a significant and growing problem,” said Robert Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk, in a statement. “These students are facing that issue head-on with their innovative Bloom laptop prototype. It’s encouraging and exciting to see college students embrace Digital Prototyping to tackle the sustainability challenges of our times.”

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

by Nino Marchetti

Computer company Dell, which recently took top large green company rankings in Newsweek, also recently unveiled some stylish new LED displays that are fairly energy efficient and eco-friendly. These displays – the 22-inch (ST2220), 23-inch (ST2320) and 24-inch (ST2420) – price between around $190 and $260 and look to be available now.

From a green focused perspective, these new Dell displays are fairly energy efficient, meeting Energy Star 5.0 guidelines for reduced energy consumption. They also contain what Dell says are “environmentally preferable materials such as arsenic-free glass and mercury-free panels,” making them easier for recycling when one decides to move on to a new display.

Beyond green aspects, these new displays provide features like 1920 x 1080 full HD resolution, a dynamic contrast ratio (estimated at 7,000,000 to 8,000,000:1), fast response time of 5ms typical (black to white) and a 16:9 aspect ratio. Connectivity is available through VGA and DVI (HDCP) ports, as well as HDMI, depending upon the model. They also don’t slouch in the looks department, with a glossy black design, touch controls on the bottom right panel, a bottom front bezel that becomes lit when switched on and a slim panel profile.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

by Pete Danko

Say you’re an entrepreneur looking to start a biofuels production company. Where’s your feedstock going to come from? How many biodiesel fueling stations are within easy delivery range? These are just the kind of bioenergy-data questions the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is trying to answer with the just-unveiled BioEnergy Atlas.

The atlas comes with two online visualization screening tools — BioPower and Biofuels Atlas — that “allow users to layer related bioenergy data onto a single map to gather information on biomass feedstocks, biopower and biofuels potential, production and distribution,” according a lab press release.

Funding for the BioEnergy Atlas came from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Blue Skyways Collaborative and the Energy Department’s Biomass Program. Those agencies, along with the Department of Agriculture, provide the data, which the NREL says allows for “timely and accurate analysis analysis of the potential of given sites to be successful biomass producers.”

The NREL imagines a wide range of users for the atlas, including “government and state agencies, universities, the petroleum and pipeline industries, research institutions, vehicle manufacturers, investment firms, GIS companies, private citizens and media.”

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling

by Susan DeFreitas

Those who fear the all-powerful nature of Google may not be that excited about the Google PowerMeter energy management system. But those who embrace the benevolent Google will now also have a chance to embrace the eMonitor online dashboard and hardware by Powerhouse Dynamics, recently announced as a Google PowerMeter Integrated Device Partner.

The eMonitor online dashboard, which works with a device that attaches to your circuit breaker panel in the home with sensors that clamp around each circuit, allows customers a more detailed view of their real-time power consumption at home, right down to the circuit and appliance level. This in turn–presumably–will help customers to determine exactly what it is that’s causing that spike in electricity consumption right around 8:30 AM every day, with detailed information that will allow them to distinguish the energy being used by the coffee-maker, say, versus the hair-dryer. The service can be accessed from any internet connection and is also equipped to help users set-up and receive alerts, view analysis and diagnostics, and receive cost-saving recommendations.

“Powerhouse Dynamics’ integrated device partnership with Google PowerMeter provides our customers with one more level of convenience in viewing home power consumption,” said Powerhouse VP of Business Development Tim Durant, in a statement. “eMonitor allows homeowners to monitor their circuit-level energy usage and provides the intelligence needed for identifying easy and actionable steps in lowering energy use, saving money and keeping homes safe. We are committed to delivering total flexibility in how and where consumers can access their power consumption.”

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling