Greenwash (verb, \ˈgrēn-wȯsh\) - to market a product or service by promoting a deceptive or misleading perception of environmental responsibility.

Companies are launching major ad campaigns to tout their green credentials, but many of their claims are misleading. So how can we know who’s telling the truth about supposedly green products? “Greenwashing” is eroding the credibility of environmental marketing and turning would-be green consumers into skeptics. But there’s a way to end the practice and increase transparency, and new software is a key component of the solution.

Scrutiny of green business campaigns is reminiscent of the demand to hold corporations accountable for their financial reporting. The U.S. is still a leader in financial accounting (thanks in part to accounting software systems), but we need to develop the same infrastructure for environmental accounting to prevent further greenwashing. Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software is becoming the foundation of this infrastructure, and the market is growing; roughly 60 vendors are currently providing solutions. ECA software enables companies to consistently track the many components of their carbon footprint while identifying opportunities for cost savings and waste reduction, making a whole new era of corporate environmental transparency well within reach.

For ECA software and environmental accounting adoption to drive truly green business practices and make greenwashing obsolete, we need action in five main categories:

Clear Government Action on Regulations

lncreased coverage of existing new policies and decisive action on new legislation could quickly increase the adoption of carbon accounting and the use of ECA software. The EPA’s Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule, which requires companies that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse gases annually to disclose emissions to the EPA, could be expanded to include smaller businesses (who collectively have a large carbon footprint). Decisive action on new legislation is also a potential boost to ECA software adoption and a threat to greenwashing.

Adoption of Carbon Accounting Principles

Stricter requirements for disclosure of standardized corporate emissions information, now possible with the adoption of ECA software, would provide a far-reaching and objective method with which to examine a company’s environmental record. When such a measure exists and becomes widely used, one will only need to refer to these numbers to get an impression of a company’s overall environmental performance. It will be a lot more difficult to conceal adverse impacts on the environment in implementing greenwashing campaigns.

Expansion of Scope 3 Emissions Accounting

Mandatory inclusion of suppliers’ emissions and other indirect emissions sources in company environmental reports (Scope 3) would prevent under-reporting of emissions; absolutely all emissions would be measured and reported without room for loopholes. Requiring Scope 3 measurement would also spread more adoption of general carbon accounting throughout the supply chain; when a business must account for Scope 3, it must ask its suppliers to track their carbon footprints. Then those suppliers must ask their own suppliers and so on to create a tidal wave of carbon accounting and emissions transparency – the greenwasher’s worst nightmare.

Better Green Business Incentives

Using ECA software to identify eco-friendly savings opportunities can make it cheaper to truly go green, making it unneccessary for businesses to greenwash in the first place as they find that shrinking their carbon footprints and minimizing costs can go hand-in-hand. Government incentives can also encourage eco-friendly business practices. A global survey this year by workspace solutions provider Regus concluded that 63% of U.S. companies need more tax breaks to accelerate green investments. ECA software can develop to alert users to new opportunities to take advantage of government incentives as more of these opportunities emerge, ensuring that green sincerity is in the best interests of businesses.

Demanding, Informed Consumers

Demanding the hard numbers from standardized carbon accounting reports, while boycotting the proven greenwashers, forces businesses with green marketing campaigns to prove their sincerity or else re-think their public relations strategies. After all, fully informed consumers make deception by greenwashing impossible. When standardized carbon accounting is required and ECA software is available, companies won’t have any more excuses to conceal their carbon footprint. At that point, the responsibility will rest with the consumer to leverage informed demand and phase out greenwashing entirely.

Hunter Richards is Accounting Market Analyst at Software Advice.

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By now, most of us have heard about the infamous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the woes that BP has had in trying to cap it. The exact total amount of the spillage is actually unknown, but estimates keep climbing.

But have you ever considered exactly how they calculate and track that oil spill? Well, there happens to be some very specialized software that does exactly that… and given the current events we thought it would be good to take a look at this software. There are two types of software that we need to look at — one to estimate the size of the spill at the site, and the other to track that spill over a given period of time.

Calculating Spill Size
Released by The Oil Spill Training Company Limited, The Slick Calculator And Reporter uses the Bonn Agreement Code — an internationally recognized system — to generate its information. The software uses the overall appearance of the oil spill to calculate the volume of oil in the water by the estimated oil thickness.

The software uses either aerial photography or surface measurements of an oil spill. Drawing and input tools allows the spills to be measured, and the comparison to the Bonn Agreement code gives the volume, once the range is calculated. Once the size of the spill is known, then it can be reported to the inter-related agencies using the known standard. From there the focus is not on the size of the spill, but rather coordinated containment efforts.

Not only does the Slick Calculator give you a total on the spot, it can also spit out detailed reports based on statutory or international formats as required, utilizing a full range of markers, standard terms, and symbols. This gives the information needed for both historical documentation and incident debriefing.

Tracking the Spill
GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment) is the oil spill trajectory model used by the OR&R Emergency Response Division (ERD) responders during a live oil spill event. ERD uses GNOME in a diagnostic mode to create scenarios quickly, but anyone can use GNOME in its standard mode of operation. In fact, you can download it right now for free.

Using Gnome could not be simpler. Download it to your machine of choice (Windows or Mac are currently supported), and install it as usual. When the program starts, it will ask you for a location file which describes the area in question. If you just want to try the program, one location file is shipped with it (Central Long Island Sound), and load it up. The program starts up, and you can enter the spill by drawing it on the map with the mouse.

Once entered, the app asks you for details, such as what kind and how much material was spilled (such as from the Slick Calculator above). From there it is a simple process to select a time in the future to see on a map how our spill has progressed. You can also fine tune the information to get a more in depth model. In the screen shot below I added a linear spill of 12,000 barrels, and the map shows how it would be 23 hours later.

Of course, you may want to model places other than the included location, and NOAA has happily provided location files for many areas, with new files being added as time progresses. For a better experiment, we take our hand at modeling a spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We download a Mobile Bay location file, and set up a spill out from the shore with a spill having 25,000 barrels (in other words, 5 days of the estimated 5k/day that BP is spilling in the Gulf of Mexico as of this writing). We add in a steady wind at 2 knots for good measure, and run the simulator. See the results below:

Diagram 1: Fresh Spill in Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico

Diagram 2: Same Spill 24 Hours Later

Diagram 3: Spill hits land in 48 hours

You can freely download the app and desired location files to play your own “What If” scenario as you see fit, and there are example scenarios with the location files to let you understand the modeling process better than what space allows here.

The important thing to note from our look at software tools to track oil spills is this – anyone with a modern day desktop or laptop and access to information found on the web can easily run their own oil spill tracking scenario. You are not limited to what the news reports – instead you can model it for yourself.

When news of offshore drilling drops, you can see what potential impact it could have in your area of concern. With a little effort and some information about historical (and current, unfortunately) spill volumes, you can quickly have a fairly good idea of what could happen if the unthinkable happens.

Article by D. Salmons from TestFreaks, which collects product information and reviews from over 60 countries and several thousand sources.

Photo: Deepwater Horizon Response

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For those unaware, Microsoft Hohm is an online service that allows consumers to see how much electrical power and gas they use in a given month, with suggestions on how to lower their consumption.

Microsoft recently updated this application with some new features including information pages covering every zip code in the United States and two dozen behavior recommendations for those who take the time to create a Hohm energy profile. Hohm also now features an energy breakdown dashboard that provides more detailed information about where your household is using the most energy.

Microsoft is not the only company getting in on home energy efficiency. A group of appliance and energy companies including Best Buy, Direct Energy, Lennox International, OpenPeak and Whirlpool are working on something called the Home Energy Management Center. What makes this effort unique is that it will be focused on homes of all income levels as opposed to the middle or upper class approach that most other companies are taking.

The Home Energy Management Center is being described as a “command center” for the smart home. It will also provide access to news, weather, social networking, music and movie applications and allow them to manage their energy consumption according to certain predetermined budget levels or operating limits. It is estimated that consumers will be able to save up to 25 percent per month on their energy bill.

EcoFactor is another company that is taking a very unique approach to home energy efficiency. The system EcoFactor is working on will combine your home energy consumption with information about environmental conditions. The idea behind this system is that the consumer does not necessarily want the temperature of their house set to the same level everyday. The temperature outside may not change very much day to day, but the same temperature can feel different depending on the moisture in the air.

These are just a few of the companies that are working hard to cut down home energy consumption. Hopefully, in the coming years the wide variety of systems being will make it possible for everyone to monitor their energy usage regardless of whether or not they can afford home automation.

Richard Moyle works for Horizon Window Treatments in New York City.

photo: Jeremy Levine Design

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A nanorobot which defends a single cell against dangers such as the AIDS virus or H1N1 is the main character of a video game about molecular biology that is being developed by the Universidad Santo Tomas, in Chile.

Kokori, which means “collective game” in Rapanui (the language spoken in Easter Island), is one of six projects that won 2.3 million dollars in a contest about applying informative technology for educational purposes, organized by the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research.

Of the six projects, Kokori, which uses information taught at the high school level biology, won $424,000.

Virginia Garretón, director of the project, also mentioned that the cell would also face obstacles such as bacteria, which the nanorobot would have to fend off using antibiotics as weapons. Lack of nourishment or attacks from toxic compounds or carcinogens will also pose threats.

The structure and function of the cell would also be included in the game, as a response to suggestions from biology teachers that were polled.

The game will be developed based on free distribution software for use on any platform (Linux, Windows, etc.) and will have little technological requirements.

Article appearing courtesy ENN.

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Turning the country’s vast islands of proprietary utility networks and isolated power equipment into an intelligent grid that manages the power going into homes, offices and factories will take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars. IBM is partnering with veteran energy efficiency and grid communications company Trilliant to ensure that the companies’ grid hardware and software will speak the same language.

The agreement to integrate IBM’s Websphere and Tivoli products for managing enterprise data into Trilliant’s smart grid communications system provides utilities with and end-to-end system for collecting information and administering grid operations.

Trilliant, which currently has more than 200 utility customers, provides technology that can relay information about power consumption and network performance from smart meters in homes, to utility equipment out in the field such as transformers and substations, and then on to centralized (head end) utility servers. The company will build its management system using Websphere’s application server and the Tivoli network management suite.

IBM and Trilliant will be able to resell each others products, enabling utilities to work with one company for all of its smart grid management needs. The two will also work together to develop grid standards, and will coordinate efforts with national standards bodies.

Trilliant is forming strategic relationships with many of the top smart grid firms, including system integrators Cap Gemini and Accenture, and equipment companies GE and Itron. “It’s a very small world where you are [both] partners and competitors. You have to be very flexible,” said Trilliant CEO Andrew White.

The federal government has provided $4 billion in stimulus funding for smart grid initiatives, and venture capital investment in energy efficiency startups grew by 168 percent during the second quarter of 2009.

IBM says the utilities and energy sector is one of the highest growth industries for the company. In addition to enhancing its products to make energy equipment more efficient, IBM is also looking to sell services to mitigate the impact of climate change (which the energy industry has had a hand in creating) on utilities.

According to a recent IBM-sponsored report, ninety percent of utilities expect that climate change will put their business at risk due to more severe weather that will damage equipment and reduce the availability of fresh water.

Appearing courtesy of Matter Network.

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Imagine directing traffic in Manhattan when the power is out, no one knows how to find the bridges or tunnels, and most of the drivers are speaking different languages. That scenario is similar to what smart grid company Gridpoint is up against in building software than will enable electric vehicles, charging equipment, utilities and grid operators to all get along.

Gridpoint is developing version 3 of its Smart Charging software (due to ship to customers in September) that will schedule and monitor vehicle charging while keeping track of the grid’s health. The software includes tools that enable utilities to understand how vehicles individually and in aggregate are impacting power demand. Utilities can compare recent vehicle demand on the grid with what would have happened with no control over vehicle charging to see how well their attempts at shifting the load are doing. The Smart Charging software also provides day-ahead demand projections based on previous charging data.

By connecting to the grid applications that control the power flow via the Open Automated Demand Response Communication Standards, Gridpoint can slow down or stop vehicle charging during times of peak demand.

Gridpoint has been busy lining up partnerships with many of the largest utilities during their ongoing EV trials, and this week added CabAire, eVco, Plug Smart Intelligent Energy Solutions and eTec as charging equipment partners. The eTec relationship encompasses more than 12,000 charging stations that are being set up in cities across the U.S., which are partially funded by the DOE.

Gridpoint’s John Clark says his company’s role in electric vehicle charging is to “make it invisible.” The company works with utilities to integrate vehicle charging into their existing IT infrastructure at a cost of often more than $1 million.

To enable the smart management of charging for the first plug-in and all-electric vehicles, a small hardware module will be placed in the vehicle, according to Clark. This “brute force method” of proprietary equipment will be superseded by hardware integrated into the vehicle that will employ standards being developed for sharing data. Rather than requiring an upgrade to the vehicles, Clark says the Smart Charging software will have to remain backward compatible.

Gridpoint is developing complex algorithms that must account for many factors, including the percentage of the battery depleted, the power transfer speed of the charging equipment (i.e. Level 1,2, or 3) , aggregate demand on the grid, and what time of day customers want their vehicles to be fully charged, just to name a few.

This “middleware” market that connects EVs to the smart grid will get crowded as more utilities prepare and the number of vehicles on the road grows. Companies such as Cisco, IBM, GE, and consulting firms such as Accenture and Cap Gemini will all look to play a role.

Appearing courtesy of Matter Network.

[photo credit: Gridpoint]

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