The GreenMoli Blog

Checkout my new blog

2010-08-14T22:52:00.001-07:00

Finally, having battled with SEO, I am putting my thoughts together in this new blog. Hopefully I will have the time and energy and the prodding of few smart people to keep it going here :).

If you are in the Atlanta area, call on my brother's new Handyman biz

2010-08-14T22:36:00.001-07:00

Especially if you are commercial - a hotel, office, building or industrial enterprise needing facility management maintenance work, he is offering some really good deals to sign you up as customer at this point. The company - Crisis Solutions of Georgia has a good deal of experience in this kind of maintenance work. Especially pools, large scale equipment etc. If you own a home and have regular handyman work, you may want to give Crisis Solutions of Georgia a shot as well. Tell them I sent you there and get a discount!

Used cars: A sunk cost with positivity

2008-05-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

This article in wired explains it all pretty well - If you are buying a hybrid to go green, think again. There are enough used cars in the market. Hybrids or not, these offer a better and more efficient way to conserve energy, stay cheap and go green. In fact, here is a better way to calculate how much your decision to buy any car impacts the environment: Car manufacturers are busy manufacturing the latest models and tracking demand. Each new model picked off from the market contributes to two or more they will produce new. Producing a new car means more energy will be spent and this we need to factor into what we are saving overall with new technology. As the article says, the dent made by the energy required to produce a Toyota Prius is almost 100K miles of driving with it already wasted.

Basically the idea is to choose efficiently and waste less. However, it comes at the cost of affecting profits of car companies which in turn makes the new cars more expensive as time passes and technology adoption/evolution slower.

A slow Volt or a fast Volt

2008-05-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Here is news from GM on how the Volt is coming along, timed to appear in showrooms in 2010. The Volt is a hybrid and the main difference between it and others on the road (since some may ask - why does it take so long for GM to produce a hybrid?) is that it is a different kind of hybrid - the gasoline engine is simply used to charge a Lithium battery. The overall range of the Volt could be as much as 640 miles! For more, read here.

Do we care about this now?

2008-05-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

I think when it comes to the average user and energy issues. Clearly there is a split. There is a set of users who are more educated about Green house emissions and the effects of CO2. Carbon based fuels usage needs to be clearly reduced for that. There is another set of users who didn't care about carbon fuels till now until one of them, gasoline, got way expensive. These are the cost sensitive users.

I think at this point, we have a good momentum as far as reducing petroleum consumption simply because it has started to psychologically affect a much larger percentage of people. Gas prices can alter the course of election - something the green house emissions issue was not able to achieve. I believe if both the issues are resolved by a solution which helps on both sides of the equation - reduces dependency on expensive and scarce fuel and helps reduce greenhouse emissions that that is simply great.

Read more here.

A Micro Refinery just for you!

2008-05-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a very innovative concept: A micro fueler. While I am not completely bought into the ethanol concept I am very much into brew your own gas concept. This one allows you to produce it in your own backyard using anything which is sugar based. I will be researching more into E-100 and the benefits of this innovation coming next.

Select Green Funds...

2008-02-07T06:48:00.000-08:00

Here is something we can all do very easily without hurting our bottomlines and this will have a great effect: Stop investing in mutual funds and stocks of companies which do not do anything about going green. Clearly the Oil and Natural Gas are out of scope. You will be surprised that 41% of all Oil companies are owned by the American public - firefighters, engineers, doctors etc. When you select a mutual fund, look at the portfolio it has and the sector split and choose carefully. There are green funds as well, which invest money in green technology itself and that is even better. I will be posting some funds here soon...

GreenMoli Gadgets

2008-01-31T20:46:00.000-08:00

Going green is all about giving people more control for how they can manage their behavior in a way that micro level decisions can be made easily and it makes economic and budgetary sense to make those decisions.

Fast Company Blogger Anya Kamenetz posted this blog which mentions the following key gadgets which are right-on to implement this philosophy:

1) Wattson: A wireless home energy monitoring device for about $300.
2) iSave: A water monitor which can be used on taps etc.
3) PLOGG: A device which implements zigbee/bluetooth wireless mode to send energy consumption data to your PC.

Also interesting is this article on 50 ways to go green in your business

Ethanol for a buck!

2008-01-24T17:57:00.000-08:00

Coskata, a company based in Illinois has figured out a way to make Ethanol without using up the Corn supply. The implication is that now every state and every county can produce ethanol on their own using local biomass supply and reduce the cost of transporting and maintaining it. This means that the number of gas stations which have the E85 supply can now go up from 1% to 100% in a relatively short amount of time.

Some other facts about ethanol you should know: Ethanol cars are most common in Brazil and its produced from Sugarcane there. In the U.S, GM, Ford and Chrysler have sold cars which can run on both gas and ethanol since the last few years (you may be completely unaware of this). However ethanol gas stations are extremely few at this point. More information on Ethanol can be found here.

Who will do it?

2008-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

I read this post on "But What If We HAVE To Do It?" from Terry and clearly it makes a lot of sense. It also jives in with the message we are trying to send from this blog: Its possible to figure out ways in the next ten years to make our habits and behaviors more sustainable for this planet. California is a benchmark for all of us and it proves that it can be done. I am very concerned of what the EPA is up to with allowing California to get even tougher and set some goals for all of us. Agreed, all that would make life hard for a whole bunch of people, but these are the only people who have the control and the responsibility to do it!

Here is Prius from the future and Here is the Nano from the past

2008-01-23T06:48:00.000-08:00

Ah. Tata announced a cool $2,500 car and it has everyone's eyes turning. Somewhat a celebrity since it has cool looks, I think the car is a disaster really if you look at the environmental specs. I blogged on this elsewhere, so I wont repeat it here. The car doesn't use any sort of hybrid or alternate fuels. Gives a mere 60mpg - which is about 20 less than I would expect.

I think the car is a danger to the environment. At $2,500 it gives the key to a lot of people to go gas the environment.

Prius: Lead Star

2008-01-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Learn more about Prius and its hacker community in these articles which reveal how the Prius is allowing users to take control of their energy consumption and self environmental engineering!

EPA: Something Fishy?

2008-01-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

Something surely smells fishy by this recent decision to "white out" powerpoints and other documents by EPA in the recent California/EPA lawsuit where EPA denied the state's waiver to go ahead and impose some of the toughest green house emission standards.

Also read this interesting item on the California Factor.

Green Buildings

2008-01-17T13:19:00.001-08:00

Do you know……?

In the United States alone, buildings account for:
• 65% of electricity consumption,
• 36% of energy use,
• 30% of greenhouse gas emissions,
• 30% of raw materials use,
• 30% of waste output (136 million tons annually), and
• 12% of potable water consumption.

Benefits of Green Building
Environmental benefits:
• Enhance and protect ecosystems and biodiversity
• Improve air and water quality
• Reduce solid waste
• Conserve natural resources
Economic benefits:
• Reduce operating costs
• Enhance asset value and profits
• Improve employee productivity and satisfaction
• Optimize life-cycle economic performance
Health and community benefits:
• Improve air, thermal, and acoustic environments
• Enhance occupant comfort and health
• Minimize strain on local infrastructure
• Contribute to overall quality of life
Source: USGBC.org

Apple: With Leadership comes Responsibility

2008-01-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

Quoting Greenpeace - who recently singled out Apple for environmental responsibilities and the use of environmental friendly parts, no mercury etc in their laptops, iPods etc. I totally see what Rick (Greenpeace) is saying here - though Apple ships the least amount of laptops, that's really not the point. Its the thought leader in the market. However, ignoring the behemoths - HP/Dell sounds too ignorant as well. After all if one of the two becomes environment friendly and is still competetive, the other will follow hopefully.

Great news from IBM

2008-01-14T16:37:00.001-08:00

I think this real effort from IBM is definitely welcomed by everyone. Going green will require a lot of innovation and cutting edge technology. However, what makes this really work is the fact that prices for the green products in the market are reasonable. I think IBM's efforts will help in that direction by helping companies become more efficient and competent

Green is last on Obama's Agenda!

2008-01-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

This is really alarming. I read this a while back, but noticed today that Obama's list of initiatives in this list lists Green Energy initiatives at the very tail end!

Give people the controls and you shall have it!

2008-01-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

This article from New York Times says it all. If you give people controls to measure and set their energy usage, they will take control of the situation. Especially where there are knobs and levers to adjust and it looks like a game. Big Governments, tax measures, Auto companies can't do things at the pace normal people can make decisions and implement them.

Support OLPC - Its Green

2008-01-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

OLPC, best known as One Laptop Per Child initiative is Nicholas Negroponte's famous initiative which is popular in news these days. The best thing about the OLPC is how it uses parts which are not harmful to the environment. OLPC has the Get 1 Give 1 program. Please support!

Glass half full or half empty for Detroit?

2008-01-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

Maybe Detroit has another option - abandon the existing business which is loosing money like anything and focus just on hybrids or even better - alternate fuels. This would do a couple of interesting things. Foreign car makers would end up focusing on the existing U.S market for the next 10 years since this would leave a big gap. While these companies focus on what is a loosing proposition for the future, they would also loose public face. Detroit could make it big!

Chinese hurting the environment agenda?

2008-01-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

Here is China putting a cap on oil based inflation. By putting a cap on oil and everything connected to it, China is hurting the market for alternate energy and giving the local producers a free hand to keep polluting the environment.

Mr President: Please stay out!

2008-01-09T21:16:00.000-08:00

A recent story in Wired seems to indicate how vague the government's energy policy is! Its still based on taxes, waging wars and forcing laws onto us. Clearly security of the country is paramount, but not having alternative energy developed well is going to hurt that anyway in the longer term! So I would hope we go slow on waging these oil wars and let the price of oil rise. The American consumer would figure out how to spend his money. He doesn't need to be managed by the President with a zero effect tax policy!

Free Markets and the Environment

2008-01-09T19:27:00.001-08:00

Markets would be the last thing you would think would have a positive impact on the environment. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this article in the Time today where a single trader bid up oil to more than $100 a barrel. Now normally this would send jitters down my body - the stock markets could tank, inflation would go high etc, but in this case the writer pointed out that the higher price of oil would push up the demand for hybrids and other alternative fuel technology. Higher demand would mean higher returns in the market which by economic theory would attract more suppliers in a free market. That would eventually stabilize the prices to a level we can all afford to go green without tearing out our pockets!