If you’re running a data center, energy costs are a top concern. It takes power to run computers, store data and keep the place cool. In 2007, the U.S. spent $1.3B to power and cool drives, according to IDC. “We estimate that 60 to 80 percent of power costs in data centers are related to storage,” Suresh Panikar, director of worldwide marketing for storage controller maker Adaptec, says.

Most drives can shut down after a period of idleness to conserve power and reduce wear and tear. Unfortunately, many operating systems constantly write housekeeping data, such as registry information or timestamps, to attached drives. This keeps them spinning and, as a result, using power.

Adaptec is tackling the cost of storage with a line of RAID controllers that can reduce the power a drive uses by more than 70 percent, depending on the model, simply by powering it off. The new controllers — part of the company’s Green Power initiative — are smart enough to identify this housekeeping data. They store it in a battery-backed cache and only write to the drive when really needed. The controller can also periodically spin up long-idle drives to check their health.

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A recent study by computer retailer CDW shows that most IT decision makers believe in making their technology infrastructure greener and more energy efficient. But more than half of those surveyed cite cost as the main obstacle, and see the impact on the environment and on their company’s image as greater benefits than the cost savings from a reduced power bill.

Those results seem at odds with reports from analysts that suggest green, power-efficient computing is just around the corner and is being driven by spiraling energy costs. Most forecasts show computing power costs will have a real impact on companies soon: Gartner projects that by 2010, 75 percent of companies will consider the energy and CO2 footprint of hardware during purchasing.

Computing itself is a major energy-sucking culprit, and IT power consumption will only rise in the future. In August 2007, the EPA estimated that data centers consumed roughly 61 billion kWh in 2006. That’s about 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, which cost $4.5 billion. And it’s expected to increase to 100 billion kWh by 2011 — 2.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, which would cost approximately $7.4 billion.

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When it comes to greentech investments, Canada’s no slouch. With vast natural resources, a government that encourages research, and its proximity to the U.S., investors have lots of opportunities. We sat down with David Berkowitz, who leads cleantech investment for Canadian VC firm Ventures West, to discuss the Canadian cleantech market.

Earth2Tech: It seems like with an increase in angel funding and lower startup costs, it’s hard to find IT investment opportunities that are big enough to interest VCs. Is that something that makes cleantech more appealing?

David Berkowitz: We see a big opportunity in the cleantech space. There are some terrific market drivers. On the IT side of things, opportunities are less capital-intensive and maybe better suited to angel-type investments. But we don’t see that on the cleantech side of things. Green tech is tougher for angels because it’s more capital-intensive, so investors need deep pockets. Ventures West needs like-minded syndicate partners across several rounds.

E2T: Is cleantech new for Canadian investors?

DB: We’re not new to this market. I’ve been investing in it for 10 years and Ventures West has been investing in Ballard and others since the 80s. The difference is that opportunities that seemed like a good idea then can now get to market more easily. There aren’t a lot of big Canadian players in venture capital. The Canadian VC market is changing dramatically as some LPs are getting out of the asset class.

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There’s a lot of silicon in the world. It’s the second most-abundant element on Earth. But pure silicon — the kind you can use in microchips and solar cells — is hard to come by.

Back in July of last year, we reported that silicon purification startup 6N Silicon had closed a C$6 million ($5.9 million) venture round to commercialize its process for purifying silicon. “6N’s process will take significantly less time to build a facility and the production costs will be a fraction of the ‘Siemens process,’” 6N founder Scott Nichol told us at the time. We recently checked in with David Dunnison, 6N’s VP of business development, to see if the company kept its promises.

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Stick your hand behind a car exhaust. OK, don’t: It’s really hot. The burning sensation you feel is wasted energy. Most car engines have a mechanical efficiency of around 20 percent, climbing to 40 percent or so at optimum efficiency. That means a lot of waste: 36 percent of energy is lost to the radiator, and another 38 percent goes out the tailpipe.

But with car makers like Honda and BMW exploring heat reclamation, and recent advances in thermoelectrics and nanotechnology, this kind of inefficiency may soon be a thing of the past. Honda recently announced that it’s exploring the use of a heat-reclamation technology known as a Rankine cycle co-generation unit to reclaim some of the waste.

Alas, Honda’s presentation only improves the engine’s thermal efficiency by 3.8 percent; a far cry from the 80 percent that’s wasted. So we need something better.

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Batteries are often cited as the biggest hurdle to a future populated with electric vehicles. Why? We decided to ask John Voelcker — automotive editor for IEEE Spectrum, writer and consultant — for his take on the future of the automotive battery. Here’s his thoughts:

Q: John, you focus a lot on the automotive industry’s move towards cleaner energy. Can you give our readers your thoughts on the state of the art in batteries?

A: Sure. Today and for the next 10 years, in electrically driven automobiles, the state of the art is lithium-ion batteries. They’re the successor to the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries used in hybrids like the Toyota Prius. But they have roughly twice the energy density.

Remember, though, that “lithium-ion” encompasses many different chemistries. They all move lithium ions around, but the other electrode may be one—or a combination—of several different metals. And they’re very different in energy storage, power, and safety.

Q: Carmakers are certainly making great strides there. But in the technology world, mobility is also spurring innovation. Where do you think we’ll see the biggest breakthroughs—in a car, or a phone?

A: The companies that make or supply mobile phones, laptops, and other portable consumer electronics are always the most aggressive innovators. Remember, Sony invented the very first lithium-ion battery way back in 1989 for its first portable camcorder.

But cars are a very, very different kettle of fish. No one in their right mind expects their cellphone battery to work after years of steady pounding, from –30 to 120 degrees (Fahrenheit), and that it should last for TEN YEARS! But that’s what car buyers expect, so that’s what car-battery makers have to build. And that’s a pretty tall order. So the mobile phones come first, but the car batteries are the more impressive achievement.

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There are huge volumes of product data in the affiliate marketing data on the Internet. Now eco-rating site Evo wants to use this information to do for green what Zillow did for real estate.

When sellers want to promote their product on the Internet, they often rely on other sites to send them traffic. This means millions of referring sites and millions of products for sale. There are several affiliate marketing aggregators (such as Linkshare; Performix, which is now owned by Google through the Doubleclick acquisition; and Commission Junction) who handle the commission programs of thousands of sellers. Referring sites get from 5 percent to 20 percent of the product price, depending on the product and market.

The aggregators provide product information — such as price, description, discount, and country of origin — to the sites that want to promote a product. Evo.com, a green rating startup, searches this data to decide which products and vendors are better for the planet. It’s a tough challenge, because there aren’t any well-defined standards for publishing environmental data. So Evo built a keyword analysis system to look for green-relevant data in these unstructured feeds.

The result is technology that can tell how green a product is.

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This year, the Consumer Electronics Show occupied a record 1.85 million square feet and included over 2,700 exhibitors. That’s a lot of people and resources moving through the Las Vegas area.

CES had a much-publicized green agenda this year, working with carbonfund.org to make the show so-called carbon-neutral and embracing sustainable practices. Their November release says, “Carbonfund.org will offset the approximately 20,000 tons of carbon associated with the International CES.” Did CES deliver on its agenda?

While official attendance figures haven’t yet been published, last year’s show had 143,695 attendees of whom 18.8% came from overseas. From that we can make some basic assumptions:

• That attendance grew commensurate with exhibit space to roughly 147,686 people. (This number may not be as high; CES says that as a result of “significant steps to ensure that only trade industry participants — as opposed to the public — are permitted to attend” there will have been a managed drop in attendance this year, but that it will still exceed 130,000 people.)
• That domestic travelers flew, on average, 3,040 miles round-trip from Chicago
• That international attendees flew, on average,10,494 miles round-trip from London.

Given the large number of attendees from Asia and anecdotal attendance numbers, these estimates are probably very conservative. And yet, according to Carbonfund.org’s own calculators, they represent over 655 million miles flown, and 132,575 tons of carbon. CES offset roughly 15% of this.

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While Europeans are using the legal system to enforce e-cycling of consumer electronics, the U.S. has taken a decidedly more capitalist approach. This week at CES, the largest extended-warranty provider in the country, National Electronics Warranty (NEW), said that it will try and solve the problem of recycling electronics with its “ecoNew” trade-in and recycling program, which will enable electronics retailers to provide branded return and recycling offerings to their clients. With more than 100 million consumer purchases covered last year, the company has strong existing relationships with the big-box retailers and electronics vendors, so we’re thinking the program has a chance of making a real dent in the heaps of e-waste piling up.

It’s a different approach to the regulatory path than the one taken across the pond. In many parts of Europe, manufacturers are expected to take back the materials they produce. Through the region’s “Green Dot” program, for example, members of the Packaging Recovery Organization enforce the recovery and recycling of packaging waste. For consumer electronics, disposal and recycling is particularly troublesome, as the European Union’s Restriction on the Use of Hazardous Substances restricts electronic equipment containing specific materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium.

This kind of legislation hasn’t gone over well in North America. In May 2007, the Consumer Electronics Association (the trade group behind CES) testified before the House of Representatives that it should support “voluntary initiatives” on energy rather than passing laws. They’d prefer to let the markets work things out.

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On the eve of General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner’s keynote address at CES, we got a chance to talk about the car company’s plans for green vehicle technology with Lawrence D. Burns, VP of R&D for GM’s research and development center.

Burns has worked with GM since 1969 and been in his current role for a decade. On the CES show floor Burns was flanked on one side by some of the 100 road-certified fuel-cell cars in GM’s Project Driveway, and on the other by the driverless Boss car that recently won the DARPA challenge (both of which GM’s CEO will likely highlight in a speech at CES.)

GM is eager to show that U.S. automakers aren’t behind their overseas counterparts when it comes to technology, though Burns admitted mistakes when it comes to GM’s early electric car, the EV-1. “We had an EV-1 — still the most energy-efficient car ever…We should have gone on from the EV-1 and we would have had a 10-year lead on the market,” he said.

There was that misstep, and the following competition — GM is actively avoiding the term “hybrid,” and Burns admitted that “Toyota owns the hybrid label.” Instead, GM calls its cars “electric vehicles,” and considers the onboard (gas-powered) powerplant a “range extender.” The company is coming back with a holistic strategy for greener cars that relies heavily on that electric technology.

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