Evander Holyfield

Four-time heavy weight boxing champion Evander Holyfield is ready for another fight. Except this time, he is fighting for the planet. Known as the Real Deal in the sports world, Holyfield will also be going by a new nickname, Lean Green Fighting Machine. Holyfield has announced that in partnership with Global-NES-Georgia, Inc., he plans to build a 40-acre solar energy farm on his estate in Georgia.

“I am proud to be a partner in the green movement to heal the earth,” said Holyfield in a press release. “I am also dedicated to an approach which minimizes disruption to the local community and ecosystem.”

“Global NES-Georgia, Inc is proud to build this project,” said Ed Ukanonu, CEO of Global NES. “Global NES-Georgia, Inc. is committed to providing today’s most comprehensive, yet affordable, renewable energy efficiency programs, systems & technologies.”

In addition to the solar farm, another acre of land will be dedicated to an organic garden that will be maintained by the Evander Holyfield Foundation. The garden will be used as a teaching tool for neighborhood youth to understand the importance of going green.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Four major corporations were named “Green Power Partners of the Year” this past week by the US EPA:

Deutsche Bank AG — In 2009, the company made an annual purchase of 160 million kilowatt-hours of wind-derived renewable energy certificates (RECs), which represents 100 percent of the electricity needs for its U.S. operations. Worldwide, Deutsche Bank bought 515 million-kilowatt hours of green power.

The international bank has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2012.

Intel Corporation – For the past two years, Intel has been among the nation’s largest corporate buyers of green power, purchasing more than 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours from renewable energy sources, an amount roughly equal to half of its US electric use.

It has installed two large solar systems, in Oregon and in New Mexico, to demonstrate how solar power can be used to operate data centers. It plans to install on-site solar photovoltaic systems at several other facilities. It’s “Green Intel” forum helps employees around the world share energy-saving ideas and learn about Intel’s initiatives.

Kohl’s Department Stores – The Wisconsin-based retailer has made green power purchasing a priority across its 1,022-store network as it aims to reduce its environmental impact and become a retail sector environmental leader.
Kohl’s current purchases, of 600 million kilowatt-hours supplies 50 percent of its electricity.

The company has become one of the world’s largest retail promotes of solar energy, with 69 systems up and running in California, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Connecticut. Additional systems are planned. The solar arrays provide 20 to 40 percent of the power for each store where they’re employed, according to the EPA. Kohl’s also communicates it’s green power goals to employees through a website, and promotes sustainable practices at kohlsgreenscene.

Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc. – New York-based Mohawk, one of the largest manufacturers of fine text and cover papers in the US, has been supporting its operations with wind power since 2003. It now purchases 110 million kilowatt hours annually, representing enough power to run its manufacturing and distributing operations in New York and Ohio.

Like the other corporate award-winners, Mohawk spreads the news about its environmental progress through a website, PR efforts and customer outreach. To reduce its carbon impact further, Mohawk has set emissions reduction goals through the EPA’s Climate Leaders program and uses recycled fiber in its products.

Several other companies were commended at the EPA’s Green Power Awards in Atlanta for buying renewable power directly or for buying renewable energy credits (RECs).

Most of these companies also engage in other green practices. Beaulieu Commercial, a Georgia carpet manufacturer, uses post-consumer recycled materials for carpet tile backing. EarthColor, a printer in New Jersey recaptures material for recycling. Media conglomerate Bloomberg LP., has promised to install on-site solar systems to power its US facilities.

The EPAs full list of “Green Power Purchasers”

EPA Green Power Purchaser Awards

Green Power Partner of the Year

Deutsche Bank AG
Intel Corporation
Kohl’s Department Stores
Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc.

Green Power Purchasing

Beaulieu Commercial
Bloomberg LP
EarthColor, Inc.
Foulger-Pratt Management, Inc.
Motorola, Inc.
Neenah Paper, Inc.
Shaklee Corporation
Steelcase USA
The Joinery
Western Pennsylvania Energy Consortium

On-site Generation

Applied Materials, Inc.
Butte College
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. / California and Texas Facilities

Restaurants looking to green their operations by generating some of their own electrical power are finding it easier as vendor companies try to fill in the gaps.

Owl Power Company, for instance, has developed a way for restaurants to more conveniently use vegetable oil as fuel. Owl’s Vegawatt is a combined heating and power system that runs on vegetable oil and can be connected to existing heating and power systems to be used as supplemental green energy.

Founded by James Peret, President and CEO of Owl Power Company, Vegawatt was first introduced last December at Finz Seafood & Grill in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Here’s how it works: A restaurant deposits vegetable oil waste into the unit and Vegawatt goes to work using a four-step cleaning process to turn used vegetable oil into biofuel. The unit is located outside the restaurant; just like a central air conditioning unit is placed. It contains one electrical hookup, a water feed, and a return feed. This reduces the power required for the water heater, because the water is partially heated through the Vegawatt. Better yet, the Vegawatt requires no maintenance, according to Owl.

While Vegawatt cannot power an entire restaurant, it can produce 10-25% of the energy required, which could translate to hundreds of dollars per month on saved utility costs. Right now, some restaurants pay companies 10-25 cents per gallon to dispose of their used vegetable oil, though others use their oil in vehicles.

With Vegawatt, a restaurant can saves an disposal costs and turn their oil recycling into a cash-positive operation.

Vegawatt, says Owl, provides many environmental benefits. It is:

• Non-toxic
• Non-flammable
• Produces no liquid byproducts
• Reduces carbon emissions
• Decreases waste going into landfills

The $32,000 Vegawatt co-generation systems (their cost after the federal tax credit of 30 percent is $22,000) can be leased or purchased. The company says a restaurant can save about $1,000 a month — offsetting the purchase price in two years — if it produces 80 gallons of waste vegetable oil per week.
(Obviously, a lease makes the equipment payback virtually immediate, as long as the lease amount is less than the money saved on energy cots.)

As with many of green products, there are multiple government incentives when purchasing Vegawatt. Along with the federal tax credit of 30 percent of the cost, the equipment also could qualify for state refunds.

The company is selling primarily in the Northeast, but hoping to expand to the Mid-Atlantic states. “There is a lot of interest in California, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and other places internationally as well,” Peret said.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, a sixty-plus-year-old lab complex near Chicago, needs an enormous amount of juice to run all its number-crunching computers. But its ratio of computing power to electrical usage just made a leap, thanks to the Blue Gene/P, a supercomputer designed for the Department by IBM.

An announcement last week by Argonne’s Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) trumpeted some impressive stats on the new machine — not least of which, dropped in among talk of teraflops and megawatts, was the news that the lab’s energy-efficient design is saving taxpayers over $1 million a year.

Asked how such savings were achieved, the facility’s director Pete Beckman revealed to us that some of the methods were counter-intuitive — for instance, designing a very green, very fast computer by making its parts run slower than they otherwise might.

“Probably the most signficant way that BG/P saves power,” he said, “is by scaling the frequency of each CPU core to 850Mhz (about 3X slower than my laptop). Power is dramatically reduced when we scale back the clock speed.” To compensate for the lower speed, the designers simply added a lot more CPUs: For ALCF’s Intrepid system, that amounted to 163,840 CPU cores.

Beyond some more technical innovations (having to do with a “system on a chip” approach that eliminates power-hungry connectors and adapter cards) is the easily understood matter of cooling all those hard-working machines. Beckman explains that with most computer designs, “often, computer equipment gets tossed in any space that is available, and then chillers (are) added until the room is sufficiently cold.”

For this installation, “we worked with folks modeling the airflow required to efficiently cool the supercomputer, and then built a structure to enclose the hardware and use high-efficiency air handlers to reduce our power.”

“We also tied into the Argonne chilled water plant,” he adds, “which uses cooling towers to chill the water when the weather is cold. So when it is about 35 degrees outside, we can easily chill water essentially for free!” — a savings of $20,000 to $25,000 a month in electric costs.

And just as the demand for computing power never ceases to grow, Argonne’s interest in greener processing doesn’t end here. “We are already working on the next generation designs for ultra-green supercomputers,” Beckman says, citing plans for direct water-cooling of components and ways to schedule intensive computing activities to occur at times of lower electricity demand.

The ALCF supports scientific research in biology, chemistry, physics, energy and climate science by providing scientists with mega computer power for their inquiries.

Research underway includes projects that address critical health issues like Parkinson’s disease and heart rhythm disorders to climate-related matters, such as a study looking at the effect of global warming on forest ecology and designing reduced-emissions jet engines.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media