Cross-Posted from Cleantech. Google has announced an agreement to buy smart home appliance company Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion.Nest’s mission is to reinvent oft-overlooked but important devices in the home such as thermostats and smoke alarms. Since its launch in 2011, Nest’s innovative, user-friendly Learning Thermostat has been a consistent best seller — and its recently launched Protect (smoke + CO detector) has received rave reviews.
Cross-Posted from Supply Chain. In his pre-show keynote at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich outlined a range of the company’s new products, initiatives and strategic relationships aimed at accelerating innovation across a range of mobile and wearable devices, and challenged the entire electronics industry to join Intel in becoming “conflict-free.”
Cross-Posted from Product, Service & Design Innovation. Bosch has expanded its offering beyond the design of home appliances to form a new company, Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions GmbH, for the Internet of things and services: The company will supply compact electronic products and software expertise designed to make devices and objects intelligent and web-enabled across a broad range of applications. It will initially focus on sensor-based applications for intelligently networked homes, or “smart homes,” as well as for activities in the fields of traffic, transportation and logistics.
Today IBM unveiled its eighth annual "IBM 5 in 5" (#ibm5in5) — a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years, and the tech company’s role in making them a reality.
Oakland, CA-based software company Lucid and utility data management provider Urjanet today announced they are teaming up to solve one of the largest barriers to deploying energy efficiency: the cost of acquiring and managing building performance data.Through the new partnership, Urjanet’s utilityCONNECT service will automate the collection and delivery of electricity, water and natural gas billing, history and rate-plan data for Lucid’s BuildingOS energy-management platform.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. Innovation in the Technology and Communications sector is playing a powerful role in improving the sustainability performance of companies, governments and individuals across the economy. Disruptive sector trends such as cloud computing, expansion of mobile device usage, machine learning and big data analytics present new risks and opportunities for companies in the sector. This year SASB conducted research and convened industry working groups to identify and refine a minimum set of material environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and related accounting metrics for six industries.
Safeway, Oakley, Frontier Airlines and Family Dollar are among those that have adopted a new tool that helps to measure the social impact of giving programs.The Impact Reporting tool, developed by Versaic, a San Mateo, Calif.-based online CSR and sustainability program management provider, enables users to track the impact of their donations by automatically requesting follow up information from approved non-profits after the contribution is made or the event is held.Many companies consider reporting on impact a must-have component of a comprehensive giving program, Versaic says. However, often this is easier said than done.Impact Reporting streamlines this process by collecting data and reporting it automatically, which requires no additional work from users.
Philadelphia-based architecture firm KieranTimberlake has released a new software application that allows designers to measure the environmental impact of building materials directly in a Revit model.The application, called Tally, provides Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on demand, backed by GaBi data from PE International. Autodesk, the maker of Revit modeling software, supported development and testing for the application.
Cross-Posted from Supply Chain. SAP has joined forces with the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC) and the Manuel Mejía Foundation to provide coffee farmers with the technology and training they need to develop more sustainable business practices.Technology continues to be scarce among rural communities in Colombia, SAP says. To help change this reality, the company supplied technical training to more than 500 coffee growers, teaching them how to effectively use mobile tablets and computers to access the “coffee portal,” which provides useful information on coffee market news, geographical farm data, coffee purchasing conditions, incentives and support programs.
Investment activity in financial services technology ("FinTech") companies for financially underserved consumers totaled more than $5.2 billion in allocated capital between July 2012 and June 2013, according to a recent report by the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Core Innovation Capital (Core).Investment Activity in FinTech for the Financially Underserved shows that there is substantial investor interest in a growing market for financial products and services aimed at helping to meet the needs of financially underserved consumers.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) has announced an update to its online tool that helps businesses measure their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).The Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, or CAIT 2.0, offers free online access to global GHG emissions and other climate data, enabling researchers, policymakers, media and others to download, visualize and share data for analysis and communications on climate change.WRI says the update features improved functionality and other upgrades. A streamlined interface allows users to more easily select and sort data by country, sector, type of gas, among other criteria. CAIT 2.0 also is more readily usable on a range of mobile devices such as iPads and other large tablets.
UPS has announced the launch of its route optimization software known as ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation), which the company expects will save more than 1.5 million gallons of fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 14,000 metric tons by the end of the year.ORION has a team of 500 dedicated resources to move the U.S deployment forward as UPS nears its busy holiday season. The rollout of ORION will optimize 10,000 delivery routes by the end of the year, reduce miles driven and reinforce UPS's sustainability efforts. A reduction of just one mile each day per driver over the course of a year saves the company up to $50 million annually, UPS says.
REI says a retrofit of its data center, which houses servers and backup systems for computers, software systems, REI.com and point of sale for its 132 stores in 33 states, has resulted in a 93 percent reduction in the cooling energy used to operate the facility.The outdoor retailer says the retrofit uses “free cooling” via a rooftop evaporative cooling tower to keep servers at optimal temperatures. The system reduces the need for mechanical cooling nearly year-round, or about 8,672 hours annually.The retrofit saves 2.2 million kilowatt hours each year — enough to power six REI stores. Improved efficiencies also mean improved business resiliency and stability in the event of a regional power outage, the company says.
Not far from a factory in which Ford cars and trucks are assembled, analytics experts in the company's Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, Michigan are building something entirely different but equally important: complex mathematical models that are helping the automaker sharpen its competitive edge while limiting its environmental impact.
When it comes to sustainability, Big Data is proving to be a big opportunity — businesses are now able to collect, store and process mind-boggling amounts of data. IBM estimates that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day, meaning that 90% of the data in the world was created over the last two years. Analysing, evaluating and understanding this level of information is providing insights that are transforming the way business is done.
Cross-Posted from Product, Service & Design Innovation. A company that makes a “smart” thermostat wants developers to hack together your connected home. Nest, “The Learning Thermostat,” last week announced a new developer program and Web API that will connect Nest with other items in your home such as lighting, home appliances and home automation.
Data, Data, DataSustainable business these days requires data, and lots of it. Companies are using sustainability data for a multiplicity of reasons: to inform corporate strategy, comply with regulations, evaluate investments, improve transparency, develop products and processes, manage risk, benchmark themselves against competitors, change organisational culture, and engage with supply chains.
Climate change is a serious challenge for our society and for businesses around the world. As a company, we are focused not only on ways for us to reduce the environmental impact of our business, but also on the important business opportunity climate change presents.
U.S. commercial buildings can collectively save up to 28 billion gallons of water annually using a new suite of tools co-developed by AT&T and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the organizations claim.The Building Water Efficiency toolkit is the result of data and lessons from pilot projects that ran across the U.S. during the summer and fall of 2012. The toolkit gives organizations simple, cost-effective resources to build their own water efficiency programs and includes both technical and management tools to design, implement and document water savings. The combination of tools can be used to create the business case for investments in efficient water management.
As new companies find their niche helping building designers, owners and managers lower energy consumption, the measurement and verification (M&V) industry is rapidly moving toward real-time performance-tracking, according to a new study by Lux Research. The report also analyzes these new players, both the ones focusing on sub-metering hardware and other specializing in data analytics, as they improve building energy management systems (BEMS) and making M&V tools that give a continuous picture of performance.