How do the heavy weights of the Internet and telecom stack up in terms of how green their technology, energy consumption and political advocacy are? On Tuesday night Greenpeace released its latest Cool IT leaderboard report, which ranks the world’s largest IT giants, and shows who’s making progress and who’s falling behind.

Greenpeace gave Google the top overall score (53 out of 100), while Cisco (49 out of 100), Ericsson (48 out of 100) and Fujitsu (48 out of 100) followed shortly behind. On the flipside of the top companies, were the stragglers, which included Oracle (10 out of 100) at the very bottom, and TCS (11 out of 100) and Telefonica (11 out of 100) at the second and third to last spots.

Greenpeace gives the most weight in its scores to companies for using their own technology to reduce the world’s green house emissions. For example, a networking company like Cisco develops smart grid technology which can save energy and reduce emissions. The second largest part of the Greenpeace score is made up by how well the company advocates publicly and politically for reducing emissions. Lastly, Greenpeace gives companies points for monitoring and managing their own company emissions footprint.

Google rose in the rankings from six overall in 2010 to number one this week. Last year Google invested close to a billion dollars into clean energy projects. Cisco lost its top spot in 2010 to Google this year.

IBM, which was 3rd in 2010, dropped to 9th overall this week. Greenpeace says that IBM fell across all three categories and obtained four penalty points in political advocacy for being a member of a trade association that is trying to block the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

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One of the most obvious trends from the big smart grid conference DistribuTECH last week was how much analytics and big data tools will be used to try to remake energy in 2012, from curbing energy consumption, to reducing energy loss, to adding in more clean power to the grid. Here’s 10 ways that analytics and big data will start to shape the production and consumption of energy in the world:

1). Weather data: Having a finger on the pulse of constantly changing weather data on a micro and macro level can help utilities, building owners and consumers optimize their energy consumption habits and promote energy efficiency. Startup EnergyHub recently partnered with sensor network player Earth Networks to use weather data to make a more efficient form of demand response (utilities controlling power consumption). Other startups like EcoFactor, Opower and Tendril also use weather data as part of their energy behavioral analytics.

IBM has long sold a weather prediction service called Deep Thunder to municipalities, organizations and utilities, which use it to do things like tailor their services, change routes, or generate more or less power. I think weather data could some day provide a platform for some very important next generation services and applications for energy efficiency, much in the way that location data is used as a platform for a variety of services.

2). Cell phone data: Cell phones in our pockets are essentially palm-sized sensors and computers sending a constant stream of information to the cloud where companies could one day use that data to create energy efficiency and better energy products. And yes, a lot of that data is private information, but after that data is anonymized it can be used for the greater good of the community — particularly via the billions of cell phones in developing countries. A startup called Jana does research projects around cell phone data in developing countries, and looks to work with NGOs on programs to create better infrastructure, energy infrastructure and resources.

3). Connected thermostat data: One of the biggest trends from DistribuTECH this year was the overwhelming amount of smart thermostats that are now being sold and marketed. Companies can incorporate that thermostat data into data bases that can be used to promote energy efficiency. EcoFactor’s service remembers every time a home owner overrides the automated smart thermostat system and changes the personalized service to accommodate that manual override. Using 100,000 connected thermostats (which produce 5 billion data points each month) EnergyHub found some interesting statistics like folks in cold climates have a lower average heating temperature set point than households in warmer states.

4). Hadoop & energy databases: The open source data base tool Hadoop is well known — and oft used — in the computing worlds. But in the energy and utility worlds it’s quite rare. However, as the amount of energy data has started to rapidly grow from the smart grid, some companies are embracing Hadoop as a key way to manage energy info. Opower tells me it’s using Hadoop (and the company commercializing Hadoop, Cloudera) as an important way to manage its massive energy data streams. Likewise PJM has turned to Hadoop as a way to organize the energy data coming off of a synchophaser sensor project.

5). Clean power data: One of the main goals for the smart grid is to enable the addition of more variable clean power, which is far more unreliable than fossil fuels (the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow 24/7). Analytics crunching the data from a utilities’ energy supply and demand can help make clean power a little less variable, by being able to more accurately predict the environmental conditions, as well as more accurately assess demand from energy users.

6). Electric car data: Electric cars will by their nature be connected cars, using information technology to manage the vehicle charge and location. Utilities will be closely tracking the charging habits of electric car owners in order to make sure that the grid isn’t overloaded in some early adopter neighborhoods.

7). Power line sensors: One of the areas of low hanging fruit for the power grid is the simple task of helping utilities find blackouts more easily and be able to monitor and manage grid outages. That’s partly where sensor systems called synchophasers come in, which can in real time monitor the health of power lines, collecting multiple data streams per second. Expect all major networks to have synchophaser systems installed over the coming years.

8). Real estate data: Startups like First Fuel Software can use big data to make super accurate assessments about buildings and ways to reduce the energy consumption of buildings — without any extra hardware or monitoring software being installed at the building. Things like weather around the building, demographics of the people in the building, and the building’s historical energy consumption can be used to create an accurate projection. The best way to make a building more energy efficient is by getting as much data about the building;s energy use as possible.

9). Variable pricing: Some day when electricity is sold throughout the world at different prices dependent on supply and demand, massive data bases will be needed. This type of variable pricing is offered in some places in the world, but if it ever becomes ubiquitous it will help curb consumption, by offering high prices when energy is being over used.

10). Using behavioral analytics to curb energy consumption: Getting into the brains of energy users is the job of startups like Opower and Tendril (after it acquired Gr0unded Power.) Essentially these companies have collected data on consumers and demographics and they are using it to try to guess the best way to influence the consumer to do things like upgrade their home appliances and lights to more efficient ones.

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This weekend in New York city, dozens of developers gathered together for the second Cleanweb Hackathon, where programmers spent the entire weekend building mobile and web apps around new ways to manage energy, water, food and fuel. As Sunil Paul, the founder of the event and a partner with Spring Ventures, put it in a short talk on Sunday afternoon, the idea behind the project is that “Information technology is the most powerful lever we have to address resource constraints.”

Over the weekend the Cleanweb hackers created applications like NYC BLDGS, a web data base of the energy consumption of buildings in New York that pits the best and worst buildings against each other in friendly competition. Econofy, a web site created over the weekend that enables consumers to compare the energy consumption of appliances, won both the audience choice award and the judges award for best overall hack.

The first Cleanweb Hackathon was held in San Francisco in September of last year, and the New York event this weekend was a slightly more high profile affair. Judges of the hacks included investor Fred Wilson and Rachel Sterne, New York City’s Chief Digital Officer. The United State’s Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra made an appearance as a special guest.

The event is the latest sign that the ecosystem around clean technology is changing. As investors look back at the mistakes that have been made and money lost in capital intensive investments like next-gen solar, biofuels and electric cars, some investors are taking a different route and looking to make cleantech investing look a lot more like web and mobile investing — literally. Paul’s firm Spring Ventures invests in Cleanweb companies like Solar Mosaic.

The Cleanweb is an attractive way to attack the problem of climate change and resource management for the age of 9 billion people. Information technologies are available now — compared to the science experiments in biofuels and parts of clean power — and thanks to Moore’s Law their cheap, and will get increasingly cheaper. Now it’s time to tap into the innovation of the developer community to try to create new ways to leverage IT to solve the world’s problems.

Check out the video of the event below and Paul’s explanation of the Cleanweb at our Green:Net 2011 event:

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Can gorgeous design, learning algorithms and millions in venture capital funding make a simple home thermostat as coveted as the iPhone? If anyone can achieve such a lofty goal it’s Tony Fadell, the former chief architect at Apple, who led the development of the iPod and the first three versions of the iPhone, and who left Apple two years ago to start connected thermostat company Nest Labs.

While Palo Alto, Calif.-based Nest has been operating for about a year and a half, has 100 employees, and funding from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures and Al Gore’s investment fund, it just came out of stealth on Tuesday to reveal its smart thermostat design and energy efficiency ambitions. Nest says the thermostat is the first “learning thermostat” in the world. It will be available for 0 in mid-November, and can save 20 to 30 percent in a home’s energy consumption.

The idea behind Nest

Fadell explained to me in an interview that he and his wife (who led human resources for Apple) decided to leave Apple about two years ago to spend more time with their young children, and basically retire. But you know how that goes for the ambitious, young, Silicon Valley types. While designing a green home in Tahoe, Calif., Fadell became hung up on the lack of options for a thermostat for the home — they were expensive, not smart, ugly, and basically “crap” says Fadell. And like all good entrepreneurs he thought to himself: there’s got to be a better way.

That option ended up being getting back on the Valley treadmill, and creating one of the most ambitious greentech ventures I’ve seen to date. Nest has raised tens of millions of dollars (they wouldn’t disclose the amount) from high profile venture capitalists including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Al Gore’s investment group Generation Capital, and Shasta Ventures.

While other companies are targeting the smart thermostat market (see my article on The next home energy battleground: the smart thermostat) like Opower and Honeywell, Radio Thermostat Company of America and EnergyHub, and EcoFactor, Nest is the first company that has created an end-to-end smart thermostat service, which offers the software, a gadget and a data-filled website. Fadell tells me that everything that the consumer touches has been designed by Nest.

That’s why it has 100 people and have raised a lot of money. The team building the learning algorithms includes Yoky Matsuoka, the former head of innovation at Google, and machine learning expert while Stanford Professor Sebastrian Thrun is an advisor to the company.

How Nest works

What will stand out most to energy nerds like me that look at a lot of thermostats, is the unique design of Nest. The thermostat’s form is a simple circle, with a ring on the outside and a single button, that controls the entire interface. Like the iPod and iPhone, Fadell wanted to make the device intuitive and simple to use and he says for the Nest system to work “it needed to be a coveted, cherished object that sits on your wall.”

In contrast, a major problem with most thermostats is that only two out of five are programmable and of those that are programmable, only 6 percent are actually programmed by the owners, says Fadell. Most thermostats are confusing, boring, or just not smart enough to keep the home owner’s attention.

The Nest thermostat, on the other hand, is supposed to learn your energy consumption behavior and program itself, and then automatically help you save energy in a convenient way. Once installed, the thermostat takes about a week of hardcore learning to recognize the standard way you heat or cool your home, and then recommends settings that are slightly more efficient than what you already do. It also automatically turns down the thermostat at times that are convenient to you. The device also continues to do lighter learning of your behavior via pattern recognition and your manual interaction with it, throughout the life of the device.

The recommendations and energy efficient mode appear to the Nest user as a leaf on the interface, giving direct feedback on energy choices. But the automatic control of heating and cooling will likely have a bigger impact on energy use. The Nest thermostat has five sensors — temperature, humidity, light and two activity sensors — and the activity sensors can notify the device to turn down the heating and cooling when no one is in the house.

The Nest thermostat also has a feature called “time to temperature,” which shows the home owner how long it will take to heat or cool the home. Say, you set the thermostat for 75 degrees, the Nest interface could read, 75 degrees in 25 minutes, letting you know how long it will take. The idea behind that feature is that most people set a thermostat like an accelerator, says Fadell, increasing the temperature or cooling way above or below the actual desired setting. But giving the user more feedback can help curb this problem — think of it like seeing how long a download of a file will take.

In addition to the thermostat device itself, Nest has created mobile apps and a website to be able to remotely turn up or down the thermostat, and also to give far more detailed data about home energy use. For example, you can log into the Nest website and see how much money you’ve saved, how many times you’ve turned up or down your thermostat.

The smart grid and Nest

The Nest thermostat also has Zigbee and Wi-Fi chips, so that it can connect with both your home broadband connection, and also other Zigbee devices like a smart meter, or smart appliances. Fadell says that thermostats are installed only every decade or so, so when the smart grid is fully deployed he wants the Nest thermostat to be ready.

Other companies like Opower and Honeywell are using a smarter thermostat as a way to connect with and control the smart energy home. While a lot of companies have focused on fancy dashboards that can monitor and control a home’s energy consumption, these devices haven’t really caught on, and smarter thermostats seem to be a better way in.

However, Nest is one of the only companies that is directly targeting consumers for its thermostat. Nest plans to sell its thermostat at Best Buy, via building specialty channels, and through its website. Fadell tells me the company wants to “connect with the iPhone generation where it shops.”

But at the same time that Nest is going direct to consumer, the device will clearly have a utility play, which the company is being quiet on right now. Like EcoFactor’s smart thermostat service, I could imagine utilities could work with homes that have Nest installed, to collectively curb energy consumption during peak grid events. This type of service is called demand response, and the saved energy per household helps utilities manage their grids during really hot summer days. Since the device also has ZigBee installed it could potentially connect with utilities’ smart meters, too.

Nest says that home owners can save 20 to 30 percent on their energy bills, which is one of the highest estimated ways to curb home energy use on the market. In contrast, mailed detailed energy bills from Opower are helping home owners cut around 2 percent. EcoFactor says with its similar thermostat service (but no designed gadget) it can get home owners to cut their energy consumption by 17 percent. If Nest actually takes off, utilities will be interested in working with that double digit energy reduction, though I’d like to see that 20 to 30 percent reduction validated in larger real world customer deployments.

My impressions

I think Nest is one of the more ambitious, and cool, ideas I’ve seen in the greentech space. The Nest thermostat is also beautiful and the idea is game changing on its own. However, I’m not so convinced it will work (I want it to! Prove me wrong!). I just don’t know if people will spend 0 on a thermostat, particularly in this economy. You can buy a connected, digital, programmable thermostat for , and 0 on the high end.

Also while Nest includes detailed instructions on how to install the thermostat (including a Nest screwdriver), installing a thermostat is actually kind of confusing. I’ve tried to tinker with some of the newer connected thermostats, and usually I end up wishing I hadn’t tried to do this myself — it involves circuit breakers and electrical wiring. Nest says it will offer Nest-approved installers, if people don’t want to install it themselves. Maybe the Best Buy Geek Squad will be able to help with this.

At the end of the day, it will take an army of Nest-inspired early adopters to convince the rest of the country and world to adopt Nest. Silicon Valley will probably rave about it, as they should, but will the other 99 percent of the country get on board with a 0, do-gooder, smart thermostat that’s as pretty as the iPhone?

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While there’s a good number of green and energy-focused Facebook apps out there, here comes one that looks like it could be a game changer. Energy software startup Opower, in partnership with Facebook and the environmentalists at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), plan to launch a Facebook social energy application next year that will enable users to check out their energy usage compared to friends and national averages and get other energy efficiency tips. The group says they think it could be “the world’s largest social energy community.”

The idea is to use the power of social networking, gaming and competition to get users engaged with ways to reduce their energy consumption. Think if a Facebook could app could bring the social power of Farmville to home energy management.

However, if you remember Microsoft and Google both launched similar types of applications (Hohm and PowerMeter), and then ended up killing them off after about two years for a variety of reasons. Developing an effective tool is difficult. Two reasons that these other apps didn’t work is that utilities weren’t convinced to participate (and without utility data the apps weren’t very helpful), and consumers also never really embraced the tools. Will Facebook be able to overcome consumer apathy and slow moving utilities?

Well, bringing Opower onboard will be key to bringing in the utilities. Opower already has 60 utility deals, and the Facebook social energy app will have data from utilities Commonwealth Edison, the City of Palo Alto, and Glendale Water & Power when it launches (other utilities partnerships to follow). The app doesn’t need linked utility data, but it will be more helpful and informative if your utility participates.

Users that decide to participate with the social energy app and also have a utility that is involved, will have seamless energy data uploaded and authenticated to the app, and then the user can see how their usage compares to others, and can participate in competitions and get more tips. You know, everything that all those Facebook apps are good at — keeping users constantly engaged, making the app viral, and changing user behavior. Opower has been working on behavioral analytics for years, and has been one of the only energy management startups that has gained much traction, delivering 2 percent energy reductions for its utility customers.

I’ve been waiting for a substantial social media effort around energy efficiency and fighting climate change for years. If this social energy app can take off and actually engage users, I think it could be a tipping point for getting people to change their energy consumption habits. We’ll see next year if it actually becomes popular and if Facebook can do for energy efficiency, what it’s done for social gaming apps.

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One of the reasons energy storage for the power grid isn’t widely used is that many of the technologies, like batteries, are still far too expensive to be used at grid scale. But what if you could use something that costs a fraction of a battery to deploy for grid storage … like Software-as-a-Service? On Thursday, a startup called Clean Urban Energy (CUE) launched its SaaS product, which uses commercial buildings essentially as thermal batteries, and announced a million investment from VCs Battery Ventures and Rho Ventures.

Here’s how it works: CUE makes a deal with a building owner, then plugs the company’s software into the building’s management system. Over a two-week period, the software crunches the energy consumption and HVAC system data, pulls in outside data like weather and temperature, and eventually creates a model and baseline for how the building consumes energy and how best to optimize that energy use.

The software then is able to shift parts of the building’s energy use via the HVAC system to times of day when a utility’s rates are lower and when there is less demand on the grid. So, say, a building could be subtly pre-cooled on a hot day, before the utility’s peak times occur and the rates are a lot higher. The software can do this without changing the comfort of the people in the building, says Battery Ventures Partner Jason Matlof.

CUE says it can save building owners 15 to 30 percent in energy savings from their HVAC systems. For utilities, the buildings are turned into sort-of thermal batteries that can store energy during peak times, and can enable building owners to participate in utilities’ variable pricing programs.

In contrast to many building management systems that use sensors and extra hardware installed throughout a building — and take weeks or months to integrate — CUE uses no extra gear, and just relies on the building management system and its model to start to work. The system can cost less than ,000 to get up and running says Matlof, and the low capital required is one of the reasons Battery Ventures funded the company.

The smart algorithms came from the work of one of CUE’s founders, Gregor Henze, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who previously wrote his dissertation on optimal control of thermal energy storage systems. The model is able to accurately predict how the building is going to respond to the current environment in real time and adjust the HVAC system accordingly, says Matlof.

Battery Ventures has backed other low-capital-intensive energy efficiency software plays like networked lighting company Redwood Systems. “We’ve avoided the kinds of companies that get stuck in the Valley of Death, like thin-film solar, utility-scale solar thermal and electric cars,” says Matlof.

CUE’s software reminded me a bit of some of the projects that smart thermostat service company EcoFactor has done, optimizing demand response events for utilities. Though EcoFactor is concentrating on residential buildings, and not, say, a 70-story commercial building that’s in CUE’s cross hairs, the two companies are similar in that they both use big data and predictive algorithms to focus on HVAC as the pain point in a building.

CUE has already done 12 pilots with its software (two in the Chicago area) and has just started selling its software commercially.

Image courtesy of CUE.

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