Networking Things: How the Internet Is Redefining Environmentalism

Networking Things: HOW THE INTERNET IS REDEFINING ENVIRONMENTALISM WEBVISIONS PDX, OR 5.08 ALEXIS MADRIGAL

Staff Writer, WIRED.com

Cover science, energy/green tech

I’m interested in:

Clean power

Consumer behavior

DIY science, sensors,

The Grid, visualizations, automation

Money, oil, fertilizer, food,

The near future, hidden industrial processes

WIRED keeps me preaching to the street.

BASICS: ME

Defining Environmentalism

Classic environmentalism:

Preserve (pristine) Nature, who is a she.

WIRED Mag’s Take:

Cut carbon emissions, spotted owls be screwed.

BASICS A NEW GOAL FOR 21st CENTURY ENVIRONMENTALISM: Provide universal access to resource efficiency by using technology, especially the Internet, to create novel interactions with products, environments, and other human beings.

Conclusion Upfront

Networking stuff can lead to massive efficiency gains in using resources.

The Internet is a radical environmental tool.

No, really. You’ll see examples.

You, in the audience, need to build the apps that are going to make a better world possible.

BASICS

The Resource Problem

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Anthropocene:

a new era for Earth

Biodiversity loss

Demand Outpacing Energy Supply

Whole commercial networks pegged to liquid fuel prices

Food

Electricity

Chemicals

We’re running out of species, water, soil, and oil.

MO ENERGY, MO PROBLEMS

Global Systems Are Linked

There already is a de facto network of things…

I’m going to focus on energy.

Matter is energy waiting to happen.

It takes energy to make stuff.

MO ENERGY, MO PROBLEMS

Why Do We Use Fossil Fuels?

1. They are energy dense.

One tank of gas contains as much energy as:

166,000 AA batteries

687 Big Macs

200 pounds of wood

4600 apples

2. They are their own storage.

WHERE DO ENERGIES COME FROM? If people could eat gasoline, a single tank of gas would feed 185 people for a day!

Burning Fossil Fuel: 85%+ of Energy Usage

Internal Combustion with gas/diesel

Steam Turbine with coal/natural gas

Splitting Atoms: 8%

Everything Else: 7% (Basically Hydroelectric)

WHERE DO ENERGIES COME FROM?

Our energy infrastructure is ridiculously vulnerable. THE COST OF A DUMB GRID THIS ONE ROOM HELPS DIRECT 75% OF CALIFORNIA’S POWER: 200 BILLION KILOWATT HOURS Homes draw 30 kw/hr per month

We run the system with too much slack. THE COST OF A DUMB GRID WE BURN MORE FOSSIL FUEL THAN WE HAVE TO BECAUSE OUR ELECTRIC GRID INFO RESOLUTION IS TOO LOW .

We can’t easily use distributed, renewable energy . THE COST OF A DUMB GRID

Major grid improvements are necessary to support two-way access to the grid for smaller, intermittent power production.

We Need to Use Less Resources!

But the Rhetoric of Conservation Hasn’t Worked

Per Capita US Energy Use

1949: 63,000 kilowatt hours

2006: 98,000 kilowatt hours

Vehicles per Household

1969: 1.16

2001: 1.90

Average New Home Size

1950: 983 sq ft

2000: 2266 sq ft

Water Usage S.F.

1950: 100 gallons/day

1990: 150 gallons/day

Food Supply Per Capita

1970: 3300 calories/day

2000: 3900 calories/day

Coal Used for Electricity

1950: 83.3 million tons

2006: 951.2 million tons

PAINFUL REALIZATIONS

And by We… Everyone Else Earth uber Alles People Who Really Care People Who Care Sometimes 1-2% 5% 15% PAINFUL REALIZATIONS Changing average consumer behavior is tough. It requires disruptive tech, financial incentives, and a decade+.

The Carbon Footprint of The Man PAINFUL REALIZATIONS "There's a certain amount you can do as an individual, but if you recognize this is a system-wide problem, you need system-wide attention to the problem .” Timothy Gutowski, MIT professor. The true believers can only do so much. Per capita CO2 emissions of The Man: 8.5 tons Lowest energy usage possible for an American: 130 gigajoules

Resources / What You Want Resources What You Want Current Economy Classic Conservation Our Only Hope MORE GOOD, LESS WORK

The Our Only Hope Scenario:

Is Necessary

Requires the Internet to drive novel interactions with products and environments

Is not classic conservation.

Increasing Energy Productivity Resources What You Want Current Economy Classic Conservation Our Only Hope MORE GOOD, LESS WORK McKinsey calls this scenario, “increased energy productivity.” They think it could cut growth in energy demand in half by 2020, saving the equivalent of 64 million barrels of oil a day. Current economy: 12,600 BTUs/3.2 million calories per dollar of GDP

The Internet’s Role in Environmentalism MORE GOOD, LESS WORK

For Consumer-Citizens:

A Tool

A Set of Ideas

For Engineers-Builders-Planners:

A Tool

A Model

Increase the efficiency of:

Making/delivering power

Water use in farming

Preserving ecologies

Designing better cities

Get more of what they want for and with less in:

Consumer Acts

Politics

Life

The Internet with Things DESIGNING THE GREEN INTERNETS “ We are … taking the network into every device around us, not just the data processing devices we are used to seeing as network devices.” Ken Orshan, CEO, Echelon

“… the IP network and open source computing are going to drive a different world where per capita energy usage can plummet .”

Scott McNealy, Chairman, Sun Microsystems

“ At the end of the day, what I'm gonna provide is universal access to energy efficiency the way we provided universal access to electricity in the last century.” Jim Rogers, CEO, Duke Energy Vision: Every Thing of more than $1 of Value on the Network 

Awesome Challenge: Marrying Virtual and Physical Space DESIGNING THE GREEN INTERNETS “ [In 2020, the Internet] will be indistinguishable from the physical world . Everything and everyone you see around you will have a simultaneous physical and digital instantiations.” Jamais Cascio, futurist . “ So, 2020: … At a glance, I can see environmental information. Oh, it's raining? How much has it rained? What's the pollen count? What's the forecast? All of these bits and pieces of how we appreciate the world around us will be given greater specificity and made graspable.”

The Toolkit:

Pervasive networks

Pervasive sensors

Cheap mobile computers

Geolocation

Mapping/matching

Visualization software

"I've heard of the internet of things… Isn't that like WalMart RFID tags or something? --The Crowd

Yes, but an outdated way of thinking about things.

The old Internet of things was more like a boring old database of geolocated things.

Still, it is a powerful idea:

"Today, in the 2000s, we are heading into a new era of ubiquity, where the 'users' of the internet will be counted in billions and where humans may become the minority as generators and receivers of traffic .” UN Report, 2005 DESIGNING THE GREEN INTERNETS

Can tap distributed cognitive surplus

Provides global, cheap communication

The ONLY communication infrastructure as global as the systems we need to change

Enables novel, more efficient interactions with the physical world

Dematerialization (iTunes model)

Organized sharing

Visualization of resource use

Networked automation

The Internet as Environmental Tool THE TUBES TO THE RESCUE

Harnessing the Surplus CLAY SHIRKY: The normal case of social software is still failure; most of these experiments don't pan out. But the ones that do are quite incredible… someone working alone, with really cheap tools, has a reasonable hope of carving out enough of the cognitive surplus , enough of the desire to participate, enough of the collective goodwill of the citizens, to create a resource you couldn't have imagined existing even five years ago. THE TUBES TO THE RESCUE

The Real World DIY ENVIRONMENTALISM We’re going to look at a series of projects and businesses that are harnessing the power of the Internet -- of networked nodes -- to tackle environmental problems.

Turn Off the Lights UPDATED CLASSICS

Home improvement that’s Tim O’Reilly, not Tim Allen.

One house Twitters its energy usage

Another provides dozens of data streams.

Simpler solutions are coming, like Greenbox from the creators of Flash.

Install Solar Panels UPDATED CLASSICS Solar Network is an open-source project that aims to turn solar roofs across the world into one big energy co-op. Sungevity uses satellite images from Live Earth to size and cost-out solar panels. It even Photoshops them onto your roof.

Carpool UPDATED CLASSICS Mobile, geolocated devices combine with social networks to allow for trusted ridesharing: Dodgeball + eBay + cars = iHitchhiking Combine with Zipcar and the Paris bicycle system Velolib or Intrago and you can get anywhere owning nothing.

Go “Birdwatching” UPDATED CLASSICS MIT Media lab project to use cell networks to call, listen to, record, and map owls in their native habitat. Crowdsourced birdlistening marries birdwatching culture with microphones stashed in the forest.

Shame Your Friends UPDATED CLASSICS Clive Thompson: "Imagine if your daily consumption were part of your Facebook page — and broadcast to your friends by a RSS feed.... You'd work harder to conserve so you don't look like a jackass in front of your peers." Carbon Hero uses your cell phone to calculate your real, daily emissions.

Buy Less Stuff UPDATED CLASSICS The Internet enables consumers to buy the experience without purchasing a piece of plastic. iTunes is projected to be 25% of the music business in 2012. That dematerializes 25% of these lame cases. “Years from now, the concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous. We’ll tell our grandchildren we did that, and they’ll laugh at us.” Peter Moore, now of EA

Save the Whales UPDATED CLASSICS Hydrophones sense whales in the Cape Cod shipping channel. When they hear one, they phone home to Cornell. They generate a dynamic map for captains, and call if necessary.

Save the Rainforest UPDATED CLASSICS CO2 and other sensors let UCLA scientists track and visualize data in real time from La Selva in Costa Rica. The data will be used to calculate the ecological services of a rain forest -- it’s ability to eat CO2--allowing monetization of the carbon sink.

Protest UPDATED CLASSICS

Online organizing has the potential to transform political processes at scale.

See: Barack Obama.

“ We do have one thing going for us -- the Web -which at least allows you to imagine something like a grass-roots global effort. If the Internet was built for anything, it was built for sharing this number, for making people understand that "350" stands for a kind of safety, a kind of possibility, a kind of future.” Bill McKibben in the LA Times Do protests have to enter geographic space to be useful?

Help the Developing World UPDATED CLASSICS Kiva allows for microlending to 3rd world entrepreneurs. It’s easy to imagine similar sites for LED lighting, clean generators, wind turbines, and infotech Engineers Without Borders used a Google Map to visualize local suppliers. Motorola has solar powered phone charging stations in Uganda.

Reuse, Reduce, Recycle UPDATED CLASSICS The Internet allows service-systems to replace products. SONY runs a take-back program. “ Remix is the link between consumer refuse and manufacturing material streams. By creating a platform for new production you eliminate device specific waste and consumer dissatisfaction. The powers of consumption are now the powers service.”

Boycott Products UPDATED CLASSICS CarrotMob works like a “reverse boycott,” driving people and resources to good companies/things, instead of merely trying to punish the bad guys.

Spare that Tree UPDATED CLASSICS Green Dimes gets you off junk mail lists for $20, saving 41 pounds of paper.

Manage Ecosystems UPDATED CLASSICS “ Ecological network analysis (ENA) is one of the hottest of the green sciences. It combines computer algorithms for analyzing carbon flow and graph theory. Basically, a computer is programmed to consider each species in an ecosystem as a node (the eco-IP address) and the flow of carbon to it and from it can be imagined as the bandwidth.” -- Joseph Luczkovich, East Carolina

Adopt Electric Cars UPDATED CLASSICS Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place has gotten $200 million to build out the electric car grid.

Pick Up Litter UPDATED CLASSICS Estonian entrepreneurs used Google Maps to plot out 10,000 illegal dumping sites, and organize their clean-up.

Reduce Your Water Usage UPDATED CLASSICS This DIY project allows you to take a soil moisture sensor and hook it up to a plant. The planet Twitters you when it needs to be watered. Overkill for oe plant, but a fun proof-of-concept for agriculture, gardens.

Downsides of Networking Things

Security: The loss of the “air gap” could open physical objects to hacks.

Privacy: Your snail trail will reach outside the interwebs.

Autonomy: Automation could remove some choices from consumers.

UPDATED CLASSICS

Conservation needs to appeal to all tech levels SOLUTIONS TO: LIGHTING No tech: Open the curtains Low-tech: Turn off lights High-tech: Doing it from your laptop Really high tech: Having your laptop do it for you SOLUTIONS TO: GADGET POWER No tech: Unplug your devices Low-tech: Choose energy efficient options High-tech: Get an adaptor that shuts them off Really high tech: Make power yourself SOLUTIONS TO: GADGET ENDLIFE No tech: Don't buy gadgets Low-tech: Recycle High-tech: Deal with your e-waste Really high-tech: Modular electronics SOLUTIONS TO: REDUCING CARBON EMISSIONS No-tech: Make footprints outside Low-tech: Calculate your carbon footprint High-tech: Network your carbon footprint Really high-tech: Build widgets to promote better habits MORE GOOD, LESS WORK

And the world needs your help… MORE GOOD, LESS WORK Dreaming up the biggest ideas Building the applications Solving the security and privacy issues Keeping political pressure up And, by the way, venture capital in green tech is outpacing the Internet : you can be in the sweet spot of the Venn diagram.