The consumer electronics industry is getting serious about going green

March 1, 2009 | Lee H. Goldberg | Comments |

Ironically, there were hardly any truly green gadgets on the exhibit floor at last week’s Greener Gadgets conference. Fortunately, much of the debate taking place at the event suggested that the consumer electronics industry is starting to move beyond greenwashing and tokenism.

In attempting to answer tough questions like “How do you quantify the green-ness of a product or service?” and “Where should companies devote their efforts to make the most environmental impact?” attendees got a good look at the challenges the tech sector faces in carving out a sustainable future for itself — both financially and environmentally. The conference may have produced few conclusive answers, but the issues it raised contain the seeds of new technologies and business models that could help save the planet while jumpstarting the flagging global economy.

Greener Gadgets’ opening speaker, inventor and Make Magazine columnist Saul Griffith, wasted no time getting his audience’s attention with a physicist’s-eye-view of global climate change. Apparently, the energy it takes to support the average American’s lifestyle consumes the equivalent of 23 pounds of coal, 23 pounds of oil and 200 cubic feet of natural gas per day — a level of consumption that will raise atmospheric CO2 levels to an apocalyptic 800 parts-per-million in the next century and a half. Stabilizing CO2 concentration at a survivable level of 450 part-per-million will require a complete re-engineering of the global economy and infrastructure, Griffith said.

Unless there is a drastic reduction in energy demand (not likely), the world will somehow have to learn to generate 2 terawatts of solar power and 12 terawatts of wind power over the next 20 years — a seemingly impossible feat, he explained. To put that in perspective, one terawatt is equal to the energy created by about 1 billion tons of coal or 5 billion barrels of oil.

This sounds pretty bleak. But if there was one bright spot in Griffith’s analysis, it’s that we’re finally entering an “age of consequence.” In short, people are waking up to the real and significant opportunities that exist in green entrepreneurship. To meet the aggressive timetable that most scientists agree is necessary to hit sustainable CO2 levels, Griffith touted the usual two pronged approach: drastic reduction in energy demand, and a mix of solar, wind, geothermal and biofuel power to meet the need that remains. This sounds like a pat solution, but the numbers he threw out in his presentation lent it a unique urgency that many have yet to comprehend.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the VC community, where the majority of funds are being allocated to supply-side cleantech investments. But there is tremendous potential in demand-side technology too. Because manufacturing is responsible for a significant fraction of overall energy consumption, Griffith proposed that makers of consumer goods adopt what he called an “heirloom technology” model. The term refers to the production of goods with long lifespans, capable of satisfying customers for years if not decades. This is a novel notion in the technology world. But Griffith insisted that there is no reason why companies shouldn’t design products to age well, especially if they could derive ongoing revenues from repair and upgrade services.

On the topic of transportation, he pointed out that costs of travel are bound to go up as governments put more limits on carbon emissions. In response, people will probably take fewer and longer trips, and we’ll start to see more interest in energy-efficient teleconferencing and tele-presence systems. This was just one of a handful of green business strategies that will redefine how business is done in the next 25 years, Griffith said. For more, please see the video excerpt of his talk below.

The themes in his keynote were echoed in the rest of the Greener Gadgets program — namely, that the consumer electronics industry needs to look beyond regulatory compliance in its approach to environmental issues. For instance, another session, titled “Closing the Loop,” explored how companies are mining the flagrant waste of electronic materials for money. Executives from companies like mobile phone reseller ReCellular and RecycleBank (a company that provides discounts to incent recycling) explained how regular people can use Web 2.0 to donate their used electronics to profitable collection and reclamation operations.

In the session “Measuring Your Hue of Green,” BusinessWeek environmental editor Adam Aston called for more and easier ways to determine the eco-friendliness of consumer goods. Customers need to start paying more attention to the energy and waste involved in making, using and disposing of the products they buy, he said. Despite the diverse opinions of the panelists, there was consensus that a truly useful metric for a product’s environmental contribution would need to include the efficiency it may bring to another product or system (for example, sustainable materials used in smart buildings, or electric charging stations for plug-in hybrid vehicles).

Most of the speakers acknowledged that it will take a while to develop a commonly-accepted metric for green-ness that transcends compliance with government and corporate restrictions. But the lively dialogue at Greener Gadgets is a promising sign that it might happen sooner than later. For more on how to define what it means to be green, see what conference participants had to say below.

Saul Griffith keynote:

Saul Griffith Green Tech from Camille Ricketts on Vimeo.