Green Construction at Live Work Home

Syracuse, NY — We caught up Wednesday with Bob Hotaling of Team Industries, the company that makes the structural insulated panels going up at the Live Work Home house at 317-319 Marcellus St.

The R-Control panels are a key feature that will make the house extremely energy efficient because very little heat will be able to leak out through the walls and roof.

The Marcellus Street house was one of three winners of a design competition to build sustainable and affordable homes on the city’s Near West Side. The From the Ground Up competition was sponsored by the Syracuse University School of Architecture, Home HeadQuarters and the Syracuse Center of Excellence.

Hotaling trained the construction crew whose members come from Land Shapes Construction, a Homer company, and Home HeadQuarters, which also is acting as general contractor for the project. Two apprentices from Home HeadQuarters also are on the job.

The R-Control structural insulated panels (SIPs for short) are made in Team Industries’ factory in Grand Rapids, Mich. Oriented strand board is bonded to 4 1/2 inches of expanded polystyrene insulation for an airtight seal. A mold- and termite-resistant coating is applied. That gives the SIPs their green color.

The panels get window and door openings according to the architect’s plan, and have chases drilled into them for electrical wiring. They are numbered and labeled “top” and “bottom.” Once delivered to the job site, they are installed in numerical order.

“It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle,” said architect Pam Cambpell, of Cook + Fox Architects, who was on site Wednesday to check on the construction.

To put them up, the construction workers run beads of sealant along the edges and bottom of the panels before fitting them together tongue-and-groove style. Insulated “splines” between panels insure an airtight connection so heat can’t leak out.

“That’s the big advantage of SIPs — no thermal break,” Campbell said “The insulation is essentially continuous.”

But because the house will be so tight, care must be taken to prevent mold and to bring in fresh air, Campbell said. This house will have a heat recovery ventilator that captures heat from the warm air going out to temper the cold air coming in. The air coming in also passes through a filter.

Next up: the roof.

The wall panels are small enough that the construction crew can move them around without machinery, Hotaling said. The roof panels are another matter — they are 4 feet wide, 22 feet long and 12 inches thick.

“The thickness of the roof panels makes the house structurally stronger,” Campbell said. That’s important because the house is fairly open inside, so there aren’t a lot of interior walls to hold up the roof, she said.

The crew had most of the wall panels up by 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. Hotaling said the roof will start going up later in the day. He plans to have the crew assemble sections of the roof on the ground and then use a Lull — a forklift on a boom — to hoist them onto the structure.

“We’ll be done in three days,” he said.

SIP installation began Tuesday, so assuming all goes according to plan, the house’s skeleton should be up by Thursday.

Team R-Control also is working on a considerably larger project nearby — the State University College at Oswego’s 300-bed, 12-building student housing project, Hotaling said.

Marie Morelli, mmorelli@syracuse.com, 315-470-2220.

November 17, 2009, 6:00AM

Stephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardDuncan Cooper, director of sales at Renovus Energy in Ithaca, holds a tube used to heat water. Demonstration-sized tubes are to his left, and a solar electric panel is behind him.

Syracuse, NY — More New York homeowners than ever want to put solar panels on their houses.

That should be good news for the 174 contractors registered with the state to install solar photovoltaic systems. But the demand has put such a strain on subsidies for residential solar that the state has reduced the amount offered, hoping to make a dwindling pot of money last through the end of the year.

A new round of funding for 2010 and beyond has not yet been approved, and that leaves solar power installers hanging. They can’t sign up customers until they know what the subsidy will be. And without customers, an emerging industry employing between 800 and 1,000 people statewide can’t create more “green-collar” jobs.

“We could easily hire another person if the right incentives were in place,” said Duncan Cooper, director of sales for Renovus Energy Inc. in Ithaca, an installer of renewable energy systems that employs seven. “We just don’t know where we’re going to be in the next few months.”

So what do you tell customers?

“This is the way it is now and we have no way of predicting what it’s going to be like,” said Robert Halstead, owner of Eastern Mountain Solar Corp. in Syracuse. “As you can imagine, we’re not doing a whole lot of sales between now and then.”

Solar is popular for a couple of reasons. The price of solar panels is coming down due to increased production in China and falling prices for materials. It’s also easier for people with solar installations to sell their surplus electricity back to the grid.

The Post-Standard

Green Central New York magazine goes inside hospital’s ‘green’ expansion plan and more. Link to a summary of what’s in today’s issue.

And solar power is green. Energy from the sun is free and abundant, even in often-cloudy Central New York. The panels last for 20 to 30 years. They create electricity without carbon emissions. They work during the day, when demand for power is greatest. Unlike windmills, solar panels are relatively inconspicuous.

Solar also is expensive, at least to start. The average cost of installing a solar photovoltaic system for a 2,000-square-foot house is $35,000, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Incentives and tax breaks, taken together, reduce the out-of-pocket cost by as much as 60 percent, according to a solar industry trade group.

So any change to the incentive structure has an immediate impact on the demand for solar installations.

On Oct. 13, to keep the money from running out, NYSERDA cut the incentives for residential solar photovoltaic installations from $3 per watt to $2.50 per watt, up to the first 4 kilowatts. Incentives for commercial and nonprofit solar power installations also were cut.

In one day, the agency was flooded with applications — several installers heard it was more than 100, though NYSERDA will only say it was “quite a few.” Some installers were left with the impression those applications would soak up whatever money was left in the solar incentive program.

“The money has not run out,” said Jeffrey Gordon, speaking for NYSERDA. “We’re continuing to process applications.” The reduced incentive “helps us to target the funds and allow more people to take advantage of it — albeit at a lower rate.”

Cooper, of Renovus, said he was shocked to hear that. “This is indicative of the level of communication we get from NYSERDA,” he said.

The money for renewable energy subsidies comes from the Renewable Portfolio Standard surcharge on utility bills. A typical residential electric customer pays about 75 cents per month to subsidize renewable technologies such as solar, wind, fuel cells and methane-producing anaerobic digesters.

The state’s goal is to have 25 percent of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2013. Two percent of that is supposed to come from “customer-sited” installations, such as solar panels on homes, business and nonprofits.

From 2006 to 2009, the state Public Service Commission set aside $103 million to subsidize customer-sited renewables. About $75 million of that has gone toward solar photovoltaic subsidies, the PSC said in a June report.

The state has cut its incentive twice this year. The first cut, in February, nearly sank the program.

In January, NYSERDA announced it was cutting the solar incentive by 25 percent on Feb. 1 to reflect more generous federal tax breaks. Within two weeks, the agency was flooded with 348 applications totaling $24 million.

To keep the program alive, NYSERDA shifted $15 million from other programs. The PSC authorized a $15 million cash infusion in June. That was supposed to last through the end of the year.

But when NYSERDA cut the incentive again in October, another stampede resulted. “It’s been a bit of a stop-start kind of funding, a little insecurity for the industry,” said John Siciliano, executive director of the New York Solar Energies Industry Association, a trade group based in Albany. “We’re looking for a longer-term vision from the Public Service Commission that will incentivize solar systems over the next five years.”

That’s the plan. The PSC is working on the next five years of the Renewable Portfolio Standard. It’s not certain if the commission will vote on it before the end of the year but that is the goal, said James Denn, speaking for the commission.

Going forward, a white paper written by commission staff has laid out two options for customer-sited solar photovoltaic subsidies: $24 million a year from 2010 to 2015 — roughly its current level — or $49 million a year from 2010 to 2015 — double the current level. The white paper points out that despite its advantages, solar power costs twice as much as other types of renewable energy.

“The PSC is taking a very focused look at its renewable energy programs,” Denn said. “We want to make sure the money we’re investing is being invested properly and gets the most bang for the buck.”

Contractors say solar gives you plenty of bang for the buck. “The only difference between this investment and any other is, it’s guaranteed,” said Justin Williams, owner of Central New York Solar LLC in Canastota. “I can guarantee the sun’s going to shine, you can produce energy and reduce your electric bill.”

You can contact Marie Morelli at mmorelli@syracuse.com or 315-470-2220.

—

Credit Due: http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/demand_for_solar_energy_subsid.html

Dick Blume / The Post-StandardOnondaga County’s plan to use trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels – instead of three new sewage treatment plants – to reduce sewer overflows polluting tributaries of Onondaga Lake was approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin. In this file photo from August 2009, the sun rises over the lake. Syracuse, NY – Onondaga County got the final go-ahead Monday to scrap plans for three new sewage plants — including one in Armory Square — and instead reduce sewer overflows with trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels.

U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin on Monday signed a new consent order between U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullinthe county, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Atlantic States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit group that sued the county in 1988 to stop its pollution of Onondaga Lake.

The new agreement replaces a court order that required the county to build a series of sewage plants along tributaries of the lake. The parties to the lawsuit — along with environmentalists and neighborhood activists who opposed building sewage plants — hailed the new consent order as a breakthrough that could change the face of Syracuse.

“Just imagine half a million more trees in our city,” said Joseph Heath, an attorney representing the Onondaga Nation, who helped hammer out the agreement.

DEC officials have said Onondaga County will likely set an example for other New York communities in how to use “green infrastructure” to handle urban runoff.

County Executive Joanie Mahoney laid the groundwork in 2008 when, just three weeks after taking office, she halted plans for a controversial $128 million sewage plant in Armory Square, where site work had already begun. Mahoney, the DEC and Atlantic States then sought permission from Scullin to hammer out a deal that would emphasize green measures.

Mahoney said she hopes the new plan will revitalize the community by cleaning its waterways in environmentally friendly ways.

“This is truly changing the prospects for Syracuse and Central New York,’’ Mahoney said. “And it’s probably going to be among the biggest accomplishments that I’ll have in this job, to get the federal court to change the direction we’re in.’’

Instead of a sewage plant along Onondaga Creek in Armory Square, the county will build a 3.7 million-gallon underground storage tank there to hold sewer overflows until they can be processed at the county’s Metro sewage treatment plant. The Armory Square tank will be installed by December 2013. Two additional storage tanks will be built along Harbor Brook, also by 2013.

Through a combination of storage tanks, new sewers and green infrastructure, the county is expected to prevent at least 95 percent of storm runoff from reaching waterways by 2018. The sewage system now captures about 85 percent each year, or 400 million gallons less.

The new court order gives the county until 2011 — roughly three extra years — to demonstrate its ability to restrict phosphorous emissions into Onondaga Lake. The order also calls for new scientific studies examining phosphorous in the lake.

Tim Knauss can be reached at tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.

—

Credit Due: http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/federal_judge_approves_letting.html

Siemens is behind new traffic controls that use less than a quarter of the electricity of previous systems

Designing traffic lights to be more energy efficient may not seem the hardest thing to do. Change the energy-wasting incandescent bulbs for modern light sources and you’re done, right? Not quite.

“We’ve reinvented the humble traffic light,” says Matthew Vincent, deputy director of sales and marketing at Siemens Mobility Traffic Solutions. “Previously they used very energy-inefficient [50W] tungsten-halogen lights, which only have a lifespan of six months or so, which means you have lots of maintenance issues with people visiting site to replace them.” The company replaced the bulbs with a cluster of modern LEDs, redesigned the electrical control systems from scratch and lowered the operating voltage from 240V to 48V.

The result is a new set of lights that uses less than a quarter of the electricity of standard traffic lights. There are around half a million tungsten-based traffic lights in operation around the UK and, considering the CO₂ emissions saved by preventing fleets of vans driving around replacing blown tungsten lights, the cumulative benefits to the environment become apparent. Which is perhaps one of the reasons that the Siemens traffic lights won first prize this week in the energy and environment category of the inaugural iAwards.

Showcasing a shift-change

The iAwards, set up by the government’s Business, Innovation and Skills department, are designed to help showcase British science and technology, in big and small companies: a Bafta-style award to give prominence to a field that is sometimes overlooked in the UK. Fighting it out for prizes in 10 categories, small startup firms were pitted directly against multinationals such as Unilever and Siemens.

And environment was a strong theme in the shortlist. “There is a huge amount of interest in sustainability and environment,” says entrepreneur James Caan, chair of the iAwards judging panels and a star of BBC2’s Dragon’s Den. “We are seeing more and more people coming forward with business ideas, entrepreneurs developing that space. There is a shift-change in people recognising its value and importance.”

At Solargorilla, which won the iAward for digital communication, chief executive Jerry Ranger says his company’s invention is all about allowing people to use off-grid technology in everyday life.

The device has two solar panels, each the size of an A4 sheet. A proprietary circuit board stabilises the voltage coming in and a super-efficient battery stores the electrical power generated from the sun. In the northern hemisphere the Solargorilla will charge a standard laptop in around six hours or a mobile phone in under an hour. “We had a guy on Madagascar who ran a laptop for four weeks completely grid-free,” says Ranger.

Other shortlisted companies included AMEE, a company aiming to track and connect the world’s energy and consumption data, and map its environmental impact. AlertMe offered up a smart meter that it says could save consumers 25% of their energy bills, while the radical-looking QR5 wind turbine from Quiet Revolution is designed to fit discreetly to buildings, generating decentralised power in the urban environment. Diverse Energy had its PowerCube – a fuel cell that runs on ammonia and that could replace diesel generators to power mobile phone towers in developing countries – shortlisted for the “next big thing” category.

Paul Drayson, the UK science minister, and a technology-company entrepreneur himself with vaccine company Powderject, says that climate change is a massive market opportunity because the world has no choice but to respond to the problems. But, because it is such a new sector, there are many unknowns for small companies. “The industrial structures haven’t settled down yet,” he says. “In life sciences you have an established structure whereby a startup from university will form the biotech company and have a route to commercialisation, either through licensing or acquisition to a large pharmaceutical company. In clean tech, that route to market has not been well established. That’s all being built and that what’s makes this market area exciting.”

And he says there is no better time for British companies to get moving on green technology. “We’re coming out of a nasty recession; market shares change more rapidly at this stage in the economic cycle than any other time. It’s the companies that are bold now and invest in new technologies that are going to win market share as the economy grows over the next five years.”

Protect your investment

Building a company from scratch may not be the specific expertise of those coming up with ideas, but Drayson has some tips. Anyone thinking of starting up a business should ensure their technology idea is protected, he says. “You have patents and registered designs. Then go and talk to companies operating in that space; don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re unique, don’t make the mistake of thinking you have no competition, you do.”

For small business startups, even in the green technology space where Caan says specific investment funds are increasingly becoming available, would-be entrepreneurs also need to understand that the initial idea is only a part of the business. “The one thing I come across time and time again is that entrepreneurs believe the idea is 95% and execution is 5% and there lies the problem,” says Caan. “Success lies in your ability to execute a journey – it is the development, patent, logistics, manufacturing, distribution, pricing, branding and marketing. People, for some reason, forget all those things.”

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Credit Due: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/18/green-technology-innovation-iawards

Visit http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/pact_website.html for further information

A new online platform launched today by the World Future Council provides policymakers throughout the world with the right tools to unleash sustainable energy development. The new PACT website (www.onlinepact.org) embraces eight new policy recommendations on energy efficiency.

Submitted on 11/11/09, 08:31 AM

Hamburg/London, November, 11th 2009: A massive uptake of renewable energy and the application of efficient technologies is the key to fighting climate change, creating jobs and building future economies. A new online platform launched today by the World Future Council provides policymakers throughout the world with the right tools to unleash sustainable energy development in their country. A catalogue of policies and regulations to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and to reduce the overall energy demand now helps Parliamentarians to create a better policy framework. The PACT website www.onlinepact.org that was originally launched in November 2007 has been completely rebuilt and embraces eight new policy recommendations on energy efficiency.

“It is eye-opening to realise that replacing a single 100 Watt traditional light bulb with an energy saving model results in a saving of C02 emissions that equals driving a fuel efficient car from India to Germany. If all light bulbs worldwide were replaced global CO2 emissions would be reduced by 2%. This equals more than 50% of global aviation emissions per annum”, says Dr. Axel Bree, Policy Officer and chief editor of the PACT website.

Bree: “Our new website has been explicitly designed for policymakers. We want to sensitise them to the urgent need to develop sound renewable energy policies and increase energy efficiency but also emphasise that, by promoting the renewable energy transition, thousands of jobs can be created and money can be made. The unique aspect is that we don’t leave it at that but combine this information with precise policy recommendations and suggestions of how to implement them”.

The PACT website is divided into a section that provides ‘a one step clearing house’ for designing ‘Feed-in Tariffs’ as best policies to accelerate the development of renewable energy and into a series of eight sound policy recommendations to reduce the overall energy demand. There are policy examples for the use of cooking stoves, which do not emit CO2 or other hazardous fumes, but produce biochar, an organic, carbon-storing fertilizer. Smart electricity meters inform consumers about how they could save up to 10% of their electricity costs by running the washing machine at off-peak times or turning off appliances on stand-by. Congestion charges can mitigate traffic problems and curb gasoline consumption in large cities while taking in funds for public transport and cycling lanes.

All policy recommendations listed on the PACT website are the result of in-depth research by the WFC. They meet the WFC Future Justice criteria that are designed to thoroughly check policies for unintended negative consequences. Case studies prove that the recommended

policies can work and have worked successfully in the past. The website is complemented by a new booklet that can be downloaded at onlinepact.org/1552.html or ordered from the WFC.

World Future Council:
The World Future Council brings the interests of future generations to the centre of policy making. Its up to 50 eminent members from around the globe have already successfully promoted change. The Council addresses challenges to our common future and provides decision-makers with effective policy solutions. In-depth research underpins advocacy work for international agreements, regional policy frameworks and national lawmaking and thus produces practical and tangible results. The World Future Council Foundation is registered in Hamburg.

Media contact:

Anne Reis
Media & Communications Officer

Phone: +49 (0)40 30 70 914-16
Email: anne.reis@worldfuturecouncil.org

http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org

WITH THE NEWS that the state’s premier solar energy company, Evergreen Solar, is facing financial struggles, many are questioning whether the state was wise to “bet’’ on solar energy by providing an unprecedented level of state loans, grants, and land deals. Indeed, the rationality of states bidding against each other to attract biotech, information tech, and now renewable energy companies by offering the biggest subsidy package is part of a decades-long debate.

A case could be made that Massachusetts is better positioned to develop a wind production industry than solar. But the bigger question is whether the United States will be a leading player in the production of renewable energy and other clean technologies -or cede that role to Germany, Japan, and increasingly China.

In the absence of a coherent national renewable energy policy, states and cities have been moving forward on their own. The predominant strategy has been to require utilities to purchase a set percentage of their energy – known as a renewable portfolio standard – from renewable sources, invest in some research, offer subsidies to attract companies, and maybe provide some worker training.

The payoff for any given state may be anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand jobs. While we applaud each success, this approach does not add up to the United States becoming a leader in renewable energy.

Even when states and cities do all the right things, success is not guaranteed. Consider Austin, a city that has a comprehensive strategy to develop a solar production industry in a state that has been a leader in renewable energy. All of its planning and investment has resulted in one company staying in the area, HelioVolt, a producer of thin-film solar power cells. Two other solar companies incubated in Austin moved to other states, taking advantage of attractive incentive packages. And Austin Energy’s new 30-megawatt solar energy farm will use Suntech modules made in China and assembled in the United States.

What would a national strategy look like? The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 invests $112 billion in green technologies, and earmarks $2 billion for renewable energy research. President Obama proposes to add another $15 billion annually in renewable energy research, to be funded by the cap-and-trade system proposed in the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

Meanwhile, China is spending $221 billion of its $586 billion 2009 stimulus package on renewable energy and other clean technologies, and is poised to overtake Germany and Japan to become the world’s largest alternative energy producer. Another spur to development is a 2007 policy requiring large utilities to produce 3 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010 and 8 percent by 2020, excluding hydroelectric (20 percent by 2020 is proposed in the Clean Energy and Security Act). China’s five-year plan that starts in 2011 will include even higher standards and subsidies to support clean energy development.

Though aspects of it may violate the WTO, China has a coherent industrial policy to capture global leadership, while US initiatives are fragmented. China recognized that the real economic development potential in renewable energy is in manufacturing, which comprises 70 -75 percent of the jobs in solar, and now has more than 100 solar companies that account for one-third of global solar component production.

Following European producers, China’s largest solar panel producer, Suntech Power Holdings, will soon build a plant in the United States. The company plans on selling panels at below cost in order to build market share. The New York Times reports that the factory, which will employ 75 to 150 workers, will be located in the Southwest. Other Chinese manufacturers will follow. States will no doubt compete in offering subsidies to attract these plants.

What is needed is a coherent national industrial policy, linked to a green energy policy, to connect demand, supply, and technology. It’s not enough to have a few branch production plants of foreign producers, while the advanced technological leadership, the potential for future innovation, the production supply chains, and the most advanced jobs stay overseas. Officials can mourn the weakness of Evergreen Solar, but they should be fixing the far bigger weakness in national vision and policy.

Joan Fitzgerald, a professor and director of the graduate program in law, policy, and society at Northeastern University, is author of the forthcoming book, “Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development.’’

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

by Stephen Shankland

Mainstream servers are growing increasingly brawny with multicore processors and tremendous memory capacity, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs Pittsburgh think 98-pound weaklings of the computing world might be better suited for many of the jobs on the Internet today.

This first-generation FAWN system has an array of boards, each with its own processor, flash memory card, and network connection.

(Credit: Carnegie Mellon University)

The alternative the researchers advocate is named FAWN, short for Fast Array of Wimpy Nodes. It’s described in a paper just presented at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles.

In short, the researchers believe some work can be managed with lower expense and lower power consumption using a cluster of servers built with lower-end processors and flash memory than with a general-purpose server. And these days, with green technology in vogue and power costs no longer an afterthought, efficient computing is a big deal.

“We were looking at efficiency at sub-maximum load. We realized the same techniques could serve high loads more efficiently as well,” said David Andersen, the Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of computer science who helped lead the project.

It’s not just academic work. Google, Intel, and NetApp are helping to fund the project, and the researchers are talking to Facebook, too. “We want to understand their challenges,” Andersen said.

Flash memory and low-end processors
Today’s servers store data on a combination of slow but capacious hard drives and fast but expensive memory. In contrast, FAWN relies on flash memory, storage technology with a price and performance in between the two. Its CompactFlash memory cards are more ordinarily found in higher-end digital cameras, but they are relatively easily repurposed since they communicate with a conventional hard drive interface.

In addition, each computing node in the FAWN system doesn’t use powerful Xeon or Athlon processors. In their place are cheap and relatively anemic models–a five-year-old AMD chip in the first prototype and Intel’s Atom for handheld PCs and eventually mobile phones in the second-generation design under way, Andersen said.

The system uses a front end to communicate with the outside world, and an internal network adds reliability and flexibility. Each processor runs a stripped-down version of Ubuntu Linux.

Commercialization, though, will come from elsewhere.

“I told my students I’d be willing to do a start-up if they wanted to. Collectively we decided finishing a bunch of Ph.D.s is more important,” Andersen said.

There are plenty of other server makers in the world, though, and many of them are interested in flash memory packaged densely into what are called solid-state drives. Sun Microsystems has keen interest in flash memory and built a specialized database system for would-be acquirer Oracle. Dell sees great promise in solid-state drives.

And addressing the brains in FAWN’s design, start-up SeaMicro apparently is developing Atom-based servers with numerous processors. Founder Anil Rao is one inventor on a SeaMicro patent application for a computer system with numerous independent processor modules that share access to shared resources including storage, networking, and boot-up technology called the BIOS.

The FAWN approach can be adjusted with hard drives or conventional memory to match various sizes of datasets or rates or the queries retrieving that data.

(Credit: Carnegie Mellon et al.)

The key value of FAWN
So where exactly is FAWN useful? Andersen makes no claims that it’s good for everything–but the use cases are often central to companies at the center of the ongoing Internet revolution.

Specifically, it’s good for situations where companies must store a lot of smaller tidbits of information that’s read from the storage system much more often than it’s written. Often this data is stored in a form called “key-value pairs.” These consist of an indexing key and some associated data: “The key might be ‘Dave Andersen update 10,579.’ The update value might be ‘Back in Pittsburgh.’”

But conventional memory is expensive, and hard drives are bad at retrieving lots of small bits of data such as image thumbnails or social-network contact names stored all over the disk. “If you look at kinds of workloads that challenge modern computers, those with lots of random access to input-output are incredibly inefficient on high-end CPUs,” Andersen said.

Systems such as Amazon’s Dynamo, Facebook’s Memcached, and LinkedIn’s Voldemort store data as key-value pairs. Google’s MapReduce technology and Yahoo’s Hadoop-based equivalent use key-value pairs in processing search engine data and other tasks.

Programming a FAWN cluster would be difficult, but tailoring it for key-value pairs means it can be packaged as a special-purpose server appliance. Customers need not know the details of its inner workings, Andersen said.

Cut the power
These large-scale systems don’t come cheap. Besides the hardware, software, and maintenance costs, there’s power, too–and companies often must pay for energy twice, in effect, because servers’ waste heat means data centers must be cooled down.

The researchers compared how many datastore queries could be accomplished per unit of energy and found FAWN compelling: a conventional server with a quad-core Intel Q6700 processor, 2GB of memory, and an Mtron Mobi solid-state drive measured 52 queries per joule of energy compared to 346 for a FAWN cluster. And tests of a newer design show even more promise: “Our preliminary experience using Intel Atom-based systems paired with SATA-based Flash drives shows that they can provide over 1,000 queries per Joule,” the paper said.

The approach can be tailored for different varieties of work. For larger data elements that needn’t be accessed as often, FAWN clusters could be built with conventional hard drives. For those with smaller data elements needed even more frequently, FAWNs could use more conventional memory.

There have been server fads before–the early generation of blade servers, consisting largely of lower-end processors squeezed tightly together–were a commercial flop. But Internet-facing data centers are a big business these days, and with cloud computing on the rise, it’s going to get bigger. So perhaps the FAWN approach will catch on at least in that area.

But if somebody wants to commercialize it, they’d better think about changing the name.

“I worry no manufacturer will ever want to produce a device called a wimpy node,” Andersen said. “But we like the name.”

Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.

Hunt Consolidated Inc.’s investment arm is making a push into “green” companies now that it has spun off an entity called Terra Verde Partners to help it find environmentally friendly firms with revenue between $5 million and $150 million.

With the spinout completed in late September, officials of Dallas-based Terra Verde are scouting North America on behalf of Hunt Investment Corp.

Terra Verde will consider businesses larger than $150 million in revenue if other like-minded investors are part of the transaction, company officials say.

Hunt Investment will get the first look at deals Terra Verde digs up, according to Chris Kleinert, president of Hunt Investment. If it opts not to invest, Terra Verde then will be free to take the deal to other potential investors. The principals of Terra Verde, managing partners Phil Arra and James Lee, say they also intend to their invest their own money into deals that Terra Verde puts together.

Hunt Investment’s role may involve anything from acquiring a controlling stake, such as through a leveraged buyout, or simply injecting capital into the deal. Terra Verde is looking to invest between $1 million and $15 million of its own money in addition to other commitments from investment groups. The amount of Hunt’s participation may vary, Terra Verde officials say.

Dallas-based Hunt Consolidated is a holding company with interests in energy, real estate and private equity with estimated revenue of $2.13 billion, according to the Dallas Business Journal’s Top 200 Private Companies list. Hunt Consolidated added Hunt Investment more than a decade ago to help diversify, and since then it has put money into dozens of companies nationwide, according to the Hunt Investment Web site. Hunt Investment has six private equity and venture capital units, according to Hunt Investment’s Web site.

“What they’re going to do is bring deals to us,” Kleinert said. “We’ll invest on our own account … If we opt to invest into that business, we’d do so from our own fund, rather than through Terra Verde.”

The move may seem a tad surprising for Hunt Consolidated, the holding company controlled by Dallas business icon Ray L. Hunt. Hunt’s father, H.L. Hunt, was a wildcatter who, according to published accounts, was once the world’s richest man. Ray Hunt is perhaps best known for making a large oil find in Yemen in the 1980s that helped add to the family fortune.

Kleinert says Hunt Investment’s interest in green companies began in 2007. That’s when one of Hunt Investment’s units, the Hunt Special Situations Group, paid $37.5 million to acquire from Republic Services (NYSE: RSG) a Dallas business now called Living Earth, which sells mulch, compost and other landscaping materials.

“Living Earth is the largest recycler of green material in the state of Texas, recycling more than half a million tons (of green materials”) on an annual basis,” Lee said. Living Earth’s employment levels vary depending on the season, but it has close to 250 people.

Living Earth has “been a home run,” Kleinert said. He added that Terra Verde’s managing partners, Arra and Lee, have done a “great job” of finding possible acquisitions for Living Earth or Terra Verde to do.

More money coming in

There may be as many as 200 private equity and venture capital firms nationwide that invest in the environmental sector in some fashion, according to Bryan Urban, managing partner of Dallas-based Silveron Capital Partners, a boutique investment banking firm that specializes in renewable and alternative energy. Of that group, perhaps 50 or so specialize in it.

“There has been a significant influx of capital for the industry as a whole, both from early stage companies and more traditional renewable energy companies,” he said.

On the venture capital side of green investing, funds may be $50 million in size, while for more traditional private equity firms, funds could be anywhere from $500 million to $3 billion, he said.

“I don’t believe it’s overcrowded,” he said of the growing investment interest in all things green. “I believe there will be significant opportunities in the space, predominately because it requires so much capital.”

People in the investment industry say they’re not aware of any other shops in North Texas other than Terra Verde that specialize in green investing.

“This is the first (firm) that I’ve heard about in Dallas that is doing it,” said Arthur Hollingsworth, managing partner of Lone Star Investment Advisors LLC, an area private equity firm.

jbounds@bizjournals.com | 214-706-7122

By ANNA PRIOR

You have a hybrid automobile in your driveway, and you faithfully recycle. Is it time to go “green” with your money, too, by investing in eco-sensitive funds?

There are roughly three dozen dedicated green portfolios from which to choose, according to research firm Morningstar Inc. They include both mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Most focus on companies involved in environment-related industries—such as alternative energy or water treatment and distribution—though a few take it a step further by including a broader mix of companies with low carbon footprints, regardless of the sector in which they operate. Beyond these dedicated green portfolios, there are funds that screen holdings for certain environmental factors as part of a broader commitment to socially responsible investing.

Some financial planners and green-investing professionals say the near future bodes well for companies involved in green industries because of what many see as an eco-friendly White House, economic-stimulus money earmarked for alternative-energy technology, and proposed legislation in Congress that seeks to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and establish standards for energy efficiency.

The “policy and regulatory environment is going to be a boon for green investing, as companies across industries scramble to realign their carbon intensity and how they perform energy-efficiency-wise,” says Bennett Freeman, the senior vice president for sustainability research and policy at Calvert Asset Management Co., a longtime participant in socially responsible investing and the manager of the Calvert Global Alternative Energy fund.

But investors tempted by green investing need to choose funds carefully and understand that some of these sectors can be very volatile, as illustrated by the bankruptcy of multiple ethanol and biofuel producers, as well as struggles among small solar-power companies, amid a drop in oil prices over the past year. It is also important to recognize that buying into green businesses and shunning those that are harder on the Earth’s resources won’t benefit the environment directly.

The thought that “if you are buying stock [in] an oil company, you are somehow giving money to the oil company” is just not true, says Brian Pon, a financial planner with Financial Connections Group Inc. in the San Francisco Bay area. Whether you’re investing in a traditional energy company or an alternative-energy player, you are typically buying shares from another investor and not pumping cash into the firm. Further, he says, “an individual doesn’t really have the money to affect investment markets. You’re buying a hundred shares when hundreds of thousands of shares trade daily.”

Green investing has “a less direct impact” on the environment than personally polluting less and recycling, concurs Steve Schueth, president of First Affirmative Financial Network LLC, an independent investment adviser specializing in socially responsible investing. But it is a way for one’s investments to reflect one’s values, he says.

In many ways, green investing is a subset of socially responsible investing, where fund managers and other investors typically use a set of screens to weed out the stocks of companies that don’t meet certain criteria, usually relating to environmental, social and corporate-governance issues.

A wide range of fund strategies fall under the green label, says Morningstar analyst Michael Herbst. The narrowest funds and ETFs are dedicated to specific sectors, such as solar power or water treatment. Others hold a mix of such stocks and “because they are a little more broadly diversified, their performance tends to be less volatile over time,” he says. Less common are funds that consider green factors in their stock selection but also include a broad enough range of stocks to serve as a core holding in an investment portfolio. Most green mutual funds and ETFs are on the smaller side, with all but a few having less than $300 million in assets; a couple of the narrow sector ETFs are among the largest portfolios.

Green Sector Bets

Among the narrow and volatile green portfolios are two ETFs that focus on solar energy: Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy Index and Market Vectors Solar Energy. They are both down 45% over the past 12 months, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 6.9%.

“Any time you make a sector bet, you are making a very narrow bet that has lots of opportunities to go wildly wrong,” says Milo Benningfield, founder of Benningfield Financial Advisors in San Francisco. Just make sure you are “comfortable with that and have the capacity to take on that risk.”

A drop in the price of oil, which made alternative energy sources less viable economically and less attractive to investors, weighed heavily on the solar sector and other alternative-energy areas in the past year. But Claymore Securities Inc. President Christian Magoon says that if the U.S. passes legislation favorable to alternative energy, solar-energy stocks could get a big pop. “There’s a lot of volatility in solar stocks,” he says.

PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy, a somewhat broader alternative-energy portfolio, has also taken investors for a bumpy ride. The ETF gives investors exposure to areas including ethanol, solar and wind power, and energy efficiency. Over the past year, the fund—one of the larger green portfolios, with a recent $783 million in assets—returned a negative 27%. Over the past three years, it has declined an average 13.5% a year, trailing the S&P 500 by more than eight percentage points.

One of the largest green portfolios, with a recent $1.4 billion in assets, is PowerShares Water Resources, up an average 0.14% a year over the past three years. This fund invests in companies that generally derive 50% or more of their revenue from water-related businesses, including water utilities, water-treatment companies and firms that are involved in the infrastructure and distribution of water.

A Broader Mix

The next group of green funds are those that branch into broader sectors of the economy but that Morningstar’s Mr. Herbst says still aren’t diversified enough to be attractive as core holdings.

New Alternatives, launched in 1982, has one of the longest track records among green funds. It invests in various areas of alternative energy, including wind, solar and hydropower, as well as in companies focused on energy efficiency and pollution reduction. Recently, two-thirds of its assets were in utilities and industrial-materials firms, according to Morningstar. Like a traditional socially responsible investment fund, New Alternatives steers clear of certain sectors, including nuclear power, coal and oil, and incorporates screens for other social issues.

Over the past decade, New Alternatives ranks in the top 15% of Morningstar’s World Stock category, with an average annual return of 6.47%.

Winslow Green Growth and Winslow Green Solutions also fall into this broader group. These mutual funds focus on companies that provide solutions to environmental concerns and those that have environmentally sustainable operations. For example, both funds have holdings in Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., a fast-food burrito chain. Chipotle has made an effort to be greener by using recycled materials and energy-efficient lighting in some of its restaurants, while also working to source food locally and use natural and organic ingredients, says fund co-manager Matthew Patsky. Both Winslow Green Growth and Winslow Green Solutions have outperformed the S&P 500 this year, with gains of 39% and 26%, respectively.

Pax World Global Green, meanwhile, invests primarily in companies that provide environmental services in the areas of water, energy and waste. It is up 32% this year.

Possible Core Holdings

Several green funds are considered broad and diversified enough to be used as core holdings in an investment portfolio.

The 10-year-old Portfolio 21 is one of Morningstar’s favorites in this group because of its established track record and broad exposure to various sectors, issues and locations. This fund ranks in the top 30% of Morningstar’s World Stock category for past five years and top 40% for the past decade. Assets are just under $300 million.

Portfolio 21’s holdings range from lesser-known companies such as energy-efficient ball-bearing manufacturer SKF AB in Sweden to Internet giant Google Inc. and pharmaceutical company Novartis AG.

Google’s business success along with the company’s attention to energy efficiency—including installing solar panels at company headquarters—caught Portfolio 21’s attention, says Tony Tursich, one of the fund’s portfolio managers. Novartis, meanwhile, has taken a leadership role in trying to reduce waste from drugs, which ends up in water supplies, he says.

The fund has some exposure to sectors that wouldn’t be considered green by most. It doesn’t own traditional mining companies, “but we do have exposure to the metals sector through Johnson Matthey PLC, a metals recycler and refiner,” says Mr. Tursich. Portfolio 21 also has investments in several auto-parts suppliers, including one that develops hybrid-auto technologies, though it is avoiding auto companies themselves.

“Toyota and Honda are way ahead of the curve in [building] fuel-efficient cars, but they are still jumping in and making big SUVs and trucks,” says Leslie Christian, chief executive of Portfolio 21 Investments.

Other funds that Morningstar analysts say could be considered for core holdings are Green Century Balanced, Green Century Equity, Northern Global Sustainability Index and Alger Green.

—Ms. Prior is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. She can be reached at anna.prior@wsj.com.