WorkGreen

World temperature 1880-2011

2012-02-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

NASA published this video rendition of the world's surface temperature from 1880 to 2011.

Speaks for itself.

The green button

2012-01-28T06:03:00.000-08:00

The White House effort to make energy usage data more transparent to end users has yielded first results. Along with other major California utility companies Pacific Gas and Electric has announced their support for the "Green Button". The initiative drives utility companies to offer energy usage data for homeowners in a standard format to download from their website at any time. Based on this format, other vendors such as Tendril or oPower can provide applications to monitor your energy usage realtime and take action directly from mobile devices at any time. This can lead to significant energy savings in a short amount of time.

If you have a smart meter installed at your home, try it out and see what unleashed data in standard formats can do. This is a great initiave by Aneesh Chopra, The United States CTO.

Kids of Sodom - eWaste in Ghana

2012-01-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

This year's UNICEF picture of the year is by German photographer Kai Loeffelbein. The series "Kids of Sodom" depicts life at the other end of the spectrum of consumer electronics.

If eWaste isn't just tossed into a landfill or a nearby ocean, it is collected for recycling. This sounds good, but countries are not required to recycle their electronic trash in their own country. Despite some country specific regulations or global agreements like the Basel Convention (which is not signed or ratified by all countries) this is common practice.

So each year, hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous eWaste are shipped in containers to places like Accra in Ghana. In those countries, large slum cities exist where people try to harvest valuable materials with the poorest of means and absolutely no health protection.

Loeffelbein's photo series shows this kind of life. We are not only exploiting the poor countries for rare materials, but also toss the broken toys right back at them. With more stringent and mandatory regulation we could stop externalizing the true cost of our digital life style and achieve a more viable relationship to innovative electronics.

Green Christmas wishes 2011

2011-12-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction."
- Bill Gates

This year has been huge for our Sustainability efforts at Workday.

We issued our very first CSR report 2010, which was truly a change maker in our journey to be the most environmentally and socially sustainable company we can be. It was a beautiful document, but more importantly it anchored all our efforts in the minds of our executives and fellow employees, so we moved from tree huggers to sustainability managers.
We had a green and healthy Rising.
We started composting in the offices.
We continued and extended our commitment to carbon neutrality by purchasing RECs for 2011.
We revamped and reinvigorated our green blog.
And hey, we even got a cool new logo!

Looking ahead, I’d like us all to consider Mr. Gates’ quote for a moment: While this is unfortunately very true to the negative extent in the climate realm, it also is true in the positive direction. Small improvements here and there start building up momentum until they become a shift in perspective for many until we finally reach a tipping point. What wasn’t even conceivable a few years ago is now common sustainable business practice. Think what we can achieve in two, five or even ten years and how it can make a measurable difference. We should be proud of what has been achieved so far and look for opportunities to do more in 2012.

So, I am dreaming of a green Christmas...

COP17 and the meaning of global climate politics

2011-12-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

In our series of review posts on Climate Change Conferences (see COP15/Copenhagen and COP16/Cancun), we have to take a look at what was achieved in Durban as part of COP17 in the first weeks of December 2011.

Let's keep in mind that the currently active agreement for stabilizing green house gas emissions globally, the 1997 Kyoto protocol, is running out in 2012. No binding successor agreement is in place and finding a solution to this problem was the primary purpose of COP17 (and its predecessors).

The conference was off to a slow start and nothing much was achieved until the very last days. In fact, the real action took place after the main event had concluded. In 2 night long sessions, an agreement of some form was reached after all. Here is the high level summary:

The Kyoto protocol will be extended to a second commitment period until the end of 2017.
A new legally binding agreement will be defined by 2015 and put in place by 2020.
A rough outline of the Green Climate Fund, aiming at bringing financial aid from developed countries to poorer nations, was sketched. The actual funding remains unclear.
More efficient market mechanism for handling carbon emissions were discussed.
CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) has been anchored in the agreement as a climate saving technology.
Further steps on REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) have been outlined.

Now, what does this all mean? Here are some reflections.

Kyoto and its followers

Overall, we have to openly question the efficiency of a global treaty such as the Kyoto protocol. The US, as the 2nd largest emitter of CO2, never ratified it. China, the largest emitter of CO2 by now, is classified as a developing country and does not have to commit to specific targets. Even better, right after Durban closed, Canada announced that they will withdraw from the treaty altogether since it would impose economic hardship on the country. So what good does it really do? It remains highly questionable if we can ever reach a centrally organized treaty that transfers into binding country law to reduce emissions. Such a centralized, top-down approach seems politically naive and will never reach the dramatic positive impact we need. It will be undermined by the existing economic and political lobbies in each country and at best limp along in slow motion.

Green Climate Fund
Establishing a central fund aimed at transferring investment for sustainable energy development to the more impacted poorer countries is a good idea. There is certainly lots to outline on how such a fund would be structured and managed. But given the current economic weakness and respectives debt crisis of the EU and US, it remains highly doubtful when and if such a fund would be filled with investment money.

CCS
Given the high percentage of coal-based energy generation, it seemed logical to pursue a technology to separate the carbon from the power plants' emissions and store it somewhere. Such technology exists in an exploratory stage, but there is no proof that it can play any role on a larger scale to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide. The amounts of CO2 would be staggering and require entire underground cave structures, all to be used for thousands of years without leakage. There is no company or country that can guarantee that such a process could work and therefore making CCS part of a climate treaty is highly questionable.

REDD
The rampant deforestation is an irreversible process that is extremely harmful to the CO2 balance. Pushing for active reduction of this emission source by creation of a strong framework is very meaningful and can take effect directly without large technology or investment risk. It should be put into place immediately.

So, overall, COP17 was not the complete failure it threatened to be, but also it showcased the difficulty of any global consensus building that involves painful restrictions and financial burdens to be placed on the developed countries. It remains to be seen if a clear roadmap for the 2020 agreement can be developed in the next three years and if it can be put into effect in a truly binding way at all.

Take only what you need

2011-12-01T06:24:00.001-08:00

Professor Tim Jackson from the University of Surrey has, as part of the Sustainable Development Commission for the UK, published a remarkable report about "Prosperity without Growth". He outlines problems of our current system of rampant consumerism and shows possible ways out of this economically and ecologically flawed a approach.

Our market-driven model is entirely predicated on continued growth, which inevitably has to finds its end at some point. Resources such as fossil fuels become more scarce very quickly and the ecological footprint of growth brings our planet to its knees.
Growth has delivered its benefits very unequally within societies and across countries. Also, the blind belief in consumerism as a credo doesn't really raise people's happiness, in fact it it brings about a feeling of emptiness and "affluenza". I recommend at least reading the first introduction pages to get an idea of Jackson's work.

Now, as we enter the high season of consumerism called "the holidays", maybe we should ponder if Black Friday violence isn't a tell-tale sign that something isn't quite right with the social status we associate with mere "stuff". My personal recommendation for the Christmas Season this year (again) is to take action against deforestation and protect an acre of rainforest with Conservation International. Or just spend good old quality time with someone. In any case more meaningful than yet another unloved plastic toy or tech gizmo du jour.

Does the Internet hurt our Environment?

2011-11-27T00:43:00.001-08:00

Well, does it? How much does running all those servers in all those data centers in the cloud consume in electricity? What about the insane carbon footprint of Spam? But what about all the savings by telecommuting? What about fostering innovation by sharing information about new technologies that lead to more efficient use of resources? A pretty complex topic, but I am of the opinion that new technologies and the internet will play a crucial part in the transition to a Renewable Energy future.

A cool 2010 Infographic shows the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Internet in terms of environmental impact.

Google ends RE
2011-11-27T00:20:00.001-08:00

In a recent announcement of out-of-season spring cleaning (EOL for Google projects that didn't play out as planned), Google decided to end their efforts to make the production of Renewable Energy more cost efficient than Coal (RE < C). This ambitious initiative ran for four years and results on solar thermal (heliostat) and geothermal energy are published and broadly available.

Stopping this project does not mean Google abandons their attention to green energy. They continue to invest heavily in Renewable Energy (more than $850 million) and also are leading on Data Center efficiency. However, some doubts remains about their future direction as Bill Weihl, google.org's Green Czar and driving force behind many initiatives, has decided to leave the company in November 2011.

Renewable energy - the path of disruptive technology

2011-11-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

All disruptive technologies have something in common. They upset the status quo and by far outpace any growth projection made based on old structural thinking.

A few examples: In 1878 Western Union declared that the telephone has no commercial use and is technologically flawed. In 1977 the CEO of DEC declared that there is no viable reason why individuals should have a computer in their home. In 1980 McKinsey projected for ATT that by the year 2000 we would have 900,000 cell phones in the US. In fact, there were 109 million of them. Now think about Apple and the iPod, iPhone and iPad. All examples of technologies that changed how entire industry sectors are viewed today.

The reason the assessment and projections of early stage technology are so wildly off is that they are done from the view point of the "currently feasible". This old thinking invariably leads to a very conservative and held-back assessment of what could be possible.

Now think about Renewable Energy. In 1977, an expert committee tasked by the German government to assess the potential of Renewables declared that more than 5% of the overall energy consumption is definitely not possible. Not now, not ever. Even in 2005, the conservative German party CDU declared that a target of 20% renewable energy production is not at all plausible. Not now, not ever. Well, in 2011, Germany reached 21% of Renewables in the total energy mix. Just like that. More over, new targets have been set for renewable electricity of 35% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Realistic scenarios for 100% Renewable Energy are now being discussed by many serious and conservative institutions (see Prof. Jacobson from Stanford, McKinsey & European Climate Foundation EFC, Greenpeace, etc.). The best part of it: they are all economically viable and in fact cheaper than staying on the current course!

So, it seems that Renewables have the potential to truly surprise us and outpace the most optimistic scenarios issues even only a few years ago.

In 2010, the global total install base of Renewables is growing nicely (by region/technology) to a total of 1,313 GW (from 1,230 GW in 2009).

But there is a large difference between supplementing a percentage of energy with Renewables or replacing fossil and nuclear energy entirely. Old structures of harvesting dwindling energy sources, transporting and processing them and finally re-distributing them to end users in all countries will be rendered mostly useless by the very nature of Renewables. Renewables are free ("the sun ain't gonna charge us"), they are widely available in all countries (rather than rare and difficult to get at in a few countries) and are comparatively immediate in their consumability. This all poses a strong threat to the existing status quo of the energy industry and political establishment. This is quite different from most of the above mentioned disruptive technology shifts and it will be of highest importance to guard what is technologically possible and economically beneficial from the interest of a small group of incumbents. This will be the fight to watch over the next 10-20 years.

Google's efficient data centers

2011-11-20T00:24:00.001-08:00

Google operates lots of data centers around the globe and they are definitely leading the way when it comes to data center efficiency. As part of that, they measure and openly publish the efficiency of their data centers using the "Power Usage Efficiency" or PUE metrics. PUE measures what percentage of energy drawn from the grid is used not for powering actual servers, but for overhead such as cooling. The average PUE in US data centers is 2.0, according to an EPA study. Google operates a 12-month trailing PUE of 1.14! Take a look at their data center efficiency page to see the details. They break down their strategy for efficiency in 5 best practices:

Measure PUE
Manage Air Flow
Adjust Thermostat (run hotter)
Use Free Cooling (ambient cooling)
Optimize power distribution

They also recommend the GreenGrid standards for measuring PUE, which is an interesting set of guidelines to consider.

Given that Workday is sharing data centers with other tenants (co-location), we don't have the same degree of choice, but we are working with our data center providers to understand their respective PUE as well as the energy mix going into powering the data center. This gives us a good understanding of how "green" a data center is in the end.

24 hours of Reality

2011-09-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

The Climate Reality project has successfully completed a 24-hour marathon of education on the reality about climate change and the extreme weather conditions we are seeing.Watch the highlights and take action but not letting uninformed deniers get their way. Political action does matter and pays off to make a change. Maybe even organize an event an invite a presenter...

CDP Study Shows Cloud Computing Saves Green AND Is Green

2011-09-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

The Carbon Disclosure Project recently released a study that provides some interesting numbers on the sustainability of utilizing cloud computing (both economically and environmentally). The study was conducting using 11 global firms as case studies, including two Workday customers: Aviva and Applied Materials.

Key findings:

Cloud computing can avoid millions of metric tons of CO2
Potential financial benefits from cloud computing run into $ billions
Cloud computing delivers a postive net present value (NPV)
Cloud computing brings business efficiency savings

To illustrate, they build a hypothetical scenario of a large global firm moving their HR application to the public cloud (e.g. Workday HCM). They found that this would save $12 million over five years and cut CO2 emissions by 30,000 metric tons - the equivalent of taking 5,900 cars off the road for a year!

The overall results show that by 2020, "large U.S. companies that use cloud computing can achieve annual energy savings of $12.3 billion and annual carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year."

This is great news for Workday customers and confirms what we've known for a while now: SaaS Is Green!

Carbon footprint calculation - new apps

2011-05-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

Interesting new applications are emerging to bring carbon calculation into existing systems. Cloud-based Carbon calculation services such as Brighter Planet and AMEE offer up the complex science in background consumable through a simple API. Based on that, interesting new applications emerge either as stand-alone products or even as mash-up on existing sites:

* YakTrak: Calculate the footprint of your FedEx shipment!
* CarePlane: Calculate the footprint of airplane travel, also as a Chrome plugin for mash-up on Orbitz and other travel sites.
* Even more apps here. All of these are developed as GitHub projects as open source.

This is a power combination to bring to light new and unforeseen ideas to raise awareness on carbon emissions.

Workday's first Sustainability Report is here

2011-05-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Workday's first ever Corporate Sustainability Report is here!

What started as an idea in summer 2010 in the Green Team meetings picked up momentum towards the end of the year. Everything came together nicely by January and from there on the professionals of our marketing group took over to create an amazing document. We are all very proud of the result and can truly look at a document representing the spirit of Workday when it comes to Sustainability.

But CSR 2010 is just the beginning. The report provides us with a baseline for our future initiatives to continue to improve our efforts on Sustainability. We have already listed lots of areas for improvement and we are looking forward to working on "CSR 2012" where we can report back on those.

Blue Man Group on Climate Action

2011-05-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

Not the most recent, but still very cool, BMG-style call to action!

Bill McKibben speaks at PowerShift 2011

2011-04-21T04:40:00.000-07:00

McKibben from 350.org holds a fired-up speech in front of young climate activists on what we need to tackle next in the attempt to save the planet.

Watch it, get inspired, take action!

Open Compute

2011-04-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

Facebook has taken the concept of open source software development and brought it to the hardware domain. They goal was to built a new type of server which less expensive to build and much more efficient to operate. They challenged every assumption and built a new, "beautiful" server. It is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to operate a data center built to run these servers over conventional data center / server architectures. Very impressive.

And the best part, they give it to the community for everyone to copy, learn from and evolve. Way to go Facebook!

Take a look:

Very interesting article on the future of data centers

2011-04-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

Make sure you look at the picture of the "data center of the future" on the second page of this article.
One other idea that I would add is that once the data centers are set up to run hotter, it may make sense to also use the facilities for "hot yoga" classes. :)

Organize for Good

2011-03-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

A customer of ours pointed out a very interesting offering: AngelPoints. Their solution allows companies to organize all Employee and Company efforts for donations, volunteer work, community support and sustainability. Being part of a meaningful efforts in their workplace attracts top talent, motivates and retains employees. They also have a solution for Sustainability programs.

This is software doing good in action!

Carbon footprint of Spam

2011-03-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

It is always amazing to me how seemingly small things create big problems once taken to web-scale. One example is spam email. McAfee conducted a global study on how much energy is spent creating, storing, viewing and filtering the annoying spam email. First of all, the numbers are staggering: Various sources estimate that 90% of all incoming email is undesired (spam). A study lists the volume of spam email in August 2010 as 200 billion per day. Yes, that is per day. Emails that need to be sent, stored, filtered, viewed and purged. That's crazy!

Per year, according to McAfee this adds up to an energy consumption of 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or 33 terawatt hours (TWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion gallons of fuel. What a useless waste of energy!

Another interesting aspect is that most of the energy is consumed by end users trying to get rid of the junk mail. McAfee argues that a good spam filter can minimize this energy use and hence be a meaningful green contribution. I think this is an interesting example of using a green case study to drive additional value to the product sold. This could also be very relevant in a SaaS applications setting.

Cloud Computing is Greener

2011-03-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP), "Cloud Computing and Sustainability" showed that companies can reduce the energy use and carbon footprint of computing by up to 90 percent by outsourcing applications.

Check out this HBR article Cloud Computing is Greener for more information.

New Dublin office measures electricity consumption in real time

2011-02-22T06:36:00.000-08:00

As part of the new office build out, our local Dublin green team has installed electricity smart meters. The system, made by Eniscope, measures consumption in real time, collects the data from one or more meters and offers it up in powerful analytics. They also offer a service to review your consumption patterns and recommend improvements in energy efficiency. This, plus the overall consumption awareness, will lead to lower energy usage and lower cost.

We are planning to monitor this in our Dublin facilities and consider broader roll out to more facilities.

Unprintable File Format?

2010-12-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

According to Popular Science, the World Wildlife Federation has developed a new file format, WWF, that is essentially identical to PDF except one thing: it can't be printed.

Right now the format only works for Macs and is essentially a plug-in that prevents printing of the format, but there are plans to expand to Windows soon.

Who knows if this will catch on in offices, but it certainly helps raise awareness of the tremendous cost and waste associated with paper printing.

A good day in Cancun

2010-12-12T01:03:00.000-08:00

For the last 2 weeks, the world's climate-concerned eyes have been on Cancun where the UNFCCC met to improve on the failure of the Copenhagen conference. Not much hope was had going into the conference, too many contentious issues were raised before the conference even began. But last night, a compromise was reached and the conference ended with a positive outcome that sets the framework for future more binding agreements as a follow-up to the Kyoto protocol.

In short, the Cancun Agreements entail the following:

Establishing a formal temperature target of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A commitment to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) to include the protection of rain forests into the climate protection measures. Most importantly reduced deforestation can count as an offset in a cap-and-trade system.
A framework for to measure, record and verify (MRV) emissions that can includes industrialized and non-industrialized countries.
A structure for a "green climate fund" which will contain the 100$ billion committed annually during Copenhagen. This fund will be critical to fund investments in clean energy in the emerging countries.

While no hard commitments were set yet by any countries and the emergence of national agreements that support this direction are to be formed, this conference is a major step forward and proves that the UNFCCC can function as a body to govern climate policy.

It also shows that one person can make a big difference. Mexican Foreign Minister, Mrs. Patricia Espinosa, skillfully led the entire conference and when Bolivia threatened to kill the unanimous vote required for an agreement, she duly noted the concern and made a result happen. Her leadership has restored faith in the difficult multilateral process of climate talks. Sometimes politicians actually can be climate heroes...

Some relevant commentary and links:

* Coverage of the conference

* Details of the agreement

* 33-page conference PDF

The planet's vital signs

2010-11-17T05:47:00.001-08:00

NASA offers a very cool site to track vital statistics of our planet. The key indicators include CO2 concentration, sea level, ice levels and global temperature. The web site offers lots of valuable information around these stats, but there is also a condensed widget for it.

Story of Electronics

2010-11-10T03:27:00.001-08:00

Another "Story of ..." production, this time on Electronics, their "design for the dump" and the evil export of eWaste.

A bit of good news for biodiversity

2010-11-10T03:08:00.001-08:00

Amidst all the doom and gloom of recent global conferences that aim to protect our plant, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) met in Nagoya, Japan, for several weeks to create and sign a new treaty on the protection of species.

Small wonder, but they actually reached an agreement that will increase the protected area coverage to 17 percent of the land surface of the planet and 10 percent of the marine realm by 2020. This is up from prior targets and should help to protect endangered species. Not as much as we might need, but definitely a welcome break from the stalemate of recent global politics.

Read all about it here.

Roller coaster ride of fossil fuels

2010-11-09T05:54:00.001-08:00

Very nicely done video on past, present and future of fossil fuels..

Study on energy and carbon savings by cloud computing

2010-11-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

Interesting new report by Microsoft/Accenture/WSP claiming that running business applications in the cloud can help reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions by a net 30 percent or more versus running those same applications on their own infrastructure.

See their study here.

However, some voices do not fully subscribe to the benefits mentioned in the study.

It would be very interesting to conduct a similar study specifically to Workday's services and customers sustainability benefits by switching to our cloud offering.

Case Study on Workday's LEED-CI Gold certified office

2010-10-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

Workday's property management group Hines did a case study on our LEED-CI Gold certified office build-out. Highlights are 93% ENERGY STAR compliance on equipment, $1.02 dollars saved on energy cost per square foot and 20% reduction in indoor water use. Well done!

See the full report here.

A fight worth having

2010-10-06T21:50:00.001-07:00

Election time is coming up and with that many important decisions are to be made. Arguably the most important one is on the future of clean energy in California.

California has led the country in clean energy legislation by introducing A.B. 32, a forward-looking bill supported by all parties. Unlike the political stalemate on the Federal level, California achieved landmark legislation and this is even more important with this year's missed opportunities for a country-wide or global regulation. Many things that started in California have changed the world for the better!

Now, with Prop 23, out of state oil companies are trying to gut this legislation by tying it to an unrealistic level of unemployment. This even infuriated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Rep), a long time proponent of A.B.32. Read more about it in Friedman's recent column.

So, what can you do?

Get informed by visiting "No on Prop 23".
Learn what A.B. 32 does for California.
Tell your friends on Facebook about it.

All very confusing? Just remember: A.B. 32, good; Prop 23, bad.

Ban on eWaste export

2010-10-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

As we know, most of the eTrash produced in the US is not dealt with in the country, but exported to third world countries for "recycling". Which means electronics are produced in China, shipped to the US to be used for an increasingly shorter period, and then shipped back to China to drop it into a landfill. Yeah, that makes sense...

Now there is a new legislative proposal introduced to ban the export of eWaste. Read here for more details.

The Age of Stupid

2010-10-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

In a somewhat dramatic film from 2009 called "The Age of Stupid", we get to look back from the year 2055 when the full extent of possible climate change has pretty much altered our planet forever and ask ourselves:

"Why didn't we do something about it when we still had time?"

Based on current scientist view, we have about 5 years left to start a full-hearted shift from CO2 emitting energy sources to clean energy and follow through on the Kyoto protocol. Not a whole lot of time and Copenhagen 2009 and Cap-and-Trade 2010 did not materialize results. So this is beginning to look real scary for anyone under 70 or with children to think about...

Since I knew most of the fact portrayed in the film already, I found the movie primarily alarming and depressing, with not a whole lot of positive messaging left. But I recommend it for people still thinking we the next 20 years will be anything like the last 20 years.

Age of Stupid: Trailers: Original Theatrical Trailer from SPANNER FILMS on Vimeo.

Green Team Brown Bag

2010-09-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Workday green team held another successful brown bag on Thursday last week.

Mike Frandsen walked the audience through an introduction of the green team and its charter. Ralf Schroeder followed with a section explaining why Workday is truly a sustainable company. This is due to our SaaS delivery model, but also due to the commitment of each one of us to make a difference. To highlight that point, Erik rolled out the Carbon Rally to all of Workday’s employees. The winner who takes the most carbon challenges will receive a nice price at the next GT brown bag. Participate by signing up for the Workday team here: http://www.carbonrally.com/teams/1080.

Finally, the meeting ended on a high point: The City of Pleasanton attended with 3 guest speakers that gave insights into how Pleasanton plans to become the greenest community in the state of California by 2020 – a truly great goal to have! In case you are interested but were not able to attend, here are the slides from the brown bag: https://confluence.workday.com/x/tICKAw

See you at the next brown bag!

CSR is NOT dead

2010-08-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal stirred up much controversy last week with this article describing the case against corporate social responsibility.

In a nutshell, the author argues that if there is a business case for CSR, then companies will perform those duties naturally as they attempt to maximize financial profits, but any separate CSR strategy is pointless and possibly damaging to their fiduciary duties.

Although thought-provoking, there are some strong arguments to the contrary.

Some well-written responses below. What do you think?

The best of the bunch is this thorough response from Vault.com's Corporate Responsibility Editor (who previously wrote for the WSJ)
A thoughtful post from GreenBiz.com that says this is an old and very flawed argument
A passionate response from an sustainability academic who asks how good Enron was for the world
The President & CEO of BSR weighs in on the topic, calling his argument "incomprehensible"

Lessons on making a company sustainable

2010-07-16T02:45:00.000-07:00

Len Sauers, VP of Sustainability at Procter & Gamble reflects on lessons learned on how to introduce Sustainability in a large organization such as P&G.

Some notables:

* Sustainability is a business opportunity, not a risk

* Senior management must be committed

* Efforts must be part of the daily work, not a side project

* Focus on the big impact items first and deliver

* Employees are the greatest source for green innovation

Interesting read...

SAP's sustainability approach

2010-06-30T02:47:00.000-07:00

SAP is taking a very active strategy towards sustainability.

They publish their own sustainability report in a nice online version and try to continually improve their operations on a variety of measures.
They provide thought leadership on how IT can make a difference in achieving sustainability goals.
They continually build out their product suites, by acquisitions such as ClearStandards, and define a broad set of possible leverage points (see chart below). Interestingly, this also includes HR related items such as Talent or Diversity.

I believe in the long term a comprehensive Enterprise Application Solution needs to also support the Sustainability goals of its customers and provide robust reporting and management capabilities for elements such as CO2 emissions.

In a whitepaper, SAP defines the term “Sustainability” in the triple-bottom line dimensions Social, Environmental and Economic (or “people, planet, profit”).

Sustainability has a lot to do with efficiency and hence will be a cost reducer. Also, in many cases it represents an opportunity for innovation and new revenue. Both together clearly position it as a profit driver.

IT plays a role both as a contributor to GHGs, but more importantly as an enabler for huge GHG savings. Efficiency needs to be a key design principle in software development. Done right, our pure SaaS approach presents a very strong strategic opportunity to be the most optimal way to achieve enterprise data management and processing. Once fully realized, virtualization and the use of elastic computing resources in the cloud should put us in a benchmark of our own when measuring hardware and energy consumed for processing achieved.

Also, executing on a sustainability plan requires defining the plan with goals and KPIs, monitoring execution with dashboards and taking corrective action where needed. Our “action to insight” approach paired with our goals strategy should enable us to support this vision (note that much of the data requiring measurement are manufacturing / supply chain related, but there is certainly a good starting point in our Financials and HCM footprint).

In summary, I believe Workday has an opportunity in the short term to present its SaaS offering as a quantifiable contributor to our customers sustainability goals and in the mid-term to develop this notion as part of our product functionality (think carbon dashboard with drill-down).

Saving Civilization is not a spectator sport

2010-06-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

In his book "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization", Lester R. Brown outlined the problematic situation we are in and proposes a set of measures as "Plan B.".

While this is not new in the list of issues and solutions, it shows some interesting numbers.

You can get a free PowerPoint slideshow summarizing his book here.

Two quotes:

"Saving civilization is not a spectator sport."

" The choice is ours. It will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come."

Getting off oil is easy....

2010-06-18T00:11:00.002-07:00

Hilarious (and sadly somewhat true...)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

An Energy-Independent Future

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Carbon Footprint of WC 2010

2010-06-13T06:44:00.000-07:00

I am obviously very excited about the Soccer World cup in South Africa, but as always, there are at least 2 sides to this coin. A recent study outlined the CO2 footprint of the entire tournament and totaled it up to 1 million cars on the road for a year. Yikes!

Comparatively, the footprint of WC 2006 was lower due to existing infrastructure, different energy mix, etc. Maybe environmental considerations should be included in the selection of the next location...

Story of Bottled Water

2010-04-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

Here is another great "Story of Stuff" production, this time on bottled water. It is arguably the biggest marketing scam ever unleashed on consumers and is a terrible thing for the environment. Check out this very well-made movie:

Thanks to Mike Frandsen's daughter for sharing...

Workday turns 5 - and plants trees...

2010-03-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

Workday just turned 5 in March 2010. To celebrate, we didn't hand out a nice plastic watch, but celebrated in green style.

* Pleasanton employees received a tree seedling from ArborDay,

* Dublin employees planted a tree in their name with Tree Council of Ireland and

* Munich employees protected 6 acres of rain forest with Conservation International.

Way to celebrate...

Climate Change Recalculated

2010-03-14T03:48:00.000-07:00

Saul Griffith is a very interesting speaker about the numbers behind climate change. What does our average consumption look like? Where could this energy come from? Is it industrially doable? Is it politically doable? What would need to happen next to avert a climate crisis?

Very interesting questions answered in a long-ish talk, but you can easily navigate to the various chapters of the video. I think Saul draws the right conclusion in saying the biggest contribution to a more sustainable future lies in the reduction of our endless consumption. Think "2,400 Watts per person per year"...

Thanks for Mike Frandsen for providing the link...

Book review: Without the hot air

2010-03-14T03:41:00.001-07:00

There are many books on the market about how to solve the climate crisis. But I found it hard to understand most of the quoted facts and to form your own opinion about their validity. David MacKay takes an approach to cut out the theories and focus on the pure numbers. His simple question is: "Can we live off renewable energy sources?". In his book, he compares our average energy consumption and balances that to the theoretically possible clean energy production. This common sense approach helps you understand what is even worth discussing and what is just "hot air".

You can buy the book from amazon, or download it for free as a PDF here.

Thanks to Stan Swete and Rick Bergquist for pointing out this excellent book to me.

Innovate to Zero

2010-02-25T04:41:00.000-08:00

As any green blog these days, we have to provide commentary on Bill Gates' recent talk at TED 2010.

The basic premise of the talk is that we won't stop our climate problem unless we can bring down the CO2 emission from 26 billions tons today to basically zero. Yes, zero. The factors in this are :

CO2 =

P (eople) times
S (services consumes per person) times
E (energy per service) times
C (O2 emiited per service)

One of these needs to trends towards zero for all to go down. First-grade math. People won't go down, but up. Services (aka quality of life really) should go up for all those people. Energy per services is already going down but not enough. So really, he claims, emissions per service is the one that needs to be made zero. Enter innovation. Only radical, miraculous innovation can do the trick.

Wow, sounds like we're in a bind here. Without a miracle, we're toast. BUt fear not, Bill has some potential miracles up his sleaves. He is heaviliy investing into a new form of nuclear energy called "TerraPower". Bit of a euphemism, but if ot were to work, it wuuld actually take todays radioactive trash and burn that almost cleanly at minimum risk. Sounds like a miracle? To me it does. But then again, Bill has deep pockets and a lot of pull, so we'll see in the next 20 years. He at leats points out that all other innovations and forms of energy will be critical to get us closer to zero as an energy mix and buy us time for the miracle to occur.

Take a look and judge for yourself. My overall sense was it sounded more like a VC pitch for a new form of nuclear energy than an all comprising approach to solving our climate crisis. But at least one more powerful person is now strongly in the camp of the climate savers...

Workday awarded by EPA

2010-02-17T22:29:00.000-08:00

Workday has been awarded membership to the 2010 Green Power Leadership Club by the Environmental Protection Agency!

For offsetting 100% of our electricity use of all our office buildings and data centers we have been given a nice Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood plaque, which we will proudly display in the lobby.

Looks for us also in the EPA Green Power Partner listing.

SEC issues guidance on carbon disclosure

2010-02-17T02:37:00.000-08:00

While not a binding law on how companies need to report on carbon, the SEC has now issued guidance on how corporations should disclose their climate impact. I would see this as step in the right direction of more formal and binding disclosure coming soon.

Read more about the SEC statement here.

Another one to watch for carbon disclosure is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

Make no difference

2010-02-10T05:24:00.000-08:00

Being green isn't always easy. While thoughts on sustainable living certainly have entered the mainstream mind, even the ones of us that truly (or maybe even overly) ponder their actions and try to make an impact are faced with the the total in-consequence of our meaningless actions. A drop in the bucket...but hey, have a laugh and do it just the same! Go read the Onion on why it's important to make a difference!

Talking about mainstream, a green superbowl ad? Who would have thunk a few year ago when only Budweiser or Coke mattered? Make up your own opinion on the spot or take it from here. :-)

Facts about bottled water

2010-01-11T23:16:00.000-08:00

We all know that bottled water is an incredibly bad thing to consume. Here are a few convincing reasons why:

This is even more impressive in the light of the fact that two million plastic beverage bottles are used in the US every five minutes.

COP15 thoughts

2010-01-09T03:23:00.001-08:00

Ok, since every green blogger on the planet has been pouring his or her frustrated heart out about what went down in Copenhagen in December of 2009, here is my therapeutic attempt.

The goal going in was to negotiate a successor agreement to the expiring Kyoto protocol. So, stakes were high and positions could not have been more different on the individual issues. Small and developing countries have a lot to lose by climate change; large and rich(er) countries contribute most to the problem, but also have to spend the most money to fix the problem. Not an easy negotiation task.

But it all fell apart in the process. Lots of reasons, lots of blame, but here are views of COP-15 that I found worth reading:

- Carl Pope of Sierra Club: Lessons from Denmark
- Steve Howard of the Climate Group: The Copenhagen Accord

Next preparation summit is mid-year in Germany with a target of another meeting in Mexico in 2010. Maybe that will go better, it certainly needs to...

Green IT initiatives rising

2010-01-09T03:18:00.001-08:00

In 2009 the number of green IT initiatives has been rising to 28% of major companies as outlined in a survey by Forrester.

Of the companies with green IT projects, 2/3 list reduction in energy cost as the driver and 1/3 name "the right thing for the environment" as their driver.

Workday certainly can help on both ends as a SaaS solution...

Biodegradables

2009-12-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

In response to our last post on the plastic garbage patch, we decided to take action and switch over to biodegradable knives, forks and spoons. Currently we are consuming about 8000 pieces of throw-away cutlery per year. While biodegradables are about 40% more expensive, it does not total up to a huge amount overall.

Thanks to our finance department to making this green move!

Our legacy - a garbage patch

2009-11-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

One of the most disturbing results of our ever mindless consumption is the growing garbage patch in the Pacific. Doubling twice in size each decade, this slur of bottlecaps, lighters, toothbrushes, plastic bags and small pieces of broken junk is now estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

Sea creatures and birds die a painful death digesting our debris. Chris Jordan, who has done some outstanding work described in an earlier post, has documented some of this in a new story. Check out how our junk makes it half around the world to kill innocent life.

Keep this in mind with every throw away item you use. Every piece of packaging or containment that is only useful to us for a very short time is ending up as a massive long term problem elsewhere, no matter how much we recycle.

Green Rising

2009-10-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

Workday Rising 2009 was a smashing success, lots of positive energy and buzz by customers, prospects, partners and employees! But it was not only a great business success, it was also a great green success.

Patty Pasley and Amy Zeifang worked miracles to reduce the environmental impact of this event. Workday offered:
* water cooler and glasses instead of bottled water
* program monitors in front of each session room and throughout the conference instead of printed signs
* minimal conference handouts
* session program printed on recycled paper
* donation of leftover food to a foodbank

Well done, Patty and Amy!!!

Our "green sponsor" OmniPoint offered re-usable water bottles and sported a fun green T-Shirt listing some of the green accolades of Workday's SaaS model.

Workday recognized by EPA as 100% Green Power Purchaser

2009-10-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Workday recent extension of coverage of the electricity offsets has been recognized by the EPA in their Green Power Partnership Program. We are now listed as a 100% Green Power Purchaser. See us right with listed with 1,300,000 kWhs!

Workday offsets 100% of its electricity use!!!

2009-09-04T01:35:00.000-07:00

Fantastic news!

Workday has renewed and extended its commitment to clean energy and to making SaaS the truly green alternative by offsetting 100% of its electricity use of its office buildings and development data centers. To achieve this, we have partnered with Renewable Choice to purchase over 1 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy credits (RECs).

Our purchase of 1,300,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy credits has an impact that is similar to:
- Planting 4,986 mature trees
- Not driving 1,484,518 miles in an average car

For this commitment, we are (soon) registered with the EPA as a leading partner and a 100% Green Power Purchaser.

This is an awesome commitment by Workday as a company. It shows our true leadership and makes a tangible impact. And our customers do not only get the green benefits of more efficient data centers, but know that all of the electricity consumed is now 100% offset as well.

Thanks to everyone at Workday for making this possible.

On Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) and Carbon Offsets

2009-09-04T01:07:00.000-07:00

Workday is purchasing RECs to offset our use of electricity consumption. What does this actually mean? Well, we are not using renewable energy directly, because we cannot have our data centers powered by a hydroelectric power plant exclusively and we do not have a large solar panel array on the roof of our office. Instead, we are consuming "normal" electricity as it is available in the grid. But if someone, like a wind farm, produces clean electricity somewhere else in the US and puts that into the grid (hence making the overall mix greener), they get a "Renewable Energy Credit (REC)" for each 1000 kWh they feed in. These RECs need to be certified by a third-party organization, such as by Green-e Energy. Green-e is a leading voluntary certification program certifies renewable energy credits that meet environmental and consumer protection standards. So we are buying Green-e Energy certified RECs from Renewable Choice which helps the producers of clean energy compete in the energy market. By purchasing RECs for 100% of the electricity we use, we are ensured that clean, renewable energy is added to the national power grid to offset our conventional electricity use.

We do not offset carbon directly, which would be more applicable to companies that have manufacturing processes that emit carbon or other direct emisions. In that case, companies leverage "verified emission reductions" (VERs) to reduce their footprint.

This is nicely depicted by the following image which shows scope 1 (what you emit directly), scope 2 (what your electricity emits) and scope 3 (what your supply chains emits. Ultimately to claim carbon neutrality, all 3 scopes need to be considered.

A good over view of some of these terms can be found here.

We are a Green Office

2009-08-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

Following our LEED-CI certification, we have now received the official "Green Office" trophy from Hines. All our visitors can see this directly at our reception, right next to our "Best Places to work" trophy!

Workday Office achieves LEED-CI Gold certification

2009-07-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

Fantastic news from our property management company Hines. The Workday buildout of our office space has been submitted for LEED-CI (LEED for Commercial Interiors) certification and has achieved *GOLD* level! Workday will be receiving a plaque from USGBC in the next couple of weeks to commemorate this fantastic achievement.

Also, Workday has been granted the "Green Office" certificate by Hines for scoring high at their green questionnaire, another accolade for our office setup.

Congratulations for Lisa Kindred and Betty Landes for making all this happen!

One step closer - ACES passes house...

2009-06-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

As posted recently, there is major green legislation underway in the form of the American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009.

Yesterday, this bill passed the House of Representatives with a narrow margin. While this is big news for all things green, there are still substantial hurdles before this legislation opens up a green energy future. Stay tuned and get engaged to make this happen.

Next stop Senate and then ready for the Copenhagen treaty...

Direct shuttle from Walnut Creek / Pleasant Hill BART to Stoneridge Mall

2009-06-16T01:36:00.000-07:00

Fantastic news! Our very own Wai-Ping has been requesting public transit from PH and WC Bart to Stoneridge Mall and it is finally happening. This is the response she got from Wheels (Dublin / Pleasanton public transit system) last week:

"I am very pleased to say that, based on your request, we are starting up the new variant of our 70 line (to be called 70XV) that will travel between the Pleasant Hill + Walnut Creek Bart stations and the Stoneridge Mall Road loop in Pleasanton, operating nonstop along I-680 in between. This service begins on June 29, and will be departing Pleasant Hill Bart at 7:54a and arrive Stoneridge Mall at 8:28a. In the afternoon, the bus will depart Stoneridge Mall at 5:15p, arriving Pleasant Hill at 5:58p. These timings were based on a combination of factors, including the general availability of buses during peak times and input from the other office complexes along Stoneridge Mall Road. Even if these times won't work everyday for everybody, we are hoping that people who have flextime (and most seem to do) will be able to avail of the new service at least some days of the week.

As you may be aware, we are facing significant funding shortfalls at this time, affecting our ability to maintain current service levels. Therefore, this new service will have to build ridership relatively quickly and substantially in order for us to be able to justify its permanent continuation. I hope you can help us promote it among your co-workers at Workday. We will also be doing outreach at the Corporate Commons, Safeway HQ, Stoneridge Mall, and the Kaiser facility that are all located in that area.

Thank you for making this request and for bringing this unmet transportation need to our attention. I will set the request status to Closed, but you can still leave follow-up messages to this ticket if and when you feel that you might have additional information that could be useful to us. We hope to see you soon on the new 70XV !"

Taking public transport for the long commute from WC to the Mall will have a significant impact on CO2 emissions and is truly a green statement. Let's make this the most profitable bus route ever and take a few of the commute cars off the 680.

Thanks to Wai-Ping for making it happen!!!

Protecting natural habitats saves CO2 - buy an acre!

2009-06-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

Of course everyone has heard about rainforests, how we burn them down for short sighted monetary gains, etc. Even Sting signs about them for a decade. But how crucial are these large forest areas to reduce CO2 emissions? Massively important!

Conservation International is a highly ranked organization protecting species and habitats. According to them, every 4 hours an area the size of Manhattan is burned down, irrecoverably, releasing more carbon than you can ever emit driving your beloved Hummer. You get the picture, preventing deforestation matters immensely. You can participate in the protection by buying an acre, it's only $15, they make a fantastic party gift and the more people are acting, the better.

Protect an acre!

Workday wins Green Building of America Award

2009-06-03T01:07:00.001-07:00

Fantastic news! From more than 2,500 nominated projects, Workday, Inc. @ Pleasanton Corporate Commons project (submitted by Hines) has been selected as a Green Building of America Award-winning project and will be featured in the upcoming special Real Estate & Construction Review-Northwest Green Success Stories edition. Each Green Building of America Success Story project is highlighted in a case study that intertwines the words of the project’s owner/developer, consultants, architects and contractors to explain how the teams worked together to design and build one of the region’s most important, innovative or unique new or renovated sustainable facilities.

Kudos to our Lisa Kindred and Hines' Anne Sparks for our award-winning green office setup!

I will provide a link to the online version of the article once it becomes available.

First Green Conference for Internet Tech

2009-05-28T06:20:00.001-07:00

In March '09, San Francisco hosted an interesting conference on Green Internet Technologies called Green:Net 09. This conference had lots of interesting talks, most of which you can view for free on YouTube.

Start with this panel talk and hunt for related videos from there. Lots of cool stuff going on out there...

New fuel efficiency standards are coming!

2009-05-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

As outlined in many blogs, president Obama announced new standards for fleet efficiency for automakers in the US.

What's the deal? In 2016, we will have a 35.5 mpg fleet-wide average for new cars and light trucks. This standard will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and keep 900 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the air during the lives of those vehicles.

According to the White House, this "is equivalent to taking 177 million cars off the road, or shutting down 194 coal plants."

Very exciting and real steps towards solving the climate crisis!

SAP acquires Clear Standards

2009-05-12T07:17:00.000-07:00

SAP is deepening its solutions to measure and manage carbon emissions by acquiring the mature product offering from Clear Standards. The software market for carbon accounting is definitely warming up...(no pun intended).

Rent green with Enterprise

2009-04-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

Good news! Workday has negotiated a new Rental Car Agreement with Enterprise. They offer us the lowest rates in the "Bay Area". And, as reported recently, Enterprise currently offers a carbon offset option, which is even matched 1:1. The best part is, you can now select the carbon offset option and expense it along with your rental cost, so any of the CO2 emitted during your drive will be offset by clean energy with TerraPass.

When you get to the page "Verify your information and Book your Rental" the option Go Green with your Rental is on the right and you click Add. This will add $1.25 to the rental and recalculate the price. (We cannot auto-elect this option, individuals have to do it.)

We have not signed a national agreement with them yet but will in the very near future. So these low price deals are only in the Bay Area which include Pleasanton, SFO, Oakland and San Jose Airports and all other downtown locations. We'll let you know when we have our national agreement.

Thanks to Betty and our Finance execs for making this happen! Let's give Enterprise lots of good business for being green leaders.

p.s. with this we should not select the more expensive hybrid vehicles as our offsets compensate.

Committee hearings underway!

2009-04-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

A week ago the most important piece of US climate legislation ever has been submitted for review. The congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have submitted a draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009. This bill aims to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions by 83% compared to 2005 levels by 2050. That’s the same target President Obama has, but the House bill sets more aggressive short-term targets, such as a 20% reduction by 2020 and a 42% cut by 2030. It is a critical mechanism to implement a full blown cap-and-trade agreement.

Given that this 600 pager is a pretty substantial piece of legislation and is planned to pass all hurdles in this year, big discussion ensues. The Energy and Commerce Committee is reviewing this bill in many hearings, which you can follow in the Sierra Club life blog named "broken record".

Legislation will be the most important mechanism to avoid a severe climate crisis in the next 30-50 years. The USA will be the critical country to initiate and drive the change to a sustainable future. Whatever is going to happen in congress this year will set the tone for the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December this year. This is where the expiring Kyoto protocol is renegotiated and the role of the US will be driving responses from China, India and all other countries.

I recommend following these debates and check out groups such as RepowerAmerica, WeCanSolveIt, Environmental Defense Fund or the Sierra Club...

Momentum for a better place

2009-04-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

Shai Agassi's "a better place" is picking up momentum with Israel, Denmark, Australia, Ontario (CN) already signed up, but also the Bay Area cities jumping on the electric wagon. Check it out...

Watch CBS Videos Online

See Shai's recent TED talk as well:

PwC offers carbon footprint calculator on Facebook

2009-04-13T00:45:00.001-07:00

Interesting mix of players: Price Waterhouse Coopers offers new carbon calculator as an app on Facebook. It has a cute Flex interface and I immediately qualified as a "Mongofoot" entering our families consumption. I think the app is somewhat oversimplified, but maybe it starts to virally spread some awareness.

Glows in the dark

2009-04-11T04:25:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered if high voltage power lines actually have some sort of energy field around them? Well, an artist named Richard Box wanted to know more and tried it out. He installed 1301 fluorescent bulbs underneath power lines without connecting them to any energy source directly and “voila” — instant ambient energy.

The UK Guardian explains:

"A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground."

Pretty scary stuff. But even scarier is that guy's job:

Electricity sure is fun...

Carbon Accounting - an opportunity for Workday?

2009-04-11T01:28:00.000-07:00

In a recent InfoWorld article, the crucial role of IT in the solving the climate crisis is described in two dimensions:
* measuring CO2 emissions
* reducing the carbon footprint of enterprises

With a cap-and-trade agreement drawing closer and closer, the need to measure the emissions is very clear. Lots of companies will look for ways to comply to the new regulations and an assessment of their current footprint will become an immediate requirement. Several companies are starting to offer solutions already. Some might be rudimentary, but the concept is there. Note that several of these companies are already in the Workday eco-system:
* ILOG (our Flex graphics provider)
* Rackspace (our online email provider)
* Microsoft (strategic partner)

More comprehensive solutions are being worked on by interesting startups such as Greenstone.

The reduction of CO2 emissions of an enterprise can be accomplished in a wide variety of ways. The SaaS delivery model with its highly efficient hosting environments provides a good way to reduce IT-based emmissions. Workday plays a very positive role in this dimension already. Our customers can turn off their on-premise servers and rely on our data centers. Carbon offsets for our energy consumption could complete the footprint reduction for our customers.

But how about the measurement dimension? Workday already is the system of record for all accounting activity, why not carbon accounting? Could integration to upcoming hosted carbon-measurement systems make a difference? Is there a strategic opportunity for us to pursue?

The Microsoft environmental dashboard extension is an interesting data point. Warren Wilson, research director with London-based market researcher Ovum, said other major ERP vendors, including SAP and Oracle, as well as smaller players are building a range of tools to measure carbon emissions. I had a phone call with Warren about 9 months ago where was inquiring about Workday's interest in this topic. I believe our interest could be sparked by the increasing market demand.

Offsets on rental cars matched 1:1

2009-04-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

If you rent a car with Alamo, Entrprise or National, you only pay $1.25 to offset your carbon emissions. This is probably a reasonable average value for miles driven per average vehicle. However, this is now matched by a fund 1-for-1 until 1 million in offsets with TerraPass is reached.

Check it out here and remember to ask for offsets on your next rental. You can spare the dollar I am sure....

Tapped

2009-04-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

By 2030 the United Nations estimates two-thirds of the world will lack access to clean drinking water. Tapped will illustrate the impact of the global water crisis on America and what we can do as individuals to enact change sooner rather than later. Tapped examines the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil.

Workday Dublin saves CO2...

2009-04-01T04:35:00.000-07:00

By switching to Airtricity, Workday Dublin saved 8.192kgs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere in the month of March! And it is 10% cheaper than regular energy - way to go!!!

Leaving on PCs over night

2009-03-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

While we do have any desktops to begin with and folks either turn off or take home their laptops, this posting still shows how wasteful energy is consumed in general.

Even more interesting than the posting itself are the comments on it below. It is still hard to grasp how many people do not understand the impact of our unsustainable life styles...

Why we need to avoid plastic trash

2009-03-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

I have heard about this on and off, but just got around to reading a detailed article on the problem. It is another facet of our unsustainable behavior. For about 60 years now, we are accruing a larger and larger pile of plastic trash in our oceans. This patch has by now grown to spread 10 meters thick all the way between Japan and the USA, stirring around in circular currents. Fish and other sea creatures are severely impacted by our unnecessary packaging madness. We buy plastic wrapped goods, toss the stuff on the landfills from which they get blown out to see or directly dumped into the ocean illegally. Since there are no vacation resorts in that part of the ocean, no one cares. And there really is nothing we can do about it either.

Take a look at this article and I recommend watching the short, but thoroughly depressing TED talk below. Keep this in mind when making the next product choice, using the next plastic cup or fork...

Changing our behavioral patterns...

2009-03-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

A while back, I blogged about the work of Chris Jordan, who visualizes the mind boggling numbers of our average day consumption patterns. He now has given a very eye opening and challenging talk at TED. Check it out.

Cap and Trade - how does it work?

2009-03-03T13:11:00.001-08:00

The new administration has outlined its plan to address the energy challenges we face. Part of it is a Cap and Trade agreement, which will reduce CO2 emissions by a whopping 80% by the year 2050. Sounds awesome to me. But how does it Cap-and-Trade system actually work? What does it mean? EDF provided a good introduction, check it out...

Get smart!

2009-03-02T13:43:00.000-08:00

One of the much needed effort in green technology is to unify the US power grid as well as to make it smart. In recent post you have seen what the underlying issues of the grid are, but now with stimulus money flowing in, here is another view by InfoWorld on why the smart grid matters.

Wattson and Holmes

2009-03-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, I am an eco-geek. I like things that help me understand the impact of our daily behavior, to visualize "the footprint". So I couldn't resist when I came across the slick looking Wattson.

The device has sensors that are attached directly to your main incoming electricity line and that send the usage data wireless to the Wattson device. It shows the to the second energy consumption of your entire home, indicates high or low usage by turning blue or red.

Also, it collects all that data for transfer the "Holmes", the program to track and monitor your energy data.

With a little help from my electrician I got it wired up right this Saturday and can now start teaching the kids why it matters to turn the lights off (see...Wattson is all red and angry because you left the light on!!!).

Sales went Green!

2009-02-18T04:52:00.001-08:00

Our fantastic sales team not only sells our Workday solutions, they also set an example for eco-choices! The Grafs and Sakos "went green” when they departed from Sales Club in Squaw Valley, electing to ride to the Reno airport in a vegetable oil burning converted diesel truck called the “Eco Taxi”. They reduced their carbon footprint, and the smell of French fries made for a nice ride.

Click on the image to see the details of this interesting vehicle.

Google.org to help measure your energy consumption

2009-02-12T03:23:00.000-08:00

Google has announced to develop a PowerMeter which tracks your energy consumption and helps you understand which appliances cause what drain. Very cool.

Is Climate Change Irreversible or Unstoppable?

2009-02-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

Apart from the fact that all of this is hugely scary to me, there is indeed a valid question here how fast our hand basket is really moving. In a recent article on RealClimate, there is a good discussion on if we should simply give up the fight because it is already meaningless. "Irrevesible" means that in a time span relevant to humans, we might not get everything back to normal (see the explanation of the carbon cycle with ocean's serving as buffers). "Unstoppable" means that no matter what we do, it is going to run it's cause.

The short answer is "No, we have to do something even more urgently than ever". Read for yourself.

Of course, in an older 2002 TED talk on science and philosophy, Kary Mullins refutes the scientific reality of climate change and, as expected, causes great discussion in the comments section of the talk. I wonder if he still believes his words from 7 years ago. To me just because we possibly do not have the right scientific model yet to accurately measure climate change does not mean the visible results are not real.

Starting the change

2009-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Today president Obama took real action on climate change. He revoked a Bush statement that was restricting states like California to pass stricter emission laws for cars. The days of Washington dragging its heels are truly over!

Read more and see the announcement here.

p.s. i just looove typing "president OBAMA" - it's so awesome...

Green Workday!

2009-01-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

Hey, that was my original blog title, but someone else took it! Anyways, there is a new initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by leveraging videoconferencing and to promote telecommuting. A bit self serving (to the conferencing software company), but still a contribution. Check out Green Workday...

Green Credit Card saves the planet while you shop!

2009-01-16T23:39:00.001-08:00

From Chuao Wang:

"Here’s some details about the carbon offset credit card I mentioned the other day.

I have been looking for an easy way to purchase some carbon offsets and I found this credit card from Brighter Planet and Bank of America.

Here’s how the card works:
* Earn 1 EarthSmart point for every $1 spent in net retail purchases.
* Points are automatically redeemed monthly to help fund renewable energy projects.
* Every 1,000 points will fund an estimated 1 ton of carbon offsets.
* Every 1,000 points is roughly equivalent to taking a car off the road for 2,000 miles, or powering and heating/cooling your home for a month.

This page lists the projects that Brighter Planet supports. You can also track your climate profile with My Brighter Planet and see the offsets earned with your linked credit card. So instead of frequent flier miles, cash rewards or free gas, I can easily and directly purchase carbon offsets with every purchase!"

Awesome find Chuao!

Why the smart grid matters so much

2009-01-16T06:30:00.000-08:00

If we want to increase the percentage of renewable energy in the US power mix in any meaningful way, we first need to dramatically overhaul the US power grid and turn it into a "smart grid". I found this fantastic article that outlines the problematic and challenge at hand in very easy words.

A must read for anyone who wants to understand the path to a cleaner energy future.

Stanford to create $100MM energy research institute

2009-01-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

From sfgate.com:

Stanford University will create a $100 million energy research institute that will develop cheaper solar cells, technologies that use electricity more efficiently and ways to prevent the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The new Precourt Institute for Energy will bring together Stanford researchers from various departments who already are developing better solar cells or new ways to make fuel. The financing, most of it from three alumni, also will allow the school to tackle more projects, hire more faculty and train more students interested in the field.

"This is a complex and long-term undertaking that will engage the minds of hundreds of faculty and thousands of students," said Stanford President John Hennessy. "And our success will impact millions, even billions, of lives across the planet."

The institute also will strengthen the Bay Area's lead in the race to develop sources of power that won't contribute to global warming.

For several years, Bay Area academic institutions have been devoting more of their money and intellectual might toward alternative energy, hunting for ways to power homes and cars without spewing greenhouse gases.

UC Berkeley has its Energy Biosciences Institute, founded nearly two years ago with $500 million from oil giant BP. That effort also includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose researchers have been at the forefront of using micro-organisms to produce fuel.

Stanford already has a $225 million Global Climate and Energy Project funded by Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Toyota and oilfield services company Schlumberger. The school also hosts the Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency. Both the climate project and the efficiency center will become part of the new Precourt Institute for Energy.

The presence of so much energy research has, in turn, helped spawn green-technology startup companies throughout the Bay Area, just as information technology research at the area's schools helped create hundreds of software, hardware and Internet companies.

The new institute takes its name from Stanford alumnus Jay Precourt, who donated $50 million for the project. Precourt studied petroleum engineering at Stanford before pursuing a career in the oil and natural gas business with such companies as Hamilton Oil and Tejas Gas Corp.

"I'm quite concerned, having been in the energy business my whole life, with the fact that we are importing energy from insecure, unreliable sources who are, in many cases, not friends of the United States," Precourt said in a release.

UC Berkeley faced criticism for accepting an oil company's money and help with its biosciences institute. Many Berkeley students and faculty questioned whether BP's participation would undermine the goal of finding replacements for petroleum. Hennessy said that shouldn't be a concern with the Precourt Institute.

"The Precourt gift is a gift to the university, and the university will decide how to use it," Hennessy said. He also praised Precourt for wanting the school to take such a wide-ranging approach to energy issues.

"It's the kind of vision we need more of in this country," Hennessy said.

An additional $40 million for the Institute came from Stanford trustee Thomas Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor. Steyer is the founder and a managing partner of Farallon Capital Management as well as a managing director of the Hellman & Friedman private equity firm. Both Steyer and Taylor are Stanford alumni.

In their honor, the institute will include a center devoted to renewable power, called the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy.

The full $100 million in donations will help Stanford add as many as eight faculty positions and 20 graduate student fellowships. If private donors hadn't come forward, adding that many positions probably would have taken a decade, Hennessy said.

Lynn Orr, who had been director of the school's global climate project, will head the institute. Stanford will now have more money to devote to such research projects as using nanomaterials to make better solar cells, Orr said. And the school's many alternative energy researchers will be encouraged to collaborate with people outside their own departments.

"The energy challenge is a big and important one," Orr said, "but it is just the sort of challenge Stanford students and faculty should tackle with enthusiasm."

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Lead by example....

2009-01-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

Great story reported by MJ:

"As we were packing up to move to the new office Friday, I took my last set of soda cans to the recycle bin, feeling good that I didn't just trash them.

I walked by where the printer used to be (yea) and our Founder was digging through a garbage can. I asked him what he was looking for.

He told me that there was stuff in there that should be recycled and he proceeded to pull some paper out and stick it in the right place.

By the way, it wasn't his trash can."

That's just AWESOME! Our fearless leader himself embodies our green core values!!!

No Such Thing as Clean Coal

2008-12-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

The recent Tennessee Sludge Spill illustrates that there is no such thing as "clean" coal technology.

PC power management - 5 myth...

2008-12-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

Forrester was citing PC power management as one of the main power savers we can enable in 2009. They also neatly debunked 5 myth people frequently come up with:

Myth No. 1: The power used turning my PC on negates any benefits of turning it off.
"Not true, leaving it on over night costs 1.42 kWhs, which you never use turning it back on."

Myth No. 2: My screen saver is saving me energy
"Aaaah c'mon, that's just silly".

Myth No. 3: Turning my PC on and off will reduce its performance and useful life.
"Modern PCs can handle up to 40.000 on/off cycles."

Myth No. 4: I can't run updates and patches for PCs in lower-power states.
"Wake-on-LAN" technology can actually enable this."

Myth No. 5: My PC users will not tolerate any downtime for power management.
"I don't even follow what users would complain about here..."

All in all, solid support to stop wasting large quantities of energy for nothing.

Coal smudge

2008-12-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

Like coal is clean all of a sudden...check out the ad:

Green Predictions 2009

2008-12-21T07:38:00.000-08:00

InfoWorld's Ted Samson has asked 10 industry IT leaders for their predictions for 2009. Will the economic downturn kill green initiatives? Or will the energy savings drive more initiatives? What will happen in Green data centers?

My favorite was by Microsoft: "What are best practices to reduce energy and computational resource consumption for application design? Sloppy code is wasteful. Not only is it slow, error prone, and often not extensible, it usually wastes energy and utilizes unnecessary computational resources. This has a significantly negative impact on the environment. However, most architects are given the "virtualize the problem away" answer for environmental sustainability."

So let's build the most efficient apps we can and be green. :-)

Also noteworthy:
* AMD predicts the start of carbon budgets to prepare for coming regulations.
* Forrester thinks energy savings will shift from data center focus to all distributed PCs (think Energy Star 5.0)
* Cisco calls cloud computing the next green killer app and Microsoft predicts cloud providers will report environmental metrics and provide concrete green operational level agreements for enterprises

Ecofont

2008-12-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, MJ is going to like this: While I doubt that it is going to save the world, i found this idea interesting. Dutch communications group Spranq has developed an "ecofont" with little holes in it like a dutch cheese. Printing up to font size 8 or 10, you will not see any difference, but save up to 20% ink!

Making sure the damage lasts...

2008-12-21T04:51:00.000-08:00

The current administration might leave us with a terrible good-bye present. Head of the EPA Stephen Johnson has recently announced that despite his earlier stance he does not consider carbon dioxide a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. This impacts the construction of several large coal power plants that are pending this decision. We are talking about 10-12 new large coal power plants producing 8000 megawatts of energy.

This is exactly the kind of outdated argumentation and legislation which will hinder any advances in renewable energy sources. And they are just trying to sneak it in in the last days of old thinking. Read more on it here.

New energy secretary is green

2008-12-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

This is excellent news: Obama appointed Steven Chu, Nobel physics laureate and former top federal environmental regulator as energy secretary. This is a strong signal that the new Administration will push for Renewable Energy!

Read about it here.

Climate Action Report 2008

2008-12-07T03:40:00.000-08:00

The Climate Action programme, an international organization aimed to help governments and companies to reach their climate goals, has posted their latest Climate Action Report 2008.

This free online report offers lots of interesting articles on legislation, technology, finance and other related categorizes. Go take a look...

Governors' Global Climate Summit

2008-11-29T00:39:00.000-08:00

On November 17/18, CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger invited world leaders for a 2-day summit to drive concrete action plans for fight the climate crisis.

As you know, under Schwarzenegger California passed the visionary AB32 climate act in 2006 and this is a next step towards real measurable change. The hope is that this prepares a new Global Climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in 2009. This should extend and exceed the Kyoto protocol and will hopefully be signed by all nations.

Check out all the content and videos on the summit site....

US Energy Mix - can we change it?

2008-11-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting chart in the development of the US energy mix since the 50s.

(Source: EAI)

Renewables clock in at about 7% only. Given the massive energy requirements of the US, it will be quite a ways before this can be covered by wind, solar, etc. But you can also see the incredible amount of carbon-producing sources we are burning through.

Now compare this to the world energy consumption per capita. There is a strong relationship between wealth and energy consumption:

So how much would a change in US energy policy matter? Well, the 5% of the world's population that lives in the U.S. has more environmental impact than the 51% that live in the other five largest countries. Quite an extraordinary leverage (an imbalance)...