Anablog

The delightful Appliance Design magazine has a very interesting news item about a survey regarding consumer attitudes towards “green” products. It turns out we are getting sick and tired of all these companies trying to sell us stuff under the banner of “green” eco-friendly design. The intent to purchase green products has dropped about 20% from last year. I too am getting green fatigue. It seems like every press release and every story has to have some green angle. Now sure, buying a green washing machine may save a little energy on your bills, but the there will sure be a ton of energy wrapped up in the production of that new machine versus just keeping your old machine running. It turns out that consumers are pretty smart. In order to justify a 4000-dollar purchase for some “green” technology, they expect to see monthly savings equal to the additional mortgage payment they would need to make on that four grand. Since home equity is at 6% right now, 4 grand costs about 20 bucks a month. If that does not come off the gas or electric bill they realize that you are just trying to sell them some new crap that does not make economic sense. Bravo. It turns out that consumers are just as savvy as businesses about capital expenditures. The folks over at International Rectifier get green right. They have always been interested in power savings since they are in the power semiconductor business. When they showed me their presentation about smart motor control for washing machines they noted the cost of the electronics is offset by the savings of removing the transmission from the washing machine, since you vary the speed and reverse the direction of the motor electronically. International Rectifier seems to have taken the most systems-approach to advanced motor control. STM and Fairchild will sell you various modules you can hook together to run a PM motor, but IR integrates the microcontroller and the drivers and the power electronics onto one low-cost module. Pretty cool, expect the electric bike and scooter people to pick up on this and adapt the parts to vehicles. I am sure that would be OK with IR, their founder, Eric Lidow, was parading around Italy with an electric car back in the 1950s. Back then rectifiers were made from selenium. They sure have come a long way.

In a similar vein to green fatigue, one of the most promising green technologies — wind power, is getting a little pushback from the neighbors of people that want to put up 50-foot towers with noisy generators and windmills at the top. Anybody that wants a ham radio antenna at their house knows how much fun it is convincing the neighbors that it won’t look like crap and ruin their property values. Brian Dipert talked about the promise of wind energy here.

I am a great believer in conservation, but asking us to spend money to give the appearance of green, when we are just using more energy to make some shiny new crap to show off with, well, that is not being green, that is being vain. And remember, life is analog and any alternative technology will have benefits and drawbacks. The Alameda wind farm must not seem very green to the 4000 birds that it kills every year. The very thought of semiconductor companies bragging how green they are is a little laughable. I remember a friend that worked at a big wafer fab. She pointed out the hundreds of dead birds on the roof. She did not know if the birds were hitting guy wires for the stacks or if they were being poisoned by the all the toxic gasses used in semiconductor manufacturing. I do know that technology is the only way to solve technical problems. Honda introduced a hydrogen fuel cell car that really seems to work. As always, the problem is that it would cost about 100 times more than a regular car. All that cost represents energy and other social costs, so forcing us to all buy hydrogen cars will not help the planet, indeed, it will hurt it. Anyway, here’s to progress, but don’t expect to run your car off hydrogen or your house off solar any time soon, unless you are willing to pay far more than any economic rational would justify.