Brian Roy’s Blog

Green cars? I think you are missing the point…

Thursday, September 13th, 2007 | Innovation, Regulation, The Future | Comments

Ok, I promise this will be my last green technology post for a while.

The Arizona Republic published an article today entitled “13 states to auto industry: Get green“.

In my opinion this article - and the pressues the states are putting on auto manufacturers totally miss the point. The best way increase efficiency as measured by total carbon footprint… is to encourage the businesses in your state to adopt work from home policies which elimiate:

1. Commute time/pollution/congestion.
2. Some percentage of the massive fossil fuel consumption used for the building and maintaining of roads and highways.
3. The amount of “conditioned space” maintained in the state.
   1. Conditioned space is the amount of space that is heated, cooled, lit, etc - all of which increase the total carbon footprint.

While politically it is safer to pressure auto manufacturers practically the best means available to states is funding infrastructure improvements that will allow for WFH technologies to proliferate and creating incentives for employers to adopt WFH friendly policies.

Why work from home makes sense…

Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 | Innovation, Regulation | Comments

My C-Level boss (CIO) at my fortune 500 company day job just issued his tenets for a well run organization. Included in those tenets was a pretty clear statement about tolerance for “working from home”. In short developers may be granted part time work at home privileges, but other functions - particularly “leadership” functions do not qualify.

Before I say anything else let me first say this. As the CIO it is more than reasonable for him to run his organization as he sees fit. If that is his call… that’s his call.

Now, let me tell you why his decsion makes NO sense:

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The ultimate green technology… and it is not what you think…

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 | Experimentation, Innovation | Comments

About two years ago I had a debate with a neighbor of mine. He was the proud owner of a brand new Toyota Prius and was explaining to me how my ownership of an SUV was irresponsible and borderline criminal.

My argument was simple… since I - the vast majority of the time - work from my home office (i.e., telecommute) while he drove almost an hour each way, every day, back and forth to his office - my overall energy consumption was still far less than his.

Using a simple online total carbon use calculator it was simple for each of us to input our consumption and determine which solution provided a lower energy use and therefore carbon footprint.

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