Sustainable e-mail

I just got a note from the guys at Horus Networks in Neuchâtel, Switzerland announcing that they have expanded their own solar-energy plant (made of photovoltaic captors installed on the roof of their headquarter) and that they are now meeting all the needs in electrical power for their online operations (servers, routers, cooling, etc) with solar.

It's good PR, of course, to be able to claim to be the "world's first environmentally-friendly web hosting and e-mail service". The reality is slightly more nuanced - their solar plant does produce the kW needed for their operations indeed, but at the same time their machines are still connected to the electrical grid in order to guarantee stability in energy supply: "we use the grid as a battery", says Raphael Domjan, one of Horus' founders (pictured left with his colleagues Patrick Gérard and Alexis Domjan). (Raphael is also involved in a solar boat project that I've blogged recently).

But it's not just PR: it is a serious approach to sustainability based on the idea that the electric grid is not a one-way infrastructure: you can consume electricity, but you can also produce it and put it back into the grid. A sensible but systematic approach to "micro-plants" that tap into renewable sources such as solar or wind or ocean waves (or, in the future, hydrogen fuel-cells) at corporate and local level could have a non-negligible impact on energy consumption patterns. FedEx provides one of the most spectacular examples, having covered the roof of their Oakland (San Francisco) hub with a solar plant that covers 80% of their peak energy needs (case study on PDF). Smaller companies can easily do the same. We are still very much prisoners of the view that the electric grid is made of few giant production centers (plants) and many consumption terminals (homes, offices, factories), and even solar plants continue to be designed with that scheme in mind (witness the gigantic GE/Catavento/PowerLight project just launched in Portugal). In reality, Horus' micro-plant shows that a different approach to energy production and consumption is also possible.

Comments

[Andre Ribeirinho]

Portugal has the kind of natural resources that could potentialy solve it's energy problems. And it's not about money, it's about politics (ok politics is always about money).

I'll tell you an example. A few years ago, a small groups of people worked together to develop a solar-powered oven. Something that could help get better life to under-developed countries.

The project is almost dead now. A portuguese oil company agreed to buy the company in order to support it. Unfortunately that never happened and the oil company just cut whatever future could have.

This was one of the examples where a small group helped create a better world.

A few changes in the strategic directions on the Portuguese economy and we could easily be innovators in the solar-voltaic area.

But that's not happening anytime soon. And instead of groups of innovators we have big and medium companies (trying to get big) controlling whatever natural resources we might have to explore.