Brewed
4.10.2000
Last week, the "Seattle Summit On Protecting the World's Climate" took place at Cavanaugh's on Fifth Ave. Conspicuously absent from the audience were local Internet companies. Why is that odd? The Internet biz, which a lot of people think of as lean and clean, is responsible for a surge in electricity demand. (The Net now sucks in 8% of our national electricity output, according to Forbes, and this will only keep rising.)
In the Northwest, we have low electricity costs because we rely mainly on federally subsidized hydropower (through a series of massive dams) and some coal-burning (PacifiCorp's Centralia plant). But hydropower has its environmental downside. Among other things, it has decimated wild salmon stocks.
Because high-tech companies are largely responsible for the surge in new energy demand, wouldn't it be great if they got involved in energy-use issues? How? Here's one idea from Jon Naimon of Light Green Advisors: an online energy auction that would allow high-tech firms to trade "energy credits." If a company conserved energy, it could then sell the "surplus" to an energy hog. Naimon presented this idea in March at a Congressional roundtable on climate change in Washington, D.C.
Naimon, by the way, is no Green Freak. His Seattle-based company creates environmentally friendly stock indexes for non-profit organizations and corporate clients in various industries, including high-tech.--Soula Jones
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