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Bill Gates Doesn’t Think Cute Home Efficiency Products Are The Solution

May 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment


“If you’re interested in cuteness, the stuff in the home is the place to go.”
Bill Gates on the future of energy
Wired Disruptive By Design Conference

Bill Gates has a solution to meet our future energy needs and it has nothing to do with home efficiency. You know, LED lighting, rooftop solar etc. At Wired’s Disruptive by Design Conference in New York, Bill Gates let the audience know how he feels about home based energy efficiency by describing it as “cute” which in Gatesanese means ineffective and don’t waste your time. Bill’s best answer to meet our future energy needs is through improved technology; especially safer nuclear generated power in which he has invested millions. Basically, Bill Gates wants to see us maintain and supply our growth with more renewable nuclear power.

Other than the gain he’ll receive from the growth of his investment in nuclear power, we’re not sure why he would be so down on home efficiency products. Maybe he has an issue with Microsoft’s partnership with Hohm and their shared Microsoft-Hohm energy monitoring product. Or maybe it’s his 66,000 sq ft of home and heated driveways that motivate him to be against cute home based solutions. Either way, Jubbling is not very excited about his plan for the future of energy because it’s all about maintaining our level of consumption. We really like the consume less idea. Plus, if Bill is correct [again], I’ll probably lose my unpaid job at Jubbling.

Update: After reading about Android@Home’s goal to advance smart home technology, I’m starting to think that Bill Gates’ comments were less about “cute” home efficiency products and more about Google’s role in that market.

Filed Under: Energy, Featured Jubbling, Reduce, Renewable Energy, Wind Power Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Greenpeace Guide to Green Electronics

February 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Greenpeace Guide to Green Electronics
The “Greenpeace Guide to Green Electronics” has been out for about a month and the latest release, timed for the CES Expo, follows the same direction as earlier releases. Gather data from publicly available sources, Corporate Responsibllity Reports etc., and put it in a USA Today’ish format that makes it easy to read. My issue with the Guide to Green Electronics is that the difference between “Partially Good” and “Partially Bad” is “Extremely Vague”. Dell Computer, for example, receives a “Partially Bad” rating of +1 even though from the information in the guide, Dell is moving in a direction of being BFR/PVC free. And is Microsoft really a bigger electronics polluter than Panasonic? You’ve seen their toilets – you be the judge.

I will always try to give Greenpeace the benefit of the doubt but it’s difficult to find value in their “Guide to Green Electronics” report. It’s based solely on publicly available information. This is not their forte and it shows. The only thing I could compare it to would be… um… if the CEA responded by rating Greenpeaces’ anti-whaling efforts based on information gleaned from the Discovery Channel.

Download the Greenpeace Guide to Green Electronics.

Filed Under: Consumer Electronics, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jubbling @ Microsoft: Would You Like “Up-Flush” To Be Your Default Application?

December 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

Microsoft Flush InstructionsThe success of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7, pales in comparison to the success they’ve found by Jubbling. Atleast in my eyes. And Microsoft has found a “sweet spot” with us by turning the bathroom experience into a Jubbling event. Yeah, automatically turning on/off the lights as you enter/leave a bathroom is neat but so 2004 and we say BFD to the automatic faucets. What did Microsoft do to take the Jubbling to an 11? They gave toilet users a choice to decide if they want to Up-flush or Down-flush depending on their output and they’ve provided a seat where you can make your decision. “Up” is for liquid waste and flushes with less water and “Down” is for chunky and uses the full tank. Either choice is Jubbling and well beyond the normal office recycling and use of biodegradable flatware. I could’ve spent an hour in the bathroom testing out the technology and taking notes but 54 minutes was enough.

Keep up the good work Microsoft. You’ve got one less hater out there thanks to your Jubbling efforts.

Filed Under: Featured Jubbling, Jubbling@Work, Reduce, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , , ,