IBM puts its talents to green use

BusinessGreen: How did the Big Green Innovations initiative come about?
Peter Williams: Last year we hosted a company-wide Innovation Jam event and asked employees, their families, and our customers to put forward ideas about where we should be innovating as a company. We received 40,000 ideas and we then boiled them down into a number of key themes and one of these was green technologies. From there we then ransacked the business in search of technologies that already existed and areas of strength we could use to develop new green technologies and found that we were already well positioned in several areas, most notably through work we were doing on water management technologies, work on smart grids and some work we'd done to use our expertise in semiconductors to improve solar panels.

So what does the initiative actually entail? What projects are you working on?
We divided the Big Green Innovations portfolio into four areas: water, alternative energy, carbon management and computational models.

It seems strange to think of IBM working with water. What can a tech company bring to the table?
Firstly we've taken the super computer technology that is used to run weather forecasts and are developing systems to take that data and use it to better support water management and irrigation decisions. We're also looking to combine this technology with a lot of the work we are doing on smart energy grids. If you think about it smart energy grids are based on developing sensors to pick up data and use it to make decisions - conceptually it is very similar to the technology needed to improve water management.

Can you give an example of how this smart grid approach to water management would work?
We are currently working on the Hudson River and effectively installing a wide area network that will mean the river is capable of constantly reporting on its condition. Similarly we are also working on a project on the Paraguay-Paraná river system in Brazil involving sensors and systems that will allow stakeholders to make more informed decisions. We will be able to model scenarios so you can say, "if you clear cut this forest, this is what will happen to sediment flow and this is where the river will flood". We are also interested in adapting the sensors to develop smart levees where you can link the data from sensors in the levees to weather data and work out where there are risks of breaches. Such smart levees would really encourage preventative maintenance.

So it is very much built around IBM's software and data management capabilities?
Yes, but one of the other interesting ideas we are looking at is how we can use our expertise in working at the nano-level with semi conductors in order to develop improved nano-structured polymer membranes for desalination plants. The aim is to develop membranes that don't need as much pressure to force the water through, and if they don't need as much pressure much less energy is required in the process, which is the biggest problem with desalination plants. The technology won't be in the market for a couple of years and almost certainly won't have an IBM logo on it – we'll license it – but it is an exciting project.

It's been reported that IBM has been making some interesting moves in the area of solar technology. Can you give us more details?
Basically we are again adapting some of our material science expertise acquired in the development of semi conductors and applying it to the silicon cells used in photovoltaic solar panels. We believe we can structure the silicon in a way that makes the cells more conversion efficient and we also have the manufacturing techniques to bring down the cost significantly. We're also looking at ways of improving the heat dissipation in solar panels. Many solar panels concentrate the sun's rays by a factor of 2,000, which means the cell's are getting very hot. But that is pretty much the same thermal intensity as found in a computer chip and we know how to deal with that. We expect to see the first products available in 18 months to two years.

So is IBM going to start selling solar panels?
You may not see this technology with an IBM logo as we may license it to a company with a footprint in that area.

Why not do it yourselves? Isn't this a great chance to get into the clean tech market?
Well, if you saw a solar panel with an IBM logo on it you may regard it in the same way you'd regard a solar panel with the Procter & Gamble logo on it. Obviously we'd be targeting the commercial market so maybe we could provide the technology in bulk, but there is a case for licensing it.

You said you are also working on carbon management. What do you mean by that?
We're looking at ways to manage your business to reduce its carbon intensity. Carbon management tends to be based around using consultants to improve your supply chain and organisational structure and, as you may know, IBM has a lot of consultants. Most carbon footprinting calculations are pretty rubbish and miss out large amounts of information but we've developed complex management diagnostic models that assess the relationship between carbon emissions and other business factors.

Where do you feel carbon footprinting tools fall down?
For example, you may decide to reduce the amount of cardboard packaging around a product and that will seemingly reduce its carbon footprint, but what if that leads to more breakages? The product has to be remade and that can actually lead to an increase in its carbon footprint. There are multiple variables involved in any decision and you need to make carbon emission reduction decisions based on all that information and the various trade-offs you are going to have to make.

What else can we expect from Big Green Innovations?
We are about to launch a Green Sigma service, which we have trademarked and builds on the Six Sigma lean process principles. It will focus on ways to develop processes to bring down the carbon intensity of products and processes and create a lean green business. We plan to pilot it inside IBM and with some external customers and then refine it and take it to market. We are also looking at some of the asset management software we acquired through our purchase of MRO Software last year which offers great potential to help firms manage machinery and capital assets with a clear understanding of their energy use and carbon footprint. If you have that data for each individual piece of plant you can spot problems and reduce energy use over time.

And you also mentioned work you are doing on computational models?
That really feeds in to everything we are doing. We are using computational models run by our super computers to help tackle environmental problems. We already model climate, hydrology, pandemics, traffic management and so on and now we want to pull that together and start to support other areas. For example, assessing the trade offs you have to make when optimising a supply chain will require those kind of computational models, as will processing the data from smart grid technologies.

About Peter Williams

Dr Peter Williams is chief technology officer for IBM's Big Green Innovations initiative.

A management consultant with over 20 years' experience he is responsible for identifying environmentally focused businesses for IBM to either develop or participate in. He is personally responsible for assembling, maintaining and developing the portfolio of businesses included in the division.