This morning’s paper has an article announcing that wireless phone carriers are making an effort to use renewable energy to power their towers. Wireless is still a growing industry, and it certainly a large one. Will the trend catch on? Consumers are looking for greener options right now, but we do not yet have all of the answers about renewable energy. We don’t know which form is most efficient, practical, or affordable. When companies take on the challenge of renewable energy, they are able to use their resources to answer these questions by experimenting with different technologies currently available.
According to this article, wireless companies are experimenting with wind power, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, and geothermal cooling to power and maintain the various pieces of equipment required to deliver wireless communication to the consumer. Because they are big business, they are very focused on efficiency and the bottom dollar. Compared to government efforts that are typically relatively inefficient with tons of red tape, I have high hopes for the knowledge we can gain from responsible companies using their resources to learn more about how to implement and develop renewable resource technologies.
If you know of any other companies working toward a better tomorrow, let me know. I would love to know what Austin-based companies are doing in this realm.
Looks like the start of something. They should plug in their energy consumption at http://www.openeco.org to review their initiative and compare carbon emissions before and after, post them to the internet and show us how their plan is working in a year from now.