Pcls Is the U.S. missing the boat on green tech-_7
Crux of the issue
Doerr and Immelt’s piece strikes at the heart of the energy and environment policy debate in the U.S. There are a number of technologies that can displace fossil fuel use right now and new technologies, such as plug-in electric vehicles, hold more promise.
Is the U.S. missing the boat on green tech?
The United States risks missing the business opportunity posed by moving to low-carbon energy, two prominent business leaders argued in an editorial aimed at policy makers.
Both Immelt and Doerr are economic advisers to President Obama and executives from both companies regularly have testified on energy and climate policies for Congressional committees.
People in green technology business, in general, favor the bill because it establishes a system for pricing carbon emissions and has other policies to invest in energy-related infrastructure, such the electricity grid technologies and battery manufacturing.
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They offered five policy prescriptions: put a price on carbon and cap emissions; regulate utilities with incentives for efficiency and renewable energy; strengthen efficiency standards forcars, buildings, and appliances; establish more federal funding for research, development, and deployment of energy technologies; and create new trade agreements to promote the export of U.S. products. In the editorial, Doerr and Immelt said U.S. policies should indicate that the U.S. values “low-carbon energy.” John Doerr, investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “We are clearly not in the lead today. That position is held by China, which understands the importance of controlling its energy future. China’s commitment to developing clean energy technologies and markets is breathtaking,” they wrote. But proposals to encourage deployment of these technologies at scale has met resistance from entrenched interests and some lawmakers. Among the concerns are that climate and clean-energy policies will significantly raise energy prices for consumers and hurt U.S. industry compete globally. Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET’s Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002,ugg usa, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. |
(Credit:Martin LaMonica/CNET)
Still, work continues on energy and climate policy in Washington even though much of the media attention is on the health care debate.
But Doerr and Immelt run through a number of statistics to demonstrate that the U.S. is so far a bit player in the global marketplace for solar,ugg usa, wind, advanced batteries, and fuel efficiency.
The U.S. continues to produce innovative companies in the Internet but they argue that policies in energy, a highly regulated field, stifle innovation and U.S. competitiveness: “Our government’s energy and climate policies are our principal obstacle to success,” they said.
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, published an editorial in The Washington Post Monday to warn that the U.S. is lagging China is developing clean-energy technologies.
At a high level, the position of these companies–and many others–is that developing low-carbon products and services will serve both economic and environmental goals: low-carbon technologies, such as efficient lighting or solar, can revitalize American industry and curb greenhouse gases.
A giant conglomerate, GE is deeply involved in the energy industry and is one of the top global suppliers of wind turbines. One of Silicon Valley’s top venture capital companies,timberland boots uk, Kleiner Perkins has been aggressively pursuing green technology, having invested $680 million in 48 upstarts.
(Credit:Martin LaMonica/CNET)
The House narrowly passed an energy and climate bill that would mandate more renewable energy from utilities and establish a cap-and-trade system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters. The Senate is devising its version of the bill and could vote on it in the fall.
Some environmental groups, notably Greenpeace, have criticized the House’s climate and energy bill for giving big businesses such as utilities too much leeway in meeting the cap on carbon emissions, which will be phased in on over the next decade.
Kqpl Facebook’s iPhone update paves the way for ap
But Facebook does have a few things going for it–it’s big, popular, and helps Apple sell more iPhones and iPods by being a must-have application. It has also maintained its own directory of applications for the last two years. And like Apple, what applications are able to do within the confines of the service is limited; for mobile versions of apps,timberland boots, those limitations could be even tighter.
To a certain degree, Facebook already put its foot in the door with a version of its Facebook Connect service for iPhone applications. Applications that have implemented it can have their users log in with their Facebook credentials. It also can give the app access to their profile and friends list to pipe information back out. Simply making this information more readily available within the app would make inroads toward standalone apps within it.
So is there room for third-party apps in this new ecosystem? Definitely, and much more so than would have been possible in previous versions.
Facebook's iPhone update paves the way for apps
We still get a pitch about a new Facebook app now and again, but truth is, that ship sailed long ago. Most Facebook apps just don’t have the wow factor they once did when the platform was new. With the company’s latestiPhone app update, however, the wow could be coming back on a smaller scale.
These saved items go up on 3×3 grid that can be rearranged and expanded,timberlands boots, depending on how many pages and contacts users decide to add. This makes it much simpler to hop back and forth between certain parts of the site–that is, as long as you’ve planned ahead.
But Facebook could make available new application-programming interfaces, or APIs, that would let developers pipe some of that data to a mobile version too. Third-party applications could then be programmed to work within the confines of the Facebook application itself, meaning that each one could access other official features as they do on the standard site.
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One of the most interesting changes is how the app has been designed to feel very familiar to the iPhone user interface. For instance, no matter what you’re doing on the app, you can touch anywhere on the top of the screen to go back “home.” You can also save shortcuts to a friend’s profile or to one of the social network’s public-facing pages.
What can be safely assumed is that Facebook would stand to run into the most trouble with Apple’s approval process. Having apps that are installed inside an in-app marketplace means emulating what the iPhone does with its own native application store, which is a big no-no. But again, this is something Facebook could get around by limiting what applications are able to do, be it running in a Web canvas page or simply piping their data through Facebook as an intermediary.
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET’s blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh.