Adobe is ‘Green’ with envy over AC
I didn’t realize until today how shallow of an environmentalist I am. There was an article in the San Jose Mercury News about how the recent heat wave has taxed the extremely green (environmentally friendly) Adobe headquarters buildings in San Jose. In particular, the west tower was the greenest office building of its kind when it first came online and was hit pretty hard in the 100+ temperatures.
My first reaction should have been “I’m so happy that I am going to work at a place that has such deep regard for the environment that they would go so far out of their way to make an ecologically sound office building.” It wasn’t. My actual reaction was “oh crap. I’m going to be in the West tower!” Apparently I need to go see Al Gore’s movie at least 5 times, and go to a painfully unfocused protest in Berkeley to get in touch with my inner environmentalist again.
I was however pleased to note that an enterprising engineer at Adobe convinced everyone to close their blinds and reflect the heat away from the building (apparently saving 300Kw). I wonder though, when I got to work this morning, all of my stuff on the window sills had been moved away, and all of our blinds were adjusted to 45 degree angles. Maybe Yahoo! facilities read the article too. 
Digg this!
August 1st, 2006 at 6:15 pm
“Wicked hot” over there, Justin? Same here.
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:32 am
Kudos to Adobe (and Yahoo for closing the blinds). They may not have a perfect solution, but at least they’re trying. Someone has to spearhead the effort so the technology and acceptance increase.
I’ve always been a little bit of an environmentalist, but I’ve recently been becoming more of a “realist” environmentalist. I’m not living in a cabin, driving a solar car, or even a hybrid. But, I do drive a compact car, I don’t use AC at all (preferring to acclimatize - which is better for your health anyway), the house we are building is architected to be very energy efficient, and we’re running conduits for solar (which we can add when it makes sense to add).
With each successive summer setting new records for high temperatures, and new records for energy consumption due to AC use, you have to be concerned about the upward (temperature wise) spiral that’s beginning to happen. Hotter temperatures == more AC == increased heat/CO2 production == hotter temperatures.
There’s so many small and cost effective things everyone (especially corporations) can be doing to make an impact. Closing blinds on hot days, opening them on cold days, turning off lights at night (I’ve never understood why our society allows empty 50 story office buildings with every single light on), replacing incandescent bulbs with modern fluorescence, not driving hummers.
That’s enough preaching for me, for one day.
Cheers.
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 pm
That’s great Grant that you are doing your part. practical environmentalism is definitely the way to go. My partner used to work at the National Association of Home Builders Research Center where they even had a prototype neighborhood to test all manner of green technologies like solar shingles and recycled materials for insulation. The home building industry overall is doing some pretty innovative things in the space.
I’ve actually been pretty impressed by Yahoo!’s stance on things. We have recycling centers everywhere, the water for watering the grounds is non-potable collected water that didn’t have to go through full treatment, and our power system is linked to the power company so that when then the grid peaks, Yahoo! will reduce energy consumption by turning off lights (which are also on a timer so they turn off at night), raising the temperature in the buildings to lighten the load. In return the power company gives us a pretty hefty reduction in our power bill.
Yahoo! also just installed tinted filters on all windows in the company to reduce the amount of heat entering the building.
Our monitors are being systematically replaced by flat panels which use less energy and produce less heat.
There is probably more that we could be doing, but so far these changes only have a minimal impact on our daily lives while saving a good amount of power and natural resources.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:26 pm
This is more info here:
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Sorry, too late to correct …
There is more info here:
http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/
August 3rd, 2006 at 2:57 pm
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August 6th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Our monitors are being systematically replaced by flat panels which use less energy and produce less heat.
August 9th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Yahoo! also just installed tinted filters on all windows in the company to reduce the amount of heat entering the building.
August 10th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
If you had been at Adobe a few months ago when downtown San Jose had that highly irregular and brief fall of snow and hail, you could have seen a snowman/hailman on one of the tables outside the cafeteria, taken pictures of it, then used them to help you focus on cold memories during the heat wave. Sadly, I cannot take credit for that–I was only visiting Adobe when I saw it–but I did make a snowball outside my office on N 1st Street then take a picture of it with one hand while it was freezing the other. I should have put it in a freezer to enjoy during warmer weather.
August 18th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Have you considered secretly installing an airconditioner in the wall, and covering it with framed art? hehe, good luck!
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:36 am
Our monitors are being systematically replaced by flat panels which use less energy and produce less heat.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:37 am
If you had been at Adobe a few months ago when downtown San Jose had that highly irregular and brief fall of snow and hail, you could have seen a snowman/hailman on one of the tables outside the cafeteria, taken pictures of it, then used them to help you focus on cold memories during the heat wave. Sadly, I cannot take credit for that–I was only visiting Adobe when I saw it–but I did make a snowball outside my office on N 1st Street then take a picture of it with one hand while it was freezing the other. I should have put it in a freezer to enjoy during warmer weather.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
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May 1st, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Sweating buckets of water is good for detox. If life is giving you lemons, go make lemonade! Otherwise you can work in the server room where the AC is on 24 hours a day.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Ran to your post via Google.. even thou I didn’t find what I was looking for, perhaps you could bring it on the table at your work at Adobe
.
Adobe Flash Player is THE terrible energy wasting thing when it comes to software. I have an old PC so for me it means sluggishnes as well as power consumption so I notice it visually, not by thermometer or current-meter.
A nice example to convert my computer to heat radiator is to open http://treehugger.com/ frontpage to Firefox without Ad-Block plugin. There’s always atleast one badly written Flash ad that takes all the free CPU and obviously wants even more as it slows down everything else.
For me, personally, it’s not a problem because I have set it so that I need to exclusive ALLOW a Flash to be run on web page. The loser is the advertiser. He will get his +1 to his/her hit-counter and needs to pay for it.
Btw to taggle Google’s end-user power consumption there’s now http://www.blackle.com/about/
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June 25th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
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July 11th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Housing or Building architectural designs should be more and more flexible concerning weather or environmental situations on a certain place. After all people could easily adopt to places.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
It is sometimes difficult to be “green,” particularly in the summer. After all, if we’re in the midst of global warming, is that really the time to be lowering the thermostat? Even so, I do applaud the Adobe efforts. It might even persuade me to use their software more regularly: one of these days environmentalism is actually going to be of market value, and even without so called Carbon-credits. I will say this though — every time I begin to grouse about the temperature in my office being to high, I try to remember that only 100 years ago, there was essentially no air conditioning of any kind, let alone central air. And people lived through it — sitting on their porches in the stifling heat with hand fans and lemonade. And others spent the day in the fields (and we wonder why there’s an obesity epidemic in America: we trained our bodies to need huge amounts of food just to survive). It reminds me that maybe “green” isn’t exactly the worst possible option.
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October 3rd, 2007 at 2:14 am
I think I’m late for that news. I looked at the link you gave but couldn’t find the news from the list. It looks like it has already been archived.
Anyway, regarding workplace, I must say that I agree with you. Four years ago I was working as an analyst in a laboratory. My task includes analyses of waste water. It feels so great that the company was also particular with the kind of waste they throw before completely getting rid of them.
It always feel good working in a place that is well ventilated, well-lighted and pollution-free.
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