For a long time, large technology companies spoke about renewable energy mostly in terms of climate commitments. And the commitments felt like punishments to all of humanity. Carbon offsets, net-zero timelines, carefully worded sustainability pages. I’ve covered plenty of those announcements over the years, from conference halls and Zoom cals to quiet briefings where the stories always felt more narrative than about opportunity.

We first heard the call about electricity and the Internet around 2005 when people who were starting up websites were expected to use servers powered by renewable energy. We tried but when the wind power failed at a company we chose, our site went down. Electricity is now a practical constraint and a business opportunity.

That shift helps explain why Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has agreed to acquire American renewable energy company Intersect Power in a deal valued at roughly $4.75 billion. It’s a move that reflects a deeper change: technology companies are paying closer attention to the physical systems that support their growth.

Intersect Power is a US-based clean energy developer focused on large solar power plants paired with battery storage. The pairing is important. Solar generation alone is inexpensive but intermittent. Lots of energy can be produced by day and fed to the grid but what isn’t used just disappears. Storage allows energy to be used later, during periods of high demand or grid congestion, rather than only when the sun is shining.

Intersect develops, owns, and operates many of its projects, then sells the electricity through long-term power purchase agreements to utilities or large customers. It’s a familiar infrastructure model, one that prioritizes predictable returns and steady output over experimentation. The early beginnings of this model started around 2007, but the technology of solar energy couldn’t always deliver returns. See how Ivanpah in California was built on promises that are no longer a good business model based on today’s projections.

Intersect’s projects are built to power data centers and are concentrated in California, Texas, and parts of the USSouthwest. Anyone who has followed energy reporting in California over the past decade has seen how fragile the system can feel during heatwaves, when demand spikes and grid operators issue warnings. Locating generation and storage close to demand helps reduce stress on those systems.

Today, Intersect operates and is building multiple gigawatts of solar capacity, along with several gigawatt-hours of battery storage. Altogether, it has well over 10 gigawatts of projects operating, under construction, or in development across the United States. That scale places it among the larger independent clean energy developers in the country.

Intersect Power was founded in 2016 by Sheldon Kimber and Luke Dunnington, both coming from energy finance and infrastructure backgrounds. This is typical in solar energy and renewable energy companies as the deals are mostly based on contracts with banks, financing and investors. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, close to both capital markets and the technology firms that increasingly shape electricity demand.

Before the Alphabet deal, Intersect had raised more than $2 billion in equity and project financing from private investors.

According to CEO Kimber, “Intersect will remain Intersect, remaining separate from Alphabet and Google under the Intersect brand, and I’ll continue as CEO.

“When we founded this company in 2016, the goal was to build something durable and to preserve our planet for future generations through innovative energy solutions and modern infrastructure. To ask why not? when the industry reflexively said, that’s not the way it’s done.

“Today, modern energy infrastructure sits at the center of American competitiveness in AI. Power is the bottleneck.

“I’ve always been excited about tackling what comes next. Exploring new technologies. Continuing to accelerate the redesign of an energy infrastructure for the world we actually live in.”

Alphabet’s and Google’s interest in an energy developer isn’t about public messaging. Running large data operations requires steady, uninterrupted electricity and reliable cooling. Delays in grid connections, power shortages, or price volatility can slow expansion plans. I’ve reported before on renewable projects that were technically complete but couldn’t deliver power because transmission simply wasn’t available. Those kinds of bottlenecks are no longer abstract risks.

Owning or controlling access to generation and storage offers a way around some of those constraints. In that sense, Alphabet’s move resembles earlier shifts in the tech sector, when companies moved from renting infrastructure to building and managing it themselves.

Alphabet is not the only firm thinking this way. Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta have all increased their involvement in long-term power contracts and energy development. What has changed is not the technology, but the motivation. Clean energy is now tied closely to reliability, timing, and operational planning, not just emissions targets.

For investors, Intersect Power itself is not publicly traded, and exposure now largely comes through Alphabet. Other options include infrastructure funds, storage-focused energy investments, or companies that supply batteries, power electronics, and grid equipment if you are looking to invest in a meaningful space for 2026.

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All of us like to buy broadband plans, and other internet connection without even considering their impact on our environment. This is getting serious as the use of the internet is becoming more common compared to the past times. All of us need to be conscious about this fact and start educating ourselves along with the creation of awareness from those who are ignorant about it.

Here in this article, we have compiled the information about the impacts of the internet, which you get through your broadband plans and other resources, on the environment, and how we can counter them to minimize their effect. Let us get started with impacts and then how we can control them.

Alarming Impacts of Internet on Environment

The impacts of the internet on our environment are alarming and becoming out of control. You need to know the facts to consider this problem seriously. Here is the list of few impacts that it creates.

1. Use of a large carbon footprint as the consumption of energy is also increasing with it. So, this is the prime outcome or impact of the internet on the environment.
2. Our digital activity is contributing almost about 2 percent of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that is quite a big number to feel fearful about.
3. Pollution is created due to more video streaming, more use of search engines, and frequent use of emails.

Control of Internet Impacts on the Environment

There are so many ways in which you can control the impacts of the internet on the environment. The most prominent ones are given in the section below. Let us get started with them now.

1. Start using your gadgets for a longer time. This means that when you buy the laptop or computer system, keep it with you for any years before you throw it out and buy a new one.
2. Try to learn better management and care of your laptop and similar devices so that they last longer and remove the chance of an environmental issue.
3. You have to become more responsible and reasonable with the storage that you create online. Keep that to a certain limit, and do not cross it at all.
4. Try to control your thirst for video consumption, and that is not easy. So, start with simple steps, slow down with time, and eventually switch to need-based streaming only.
5. You should stop using multiple broadband plans for office and home, rather keep one and connect it everywhere. This is how you can reduce the use of the internet toa great extent.

How to choose a broadband plan

We are sure that now you will think about buying any connection or broadband before finalizing the deal. You can use one connection for multiple locations, like the same for office and home, etc. This is how we can tackle this situation wisely, but not completely.

Try to work on education yourself, become aware, make others aware of the impacts, and then take precautions to prevent it as much as you can.

The post How to control the environmental impacts of the internet? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Years ago, Green Prophet brought you a link to help calculate your carbon footprint, a free carbon calculator that summed up your carbon imprint in a matter of minutes, and benchmarked it against performances of the entire world. Back in 2012, nascent social media didn’t figure into the carbon equation. Come see how your digital life measures up.

Your carbon footprint is the sum of all carbon dioxide (CO2) gas emissions caused by your daily activities in a given time frame. The figure’s usually expressed in tons and calculated over a year.  Most everyday actions use energy and produce CO2 emissions, simple stuff like showering, cooking, reading this article on a computer. Sipping that cuppa is carbon-neutral; shipping the tea to your market and heating the kettle are not.

As the number of Internet users increases, the minute measure of CO2 emitted by every tweet, comment, email and google search, starts to stack up to significance. This is our digital carbon footprint, and on a global scale, the numbers are worrying.

Thanks to the colossal number of data centers that are now needed to feed our internet obsession, the virtual world of online communication is beginning to damage the real world. EcoMENA recently ran a story by Salman Zafar that presented stats per second of CO2 emissions across different internet and social media functions.

According to Facebook’s sustainability report, in 2004 one million people were using the platform. As of 2016, users exceed one billion. The company reports that their annual per-user carbon emissions is 299g of CO2, which is less boiling a pot of tea. But with increasing usage, it adds up.

Raffi Krikorian, a developer at Twitter once stated that each tweet consumes around 90 joules, equaling 0.02g of CO2 emissions. Tiny figure, until you factor the 8,000 tweets published every second.

YouTube

The Guardian reported that 1g of CO2 was emitted for every 10 minutes of YouTube watched. Multiply that by the views on viral videos, and watch the ozone disappear.

Google Searches

There are more than 60,000 searches made on Google per second, each producing an average 0.2g of CO2.

In 2007, Google vowed to be carbon neutral by 2017, which they have met thanks to a $2.5 billion of investment in solar and wind projects, carbon offset programs and renewable energy.

No real message here other than understand that our online lives have real environmental impact. Do your part, like Google, in offsetting your carbon footprint with any of Green Prophet-endorsed initiatives such as Meatless Mondays, building yourself an affordable holiday home, or supporting local artisans.

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After making billions on online advertising Google execs are now putting some money into companies of their dreams. The latest – the Google driverless car concept.

“Look Ma, no hands!”

This time-worn expression involving steering a car without using one’s hands has been around a while. More recently, automotive companies like Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors are teaming up with technology innovators like Israel based Mobileye  to develop a totally different concept of literally  “hands free” car driving.

Tesla, which manufactures high-priced electric sports cars and salons is  planning to use Israel’s Better Place electric car infrastructure network to test models fitted with Mobileye’s  driverless car navigation system.

Apparently, the race is now on as to who will be able to develop the best driverless car technology that will enable people to  ride in vehicles that literally navigate and drive themselves on city streets and highways. Tesla and Mobileye are not the only companies working on the driverless car concept.

Google, the software media giant that is now a household name in the internet world, has  now jumped into to the fray and is outfitting Toyota Lexus SUV cars with its own driverless steering version that is now being test driven on  streets and roads in California and around the states. 

Google’s  driverless concept could be closer to true driverless traveling, than Mobileye’s.

Program director Chris Urmson (see photo)  says that “thanks to software upgrades, the self-driving car can now detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn.”

Taking this in mind, Google says cars using their software will one day be able to easily navigate streets New York City as driverless technologies improve.

Google’s driverless concept involves the incorporation of various software and video cameras as seen in the above illustration. The “Google car” is noted in red. Purple lines and boxes represent other cars on street, while red ones represent cyclists. Pedestrians are shown as yellow.  Street signs and signals look like they normally would.

According to an article in the UK Daily Mail a spinning “silver bucket” on top of a self-driving car contains 64 lasers that collect three-dimensional information in all directions, while a radar sensor bounces waves off every  object within about 500 feet.

There’s also a camera that looks through the windshield and reads everything from traffic signals to street signs.  Specially programed software “watches” what all of these different objects are doing at any given moment. It reacts to their movements and adjusts the driving plan accordingly.  A GPS device assists in planning the route the car will take.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s much more complicated than you might think, as video cameras have to identify the various hazards, including pedestrians crossing the street, and relays the data back to the software program.

Dmitri Dolgov from Google’s self-driving car team was quoted as  saying: “The car is capable of a lot of things, but unless it’s absolutely sure that it can handle the situation well, it will err on the conservative side.”

Erring, could obviously result in a serious and possibly fatal accident. If all goes well, Google hopes to have the driverless car program “on the road” by 2017.

A driverless car concept is just one of many things currently being innovated that involves the use of “robotics” or artificial  intelligence to perform tasks that human beings would normally do.

Google’s driverless team has up to now logged more than 700,000 accident-free miles (1.1 million km)  in various test locations in the USA. Not bad for “look Ma, no hands!”

Read more on the driverless car driving concept:

“Driverless” Tesla electric car will test run on Israel’s Better Place grid

Driverless car partnership emerges between Tesla and Israel’s Mobileye

Photo illustration of Google driverless car concept

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It has been a long, controversial and expensive road for BrightSource Energy, but their 392 megawatt concentrating solar plant is now finally delivering renewable energy to the California grid and it is the largest plant of its kind in the world.

Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System (ISEGS), which is comprised of 350,000 garage door-sized mirrors that reflect sunlight onto boilers atop 40 foot towers, is jointly owned by NRG Solar, Google and BrightSource Energy – a company that started out at Luz International in Israel.

In addition to offsetting roughly 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, the massive solar facility located roughly 50 miles northwest of Needles, California, will deliver solar power to roughly 140,000 homes via California utility companies PG&E and Southern California Edison.

Despite this enormous boost for solar energy, BrightSource Energy has taken a lot of heat from environmentalists and social activists for their five square mile solar project in the Mojave desert.

It took months to resolve the issue of relocating desert tortoises that call the desert home, to make way for thousands of concentrating mirrors, and Native Americans complained that the project destroys sites that are sacred to them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the towers, which reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, have scorched an astonishing number of birds.

The paper also notes that the energy produced at Ivanpah will cost four times as much as natural gas and boasts a smaller generation capacity to land ratio than conventional plants. In other words, CSP projects like ISEGS require more land than fossil fuel plants.

Despite these downsides, the $2.2 billion plant will produce one third of all solar thermal energy in the United States, and potentially pave the way for similar projects to take flight as well.

:: WSJ

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When Google launched a competition for one business in all of Africa to receive a suite of tablets to convert a cyber cafe into a tablet cafe, Médoune Seck from Senegal applied.

He had been running a cyber cafe in the country’s capital for several years, and struggled with power cuts and high electricity bills and was ready to try anything new to make his business more successful.

So Google gave him 15 new tablets and he kept five of his PCs to populate the newly-dubbed Tablette Café. A world first, it definitely won’t be the last.

“Tablet computers will revolutionise Africa, and Senegal,” 33-year-old Seck told AFP.

Not only do they consume 25 percent less energy than PCs, but they are easier to use and they rely on a mobile data connection. So, when the city’s cyber cafes are shut down because of electrical outages, Seck can keep his doors open.

The place is already a huge hit. People from across the demographic spectrum have come in to experiment with the new tablets, AFP reports, including an elderly grandmother and teens frustrated with regular cyber cafes and their money-hogging dinosaur computers.

For less than one dollar an hour, clients can enjoy the tablets while relaxing in armchairs and loungers, or they can rent one of three private booths to have a private video conversation.

Three PCs are still mounted to the wall, but they don’t get much attention anymore.

“Our hope is that cyber cafes attract new customers interested in a more simple and interactive way of going online, and make significant savings on their number one operating expense: electricity,” Alex Grouet, Google’s business development manager in Francophone Africa, said in a blog post.

A brilliant concept, the tablet cafe is bound to take foot in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, where people go for hours without power every day – particularly this time of year.

Image via AFP

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The intrepid Google team that set out to capture images from the soaring skyscraper in Dubai needed three days to get the job done.

Not only did they capture photographs from the 80th floor window cleaning gantry, they also ascended to the vertigo-inducing heights of the 124th floor, where they encountered 40mph winds.

Trekker backpacks and trolleys were key to the successful execution of this daring project.

These are new android-powered cameras, 15 five megapixel cameras in one resilient backpack, that Google designed in order to reach places that even a bicycle or snow machine can’t reach.

The 40 pound packs have two batteries that last all day, according to Google.

“The Burj Khalifa is special because it’s the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world” said Pascal Malite, Google’s Street View Program Manager.

“We are here to bring to the user the possibility to see this huge, immense, wonderful building,” she added.

This is the first time that Google’s Street View team has worked on a project like this in an Arab country, and now it is possible for just about anyone to experience the Burj without a costly, carbon-intensive flight across the globe.

:: Engadget

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While some plebes schlep to work amid carpet covered cubicles and everlasting beige, Google’s employees have an indoor orange grove reminiscent of Jaffa’s longstanding industry, a wall covered in a giant giclée of the Negev desert, a dining room that mimics the city’s effervescent cafe culture and even a meeting room that pays respects to local surfers.”

What’s more, these offices are not relegated to just one floor of the Electra tower. Instead, there are eight all decked with the same playful, mostly nature-oriented decor that has catapulted Camenzind Evolution‘s reputation as a leader of the interior design world. 

Designed by Camenzind Evolution with input from local design firms Setter Architects and Studio Yaron Tal, Google’s new offices in Tel Aviv are so darn cool it hardly seems fair. And yet, like most of the corporation’s biggest offices in cities around the globe, they were designed with some sense of sustainability in mind.

Already one of the “greenest” towers in Tel Aviv, the Electra was constructed with non-toxic materials, has facilities that permit grey water recycling and partially relies on renewables to cover its reduced energy requirement.

Now the tower’s green image has received a significant boost with Google’s spectacular interiors, which are expected to achieve LEED Platinum.

This comes on the heels of a recent announcement that electric vehicle manufacturer Better Place has entered into a $4 million deal with Elco Holdings Ltd. to provide 125 Renault Florence ZEs that will be distributed to Electra Ltd. and Electra Consumer Products Ltd.

Each floor is designed to correspond with some aspect of Israel’s multihued identity, be it the cafe culture, its vibrant markets or the laid back beach scene. And work, somehow, does get done despite the casual environment.

Unconventional spaces are set aside for brainstorming and creative collaboration, while more traditional desk space is used for dedicated, individual work time.

“Only 7 of the 8 rented floors in Electra Tower are actually occupied by Google,” according to Office Snap shots.

“The remaining floor gives space to a new ‘Campus’, which was also opened in December by the Israeli Prime Minister. The ‘Campus Tel Aviv’, powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, is a new hub for entrepreneurs and developers, providing a base for start-up companies, and is only the second Google ‘Campus’ worldwide.”

:: Office Snap Shots

All photographs by Itay Sikolski

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Not content to change our consumer culture, which has been vastly destructive not just to the planet, but also to our very social fabric, Google billionaires are supporting a hugely expensive scheme to pull asteroids into the moon’s orbit and mine them for gold, platinum, and other rare earth metals. These will then be used to produce more unessential stuff on earth.

Asteroid Rush

Unfortunately, scientists claim that this not such a wild plan and that it is well within the realm of our technological capability and expertise. But just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Before we launch into this litany, let’s first go over how a few overgrown boys (and one woman) with too much money on their hands dreamed up this ruinous plan and how they expect to execute it.

The Seattle-based company founded by Aerospace Engineers Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis (who is also a medical doctor) has attracted a handful of wealthy investors, including former US presidential candidate Ross Perot and Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.

Advisors include Avatar film director James Cameron, who should know better than to support even more resource extraction, and General T. Michael Moseley, former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.

The team plan to launch a $10 million unmanned space craft equipped with telescopes to scout out resource-rich asteroids, and then send in another that will “lasso” these “lumps of rock” and gently bring them into earth’s orbit, where they will be broken down and mined.

Giant lumps of money

Gold, platinum, and rare earth metals such as rhodium taken from these “near Earth asteroids” will be brought to earth. In order to avoid saturating the market, however, and driving down the cost of what are rare, precious, and therefore expensive metals, some may be left in the moon’s orbit where they will be used to make rockets and other things.

According to the company’s website, “asteroids are primordial material left over from the formation of the Solar System. They are scattered throughout it: some pass close to the Sun, and others are found out beyond the orbit of Neptune.” They have a negligible gravity field, so shifting them is unlikely to create any galactic disturbance.

They are attractive because one 500 ton, 7 meter diameter asteroid contains the same quantity of metals that we mine on earth in an entire year. And there are said to be at least 1500 that are within earth’s proximity.

Planetary Resources also admits, “Despite their celestial age, our understanding of asteroids is still in its infancy. However, the more we learn about them, the more enticing destinations they become.”

Mine the landfills instead

The Guardian reports that this plan will cost billions of dollars and will take decades to produce fruit, but the company is convinced they can add trillions of dollars to our global GDP.

And that’s what this whole scheme really boils down to: GDP. Instead of spending that money to feed the billions of people living on the planet, we’re spending it so we can have more batteries and cell phones. All this even though we know that millions of people are starving, others lack access to basic needs such as water, and our own planet is in need of serious ecological restoration.

Instead of re-using the materials that we have on earth, so much of which languishes in landfills in the form of e-waste, instead of cleaning up our own mess, like children, we’re pretending it’s not there. Our shortsightedness, our absolute arrogance, our total disrespect for nature’s rhythms has taken on a whole new, interplanetary dimension.

Can somebody please give these boy-men a board game instead?

:: The Guardian

Image Credit, Asteroid Approaches Earth, Shutterstock

More on Space:

Nader Khalili Built Earth-Buildings Fit for Space

Virgin’s Galactic Space Travel – A Greener Trip From Abu Dhabi to L.A.

Virgin Galactic: Do We Really Need to Send Rich People into Space?

The post Mine Landfills, Not Asteroids! appeared first on Green Prophet.

Visual clues about you are just the tip of the information iceberg. Your shopping habits can be made malleable by others through data mining.

New York Times writer Charles Duigg wrote how Target predicted a teen’s pregnancy before her own father knew. He described a man demanding to speak to a superstore manager: “My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The mailer, addressed to the girl, promoted maternity and baby gear. The clueless manager apologized, and when he later phoned the man to repeat his apology, the conversation turned surreal. “I had a talk with my daughter”, he said, “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August.”

Be careful at the intersection of data collection and human behavior.When we shop using plastic or customer “rewards” cards, retailers collect our purchase details for deeper analysis to promote more buying. Here’s what you should be aware of:

Researchers in university and corporate laboratories are exploring human impulse and subconscious pattern formation, better understanding what makes us tick, specifically in regards to consumerism. “Predictive analytics” are used to study our daily purchasing habits, interpreting patterns that enable businesses to be frighteningly efficient in their marketing.

Here’s how shopping analysis works. Items are linked into groups indicative of specific behavioral trends. Paper plates + ice bucket might = a one-off party, but retailers hunt for bigger game. They target shoppers with long-term purchasing commitments such as weight-loss (vitamins + sports drink + exercise DVD), or the zenith of stepped-up consumerism: parenthood (cocoa butter + folic acid + What To Name Your Baby).

Mathematical models translate our purchases into indicators of personal life events.  Major retailers assign us unique shopper codes, based on our credit or bank cards, or drivers’ licenses when using checks. All of our actions are linked back to that code.

Buy something, return it, use a coupon, call customer service: it’s recorded. Apply for a customer card or store credit and our personal demographics are filed too.

Did you go to school? File a tax return? Insure a car? That info, plus your age, address, marital status, household size and charitable donations are easily obtained from public records. More information about religion, ethnicity, what we read, who we date, and where we go online can be purchased outright third parties, even if we didn’t purposely share.

Mathematical analysis spins this data into marketing gold.

Computer analytics can plot our conscious and unconscious patterns. Regarding the Target teen, analysis identified a purchase array that scored high in “pregnancy prediction”, so refined that it estimated the stage of pregnancy, allowing the store to create coupons for items bespoke to her specific trimester.

“Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, chairman of the Predictive Analytics World conference. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think.”

Target experienced over all revenue growth from $44 billion in 2002 when this analysis commenced to $67 billion in 2010. Duigg suggests predictive analytics helped them corner the mommy-and-me market.

Where will they next turn their sights? And they’re not the only retailer using this.

A Duke University study concluded that conscious decision-making is responsible for slightly more than half of our daily choices; the rest are simply learned routines.  I urge you to read the NYT article in full to appreciate how malleable our habits can be made by others.  Modern life can resemble a rat-race, but are you comfortable being manipulated to chase specific cheese?

Become a Cookie Monster

It’s serendipitous that my son just Facebooked me instructions on how to remove my Google search history before March 1, when that giant’s new privacy policy takes effect affecting their approach to data collection.  Presently, Google’s Web History function records data every time you search, and visit resulting sites. Those records had been segregated from other Google products, but that protection may change. I doubt my searches are sensitive,  but I don’t like the probability of my info being used by others down the line.  I suggest you clear your own history and stop your future browsings from being recorded.

I just did it, takes all of 4 minutes:

1. Sign into your Google account.
2. Go to https://google.com/history
3. Click “remove all Web History”
4. Click “ok”

Note: These steps must be repeated for each account. Removing your Web History also “pauses” it, it remains “off” until you re-enable it.  Can’t imagine why you ever would.

Tracking and data-mining are now standard practice. To avoid it requires serious effort.  You’re not okay with leaving footsteps every time you click?  Then use cash.

Skip the points/rewards cards.

Crumble cookie trails after playing online.

Barter.

But is it reasonable to think we can jump off the e-info grid in this age of  mobile phones, internet and air travel? Could you survive without Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?   Convenience comes at a cost to privacy.  My concern is that, like that targeted teen, we can’t begin to conceive the final bill.

Image via gabriellaap

The post How Data Mining Turns You Into A Super Consumer appeared first on Green Prophet.