The green guide to CES 2012

There’s not a whole lot that’s sustainable, efficient, or eco-friendly about the yearly Consumer Electronics Show — hey, it’s a massive gathering of tech enthusiasts that have flown into Las Vegas and are spending a week handing out schwag and showing off gadgets. But every year we try to dig into some of the innovations around energy, batteries, energy-efficient homes and the smart grid at the event, and deliver them up for your reading pleasure:

1). Smart energy homes: Quite a few companies will be showing off their smart energy home gadgets and services including the largest big box retailers. Lowe’s will be kicking off a major home energy push with partner AlertMe at CES and Best Buy will also be touting its home energy plans that it launched a few months ago. The telcos and their partners will probably have a decent-sized showing. Nest and its learning thermostat will be there takin meetings in the Hilton. Power and utility company Reliant and NRG Energy will have an updated version of its smart energy home on wheels at the show and we’ll be chatting with them later this week.

2). Electric cars: Ford dominated the electric car news at CES 2011, and it’ll probably be the same in 2012. On Sunday night Ford unveiled the plug-in Fusion Energi, which has 100MPGe and can drive on electric for 20 miles before the gas engine kicks in. Ford Alan Mulally, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company will be speaking at some point, and there’s even a Go Electric Drive Test Zone at the show, which includes retailer Best Buy, electric charging company Coulomb Technologies, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Qualcomm and Siemens.

Solar iPod apps

3). Solar-powered gadget cases: Over the past couple of years a variety of products have emerged that have embedded small solar strips on the back of cases that can top off gadgets with a small amount of solar electricity. Much of the value-add of these cases is often times an additional lithium ion battery, as the amount of the power provided by the solar strips can be pretty weak. VentureBeat has some of the first shots of a case for a solar-powered Kindle, which is made by Taiwanese company SolarFocus, and which it says will make the Kindle battery last three times the normal duration. The cost is $ 80.

4). Sustainable Planet Section: CES has a sustainable section every year, which usually features a couple dozen vendors making gear like smart plugs and batteries — it’s pretty lame. But at the 2o12 CES I was interested to see that trash giant Waste Management has a booth in the Sustainable Planet Section. While Waste Management has a very interesting investment startup strategy, I’m looking forward to see what’s the connection with gadgets — e-cycling?

5). Cars in the cloud: The digital car isn’t always about sustainability but car data, infotainment and digital systems are becoming a hot topic at all gadget events and CES 2012 will be no different. And sometimes the digital car does lead to a more sustainable car. One of the first announcements to come out of CES 2012 is that GM’s Onstar has given the greenlight to third party applications, and one of the first ones will be from car sharing company RelayRides. Woot!

6). One Laptop per Child: One Laptop Per Child is showing off its long-awaited XO-3 tablet at CES, and TechCrunch has some of the first pics of it. Is it eco-friendly? Not really, but it’s planet-friendly, and there’s so little green content this year at CES that I added one that’s only half green.

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