All Blog Posts from The Green Eye

A few years ago, I asked an investor who specialized in Russian and Eastern European investments what the current business climate and atmosphere was like in the Far East.

The level of scientific research and the quality of the scientists and engineers was top-notch, he said. A large number of the projects that had been inaugurated and funded by the former Soviet Union with potential commercial application had also not been exploited.

This corresponded with what I had heard from other companies. Intel years earlier had opened a lab in Nizny Novograd that performed much of the company's communications research. Ten PhDs could be hired for the price of a single American, former Intel exec Pat Gelsinger told me. Search engines like Yandex rivalled Google in the country. And ideas like underground coal gasification were coming to the West by being licensed to startups like Laurus Energy.

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Water is rarely pure.

That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind resource recovery, an emerging, definable segment in the water market.

Resource recovery essentially revolves around developing filters, membranes and other systems to pluck solids out of various waste and industrial water streams and then sell them as commodities. A number of companies already participate in this market. What has evolved more recently is the term and, believe it or not, that's significant. Once a seemingly disparate group of companies can get lumped under a shared conceptual umbrella, potential customers and Wall Street analysts start to listen.

A big part of the appeal, of course, is that these processes turn waste into gold, or at least into hefty sacks of nickels. Municipal water agencies, mining outfits, and oil companies now regularly spend billions a year to process their waste streams. Getting votes or CEOs to approve upgrades to waste systems is rarely easy because the money literally goes down the drain. By adding in a payback mechanism, waste upgrades become that much more palatable. (See Eleven Great Things To Do With Sewage.)Continue »

What will happen if consumers in a particular geographic area like Berkeley, California and Marin County flock to electric cars -- and area utilities haven't really prepared for the exigencies of mass smart charging?

"Fireworks," said Andres Carvallo, chief strategy officer at Grid Net. Transformers could blow and start fires all over town. The ability to maintain power at hospitals and other mission-critical facilities could be imperiled.

That's good news, in a roundabout way. In the past few months, consumers have let utilities know what they think of their plans to embed two-way communications into the grid to control air conditioners and other equipment in homes and offices to curb power.  (Carvallo will discuss EVs and more at The Networked Grid on May 18 and 19.)

In short, they hate it. A few surly consumers in California and Texas have sued, respectively, electricity providers Pacific Gas & Electric and Oncor. In Australia, some customers have locked their meters. A plan to bring time-of-use pricing to the state of Victoria was shelved in light of a pending election.

Even avid greenies seem blasé. In Canada, Toronto Hydro has scrutinized the behavior of around 115,000 customers on time-of-use plans. Has cut rate power at night goosed them to shift their behavior? "No. Not really," said Toronto's Karen France during a meeting at eMeter's customer event.

Matt Golden, co-founder of retrofitter/software vendor Recurve, told me recently that the company has installed some energy management dashboards in the homes of clients. After two weeks, the frequency of interaction with the dashboards drops considerably. There have been success stories -- customers surveyed in a test conducted by Silver Spring Networks and Oklahoma Gas and Electric were overwhelmingly surprised to learn about their rate of energy consumption -- but people seem to be dozing off on what is a very important technology.

So what's the problem? Utilities and building management outfits are asking people to change their behavior to save pennies. PG&E's residential rates range from 11 to 49 cents a kilowatt hour. Will you alter your laundry schedule to save 37 cents? Toronto's spread is 9.9 cents at peak and 4.4 at night.

Executives from smart grid companies often like to compare energy dashboards to the phone.  But the real analogy is to another ubiquitous consumer item with an interface of brightly colored squares. I speak of Rubik's Cube. You probably own one, but the odds are you are not one of those dedicated individuals who can solve it in less than three seconds blindfolded or shift the squares around with your feet. Instead, it's probably in a desk drawer in your parents' house, along with chewed up pencil stubs and a Pee-Chee folder that says, "Shannon Heeney is a fox!"

Leery Consumers

Consumers also remain leery of smart grid efforts because they have a sneaking suspicion that the main beneficiaries will be utilities. And in many ways, they are right. With better demand response, utilities can forgo building new power plants. CenterPoint in Texas can now shut off someone's power remotely within two hours for failure to pay a bill. In the past, they had to send out guys with trucks. CenterPoint has managed to eliminate 100,000 truck rolls to date through its meters.

You'll probably hear push-back from solar customers, too. Why should I have to pay additional taxes and rate increases for new smart grid infrastructure, they might ask, when I did my part by installing a $25,000 solar system!?! Again, building management is great, but it will have to be automated -- and the appetite for rate increases will be scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb.

This brings me back to cars. Consumers love electric cars. Along with green architecture, it's one of the two segments of the market that inspire lust, envy -- and likely -- compulsive spending. It's a whole new driving experience that's far more engaging than a gas car.

Nissan has already booked over 10,000 reservations for the Leaf and it will only make 50,000 in the first year of production. The car won't even enter production until September. Fisker has booked over 1,400 reservations for its $90,000 plug-in Karma. Even Aptera, which makes a three-wheeled car struggling to get to production, has a waiting list. 

Recently, I drove an all-electric Ford Focus. Strangers pointed and took pictures. I felt like the Man from the Future heralding the new era of rental cars. If only I had worn the silver skin suit. Forget high battery prices and range anxiety for a moment: electrics are the Volkswagen Bug of our time.

When utilities explain that electric cars can't take off without smart charging, the objections will melt away. Utilities will even be able to tout that they are building U.S. jobs. Petroleum comes from Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Canada. Electricity comes from Sandusky, Ohio.

Granted, utilities will have to go through the public meeting process, and objections will arise. There will also be a lot of companies arguing that the world needs software and tools that will identify consumers remotely and charge electricity to their home accounts before the cars become popular. (Easier solution: put charge spots in convenience stores and parking lots and let store owners charge whatever they want, just like they do with Slim Jims.) Safety? Check -- and don't we all drive around with a tank full of flammable liquids now? And, yes, as Dian Grueneich of the California Public Utilities Commission notes, it will be expensive to upgrade the grid.

But it won't dampen down the enthusiasm, and it will drag a technology that's not winning any popularity contests yet along with it.

This is a week that might, if we are lucky, live in green technology infamy.

As you likely know, a massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana threatens to become the largest environmental disaster in the U.S. in decades. Fishing and tourism in the region are already imperiled.

Meanwhile, a break in a water main in the Boston area has prompted officials to tell at least a million people not to use water from municipal systems and to boil any water they need to use for human consumption.

These are unqualified disasters by any measure and will harshly impact the people in those areas. But, unfortunately, it is these kinds of disasters that Americans (and most people around the world) typically need to experience before they actually tackle a problem.

Almost 99 years ago, New York City and the rest of the nation were appalled by the deaths that arose from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The disaster led to regulations for workplace safety. Some historians also link it to the rise of the New Deal two decades later. Frances Perkins, who helped usher in many of the reforms, later became Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt. Al Smith also worked on the effort. He became governor of the state and paved the way for Roosevelt.

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio and the oil spill off Santa Barbara prompted outrage among middle class Americans. The two incidents helped inspire the first Earth Day in 1970 which drew millions of protesters across the country. Then, in the 1970 elections, the Earth Day organizers helped unseat seven environmentally unfriendly Congressional Representatives, including the quite powerful George Fallon.

Soon after, President Nixon proposed the EPA. The measure passed 100-0 in the Senate and got through on a voice vote in congress. The Clear Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and other key pieces of legislation followed.

Experts have issued warnings about the fragile state of the U.S. water infrastructure for years.

"Roughly a third of the drinking water never makes it to the end user because of leakage to pipes. In older cities like Chicago -- where they have a 100-plus-year-old infrastructure -- 50 percent to 60 percent of the water leaks out of the pipes before it ever makes it through," General Electric's Jeff Fulgham told me in 2007.

The effort and money to fix the country's water problems, however, has been scant. VCs often admit that they want to, but generally don't, invest in water companies because the subsidized nature of the U.S. water market and the time required to solve infrastructure problems make it difficult for companies to make headway with their technology.

Forging a Link

These two disasters will, potentially, now highlight the links between infrastructure, the environment and the economy. More importantly, they will create a flash point that will let people from different ends of the political spectrum unite behind a goal. Left or right, no one wants to see fishermen go broke.

These two incidents are also very tangible. Climate change and peak oil -- while real -- have been the subject of debate in part because the consequences will mostly occur in the future. In other words, the true impact remains invisible. It's a lot tougher to argue about the need to contain an oil spill. Even staunch fossil fuel advocates won't be chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" with quite as much gusto.

"My guess is that this won't become a big issue unless there is a thalidomide event," Richard Smalley, the now-deceased Nobel Prize winner told me a few years ago when asked if humanity would move away from oil gracefully. "We will have to see in the rear-view mirror that we are past the peak in worldwide oil production."

Luckily, the political system does often work well in disasters. Remember the rolling blackouts in California in 2000 and 2001? The state's current renewable energy policies grew out of it. By coincidence, David Brooks of The New York Times likened the growth of the green economy to the transcontinental railroad last week. It's an accurate metaphor, and far less divisive than the usual New Deal metaphor.

No one wanted this to happen and help needs to be rushed to these areas. But once the immediate problems are solved, hopefully we can then tackle the underlying issues.

When and where did green technology begin? It depends on your frame of reference. Some point to the invention of silicon PV cells at Bell Labs in 1954. Others note that car makers produced hybrids and electric cars in the early part of the 20^th century. But you can go even further back: Egyptian architecture took advantage of passive cooling, a technique now making a comeback in modern design. Roman emperors had snow hauled to the palace in Rome, a first-century precursor of thermal mass cooling and storage, a concept now touted by Calmac and Ice Energy.

For the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day last week, we'd like to salute 40 pioneers who helped crack thorny scientific problems, devise new business models, or come up with policies that paved the way for the world to adopt renewable energy and/or use our planetary resources more wisely. They are listed by category and approximately in chronological order.

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While start-ups have played a crucial role in getting the green industry off the ground, the future will likely be dominated by large, sprawling conglomerates. Why? Green technology essentially involves revamping the physical infrastructure of the modern world: replacing coal-fired power plants with wind turbines, building homes from materials concocted in chemistry laboratories, and swapping out engines for electric motors. Established companies simply are in a far better position to muster the capital, technological depth, managerial expertise and factory capacity needed.

Familiarity plays a big role too. Millions have flocked to play Farmville. You won't see the same sort of giddy enthusiasm for those installing high voltage power lines or sewage-to-drinking water plants. If the Internet boom was an under-30 billionaire, clean tech is a science teacher with a comb-over.

With that in mind, here is my list of the top ten Green Giants, the companies most likely to produce, develop and promote the ideas an products that will have the widest ranging effects.

1. Communist Party of the People's Republic of China

What isn't China doing? The country has kicked off at least 13 electric car trials, issued somewhat strict gas mileage in cars, and set aggressive renewable energy standards. The government will invest an estimated $300 billion in green stimulus over the next decade or so, and assist the effort by direct investments in companies through its estimated $200 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Just as important, the government is getting state-owned banks and manufacturers (as well as private companies) to collaborate with Westerners. First Solar will build power plants in China and provide Chinese utilities with know-how to build them on their own while Intel and IBM are working with state grid companies.

Exports will climb too. Duke and Chinese conglomerate ENN will build and manage

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Aquaporin says it will be able to turn salt water into drinking water with a customized molecule that mimics the function of similar molecules found inside liver cells.

Yelp publishes restaurant and hotel reviews from unpaid contributors. That comparison underscores many of the differences between the green technology industry and the web. Every week, someone asks me, "Where is the Continue »

Can three cents be transformed into billions of dollars?

That's the big question when it comes to Better Place, the well-funded start-up that wants to put people into electric cars. Driving a gas car costs about 12 cents a mile when gas costs $3 a gallon, says Jason Wolf, vice president the company's North American division. Electricity, on the other hand, costs about 3 cents a mile: a kilowatt hour costs around and a car can go around 4 miles on a kilowatt hour. A battery for an electric car, meanwhile, will cost around 6 cents a mile over a 200,000 mile lifetime.

Since Better Place says it will supply the electricity and batteries to consumers, the company has a margin of 3 cents per mile (12 cents minus 9) before potential customers complain about the higher cost of going electric. Granted, 3 cents doesn't sound like much: I harvest more loose change than that every time I do laundry. And Better Place proposes building thousands of charging stations, hundreds of battery swapping stations, and devising software so these cars won't crash the grid when charging. But look at it from another perspective. There are around 200 million drivers and 254 million vehicles in the U.S. and insurance companies say the average person drives 12,000 miles a year. That comes to 2.4 trillion miles, or $72 billion of potential three-cent transactions per year. Even one percent of that would probably placate investors. And in Europe and Asia, higher gas prices boost that 3 cent margin to 9 or 12 cents. Additional revenue can come from selling semi-depleted batteries to utilities, which isn't part of the above calculations.

And with the battery separated from the car, the down payment and resistance toward going electric goes way down. "When you buy a Toyota, you don't buy eight years of gasoline," Wolf said. "You take out the battery and now you have a much, much cheaper car."

Big math problems like that, along with their inherent uncertainties, make Better Place one of the more intriguing companies in greentech today, or in any market, for that matter. In a short period of time, the company has joined the ranks of Google, Apple, Microsoft and Tesla Motors as a subject of endless debate and speculation. How did they raise over $500 million? How much have they spent? Will car dealers and manufacturers work with them?

I've criticized the company's strategy in the past. Now, after talking to Wolf, I have to admit that the plan actually makes more sense. But the recent discussion also crystallized what appear to be five big hurdles the company will have to overcome. Here is how the service works. Consumers will buy electric cars, but not the battery. Better Place will build charging networks and then charge consumers subscription fees that cover the cost of the car's battery, the electricity to run them, and ancillary services like smart charging software and charging station maps. (The company figures 2.1 charging stations per car, by the way.) Since the battery accounts for about one-third of the cost of an electric car, the sticker price will be far lower than competing cars sold with batteries.

Along the way, it will also offer discount entertainment packages, insurance and other services. Competitors such as Coulomb Technologies will offer subscriptions too, but they won't include the battery. In other words, a more expensive car, but a less elaborate subscription -- and it works with any electric car.

So what are the Better Place hurdles?

• 1. Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt. The ol' Nixonion Trilogy is perhaps the largest looming barrier. It's just plain weird to buy a car but lease the most expensive component. Nissan recently announced it would not try battery rental strategy in the U.S. with the Leaf, due to negative response to the concept in customer surveys.

This is America, after all. We hate renting. Graduating from renting an apartment to buying a home has become enshrined as a hallmark of adulthood. And if there's one thing we hate more than renting, it's sharing stuff with strangers. Who had this battery before me? Is that smoke coming from the hood? The first time someone gets in a bad accident or the car conks, watch them blame it on some stranger's battery.

Getting consumers comfortable with this will take extensive marketing and hand-holding. And they will have legitimate questions. How will this impact the resale price of the car? What if Better Place goes out of business? Is this like getting a car from Hertz? You might pay more money and feel cheap at the same time.

The weirdness of it all is one more reason Better Place may succeed in Israel first. In Israel, large companies give cars to employees as sort of a fringe benefit. Thus, the drivers won't have to worry about who-owns-what questions.

• 2. It's the Dorian Gray-Mobile. Swapping, as it takes place over time, is the brilliant nugget buried in the business plan. Consumers don't have to worry about their battery degrading. In fact, their cars will stay younger longer because Better Place will circulate newer, longer-lasting batteries into the fleet.

But for Better Place, the benefits are even greater because batteries will decline in price over time. Several months ago, lithium-ion batteries sold for around $900 a kilowatt hour, according to various estimates. Now lithium batteries sell for $500 a kilowatt hour, said Wolf, and the Department of Energy is funding research to drop it to $250 a kilowatt hour. Moore's Law will similarly whack the cost of the electrical components surrounding the cells in the battery pack.

Declining prices, of course, mean increased margins. At $250 a kilowatt hour, Better Place's battery expenses drop to 3 cents a mile and the gross margin doubles to 6 cents. The company can then add to its margins by selling the semi-depleted battery packs to utilities for grid balancing. Overall, this is a huge plus for everyone, but one that could go wrong in word-of-mouth. Consumers might see this as buying a car with a perpetual stream of payments. Never ending fees explain why many detest cable companies: your monthly rates is going up, but now you get the Bowhunter Network and Hungarian Life in HD.

Slogans could help: "The Only Car that Gets Better with Age." "It's a Timeless Classic. Really," etc. If the company can stroke the ego of upper-middle-class consumers and convince them they are getting a superior deal to those clods that insist on owning batteries, perceptions may turn. But if Better Place doesn't surrender some margin on its savings, the program could smell like a trap.

• 3. Hostility from Car Makers. The battery is one-third of the price of an electric car. That means car manufacturers only get to sell two-thirds of a car, leaving them and their dealers less wiggle room for haggling and making a profit. That should really warm car makers up to this. Car manufacturers -- on the whole, a conservative lot -- also worry about safety, warranties and design homogenization.

"The battery defines the architecture of the car. It only makes sense if you have the same type of battery for every car," Ulrich Hackenberg, a member of VW's board told me last year. "I can't imagine all of the OEMs are building their cars around this type of battery."

Volkswagen and Ford do not have battery swap plans on the road map, while General Motors and Fisker have hybrids that make swapping unnecessary. Tesla will have one version of the Model S with a swappable battery. So far, it's not a rousing start. On the other hand, fleet sales of these things are drawing customers, which car makers won't want to miss out on.

"In Israel and Denmark, we announced with Renault that we are buying 100,000 switchable cars," Wolf said. "That is larger than all of the noise in the U.S."

• 4. Your Dryer. Most people don't realize this, but they already have an electric car charging station. It's the 240 volt outlet their clothes dryer is plugged into. Technically, you will need to install a charger for safety reasons, but it's essentially the same outlet. Do you really need subscriptions from Better Place or Coulomb? Your first electric call will likely be a commuter car, plowing less than 40 miles a day, so the need for public chargers remains small. Both companies readily admit most consumers will charge their cars at home. If you drive 12,000 miles a year like the average American, your electricity costs come to $360 a year, or $36 a month. And if you charge at off-peak hours like the utilities will urge you to, the monthly costs drop to $24. Costco offers free electricity in some cars and one can imagine office buildings doing the same.

"When 90 percent of the cars are electric, do you think the majority of charge spots will be free?" he asked. Maybe not, but those subscription services better be mighty cheap.

• 5. It's Not a Cellular Network. Better Place often analogizes the service to the cell phone industry. In the early days, cell phone equipment was expensive: the only guy that could afford them was Michael Douglas with that shoe phone in Wall Street. Now, phones go worldwide and the infrastructure costs have dropped.

Better Place drivers will be able to charge on other networks, so the company won't have to build as many charging stations as you might think. Plus, the number of charging stations isn't extreme, which means Better Place only has to keep about 12 batteries at each switch station.

"A switching station can support 3,000 cars," Wolf said. "A gas station supports 60 cars. There are 1,200 gas stations in the Bay Area. You won't need that many charge stations...With a 100 switch stations in the Bay Area, you can support hundreds of thousands of users."

"Smart phones are switchable cars," he added later.

Still, the prices of cell phone equipment and Better Place equipment aren't remotely in the same league. A cell phone costs less than $20 to make and Verizon charges customers $30 to $100 a month to use them. Antennas continue to plummet in price, they largely get planted on marginal land that has no other economic use and everyone owns a phone. When a phone breaks, you get a new one. These factors are far different with cars. 100,000 drivers means $4.8 million worth of charging stations, $210 million worth of charging stations and $1.2 billion worth of $12,000 batteries.

Cell phones give you freedom to take calls and get emails away from your desk.

Then again, with a leased battery, electronics are someone else's problem. That's freedom by another name. So it could work.

Not everything is new in greentech. A number of companies are based around technologies and concepts coined years and even centuries ago. They failed or became obsolete for a variety of reasons: cost, better alternatives, a lack of interest, inconvenience. Some are also modernizing the underlying concept. Will they work now? Who knows, but you've got to agree: The list is surprisingly long.

• Mashed Earth: Native Americans in the Mississippi area, among others, built burial mounds and walls with compressed earth. The building technique pretty much went out of favor as soon as someone figured out how to apply heat to fire adobe or brick. But now, Integrity Block is bringing it back. The company has found a way to build construction-grade blocks out of dirt. The process consumes less energy than making them out of concrete. Added bonus: the blocks actually cost less than existing cement bricks, says Jim Petit at Navitas Capital, which has invested in the company.

• Solar-Thermal Water Heaters: Back in the 1920s, residents of Miami, Berkeley and Los Angeles relied on solar hot water heaters. Then the gas companies came in and they went away. Conspiracy theorists like to point to this as an example of corporate evildoing, but reality is much simpler. Gas was cheap and people liked having hot water on rainy days too. Solar water is growing industry in China. Mondial Energy in Toronto is one of the big proponents.

• . Solar Lighting: Solar lighting is earth's favorite light source since the Big Bang. Sunlight Direct has a system (which evolved from a Sandi a project) that collects sunlight in a rooftop dish and the pipes it through a building with fiber optic cables. UC Davis has something much simpler: it is tinkering with controllers that will dim and brighten electric lights with the availability of sunlight. Another advantage: people look better in sunlight. There's not of that "hungover serial killer" skin tone you get with cheap fluorescents.

•   The Opposed Piston/Opposed Cylinder Engine: Achates Power and EcoMotors are working on car engines that contain a double-length cylinder with a piston at each end. (There are no cylinder heads in between.) The pistons and cylinders are horizontal too, so car and engine manufacturers can stack them. The unusual configuration results in several advantages. Mileage can be boosted by 40 percent to 50 percent, when a two-module engine is compared with a standard diesel. The engine also can be made 30 percent lighter.
  

(We can all be glad it didn't work the first time around. Junkers & Co. ,which designed planes in Germany in the '30s, had an opposed cylinder/opposed piston design on some engines from 1934 through 1939. The concept never fully took off, however, because it wasn't easy to mass manufacture.)

• Swirly Water: Another greentech opportunity missed by the Third Reich. An Austrian forestry expert named Viktor Schauberger championed ideas about natural water flow in the first few decades of the 20th century. The main one was that you could purify water by swirling it through a vortex. Schauberger got the idea from watching fish, and he concocted devices called the Trout Turbine and the Vortex Generator. Hitler met with Schauberger, but the Fuhrer's scientific handlers pooh-poohed him. Schauberger was ultimately derided as a kook. Watreco, a startup in Malmo, Sweden, has devised purifiers based around a vortex. Parc has one too. Vortex Hydro Energy in Michigan is trying something similar, but using water vortexes for energy.

• Dung: Technically, It's never gone out of style, but dung's popularity as a fuel source tends to ebb once a nation gets past the subsistence level. Microgy, a division of Environmental Power, is erecting thermophilic digesters that decompose manure and extract the methane, which then gets shipped down a pipeline (see photo three above). BioEnergy Solutions has a trial going with PG&E. Image one above displays some of the equipment - digesters, dung separators, for accomplishing the task. Call it deconstructed dung.

•  Ambient Cooling: Again, never out of style, but clearly phased out in favor of mechanical HVAC systems. Modular homebuilders like Zeta Communities are incorporating ambient whenever possible. If you want to know why some of modern eco homes seem to have a vague Asian sensibility about them, it's probably because temples and official buildings medieval China and Japan took full advantage of ambient air. Datacenters, like Microsoft's new one in Ireland, can take advantage of chilly outside air too.

• Electric Cars: Another favorite of conspiracy nuts. Detroit killed the electric car in the 1990s, the theory goes, because the auto industry was afraid consumers would flock to overpriced, inefficient cars that would regularly need battery replacements. And Japanese car makers joined in to help U.S. oil companies because, well, because there was a trade war going on between Japan and the U.S. and Japan was paying through the nose for oil exports.
  

(The bastards! They're probably inside Tesla Motors and Think conducting sabotage right now. But electric cars, and their death, go waaay back. Detroit Electric made all electric cars from 1907 to 1939. In 1917, an all-electric Detroit might cost you anywhere from $1,775 to $2,375. It could go 60 to 100 miles on a charge and get all the way up to 25 miles an hour. "No other bridal present means so much, expresses so perfectly what you mean to say," one ad read. Huzzah! Plummeting gas prices, however, made gas cars more popular. Then the 1929 stock market crash killed it.)

• Biodiesel: What was the first fuel used by Rudolf Diesel? Peanut oil. Fast-forward several decades. Now you can fill up on the sludge in the dumpster behind Carl's Jr. Side note: Ferdinand Porsche built the first hybrid in 1902. Those Germans really had it going on.

• Hemp: This one's a tribute to all my stoner acquaintances in high school that yammered on about how George Washington grew hemp. That was right before they tried to explain the artwork on "Eat a Peach" by the Allman Brothers. The fast growing weed is a natural for eco-clothing and fabrics for sheets. Eucalyptus is big too. Still trying to confirm that "Wizard of Oz"/ "Dark Side of the Moon" thing though.

• Zinc Batteries: Thomas Edison, the prolific American inventor, tried to make rechargeable batteries out of zinc oxide. The formula, however, was never quite right. The batteries would die after a few charges. Now, companies like PowerGenix, ZPower andPowerAir have tinkered with the chemical formula to give zinc batteries a longer life. And, unlike lithium-ion batteries, they won't randomly explode.

•  Plasma Lights: Another Edison connection here. Edison favored lights with a filament. Nikolai Tesla, noted eccentric genius who is belatedly proven right, favored heating up gases in a bulb to create and plasma and hence light. Edison won, and that's why we have inefficient filament bulbs everywhere. Luxim and Eden Park, however, have come up with lights following the Tesla model. Luxim's bulbs are sold for outdoor lighting. It looks like a Tic Tac.

• Tidal Power: Tidal power prototypes have been planted in New York, and many will go into the water off the coast of the U.K. and Ireland over the next few years. But one of the first tidal plants dates back 900 years. The Eling Tide Mill is still active.

• Thin Clients. Not as old, but still mounting a comeback. Wyse and others have promoted thin clients as a cheap, more manageable alternative to the desktop for years. It didn't sweep the nation and most corporate workers still have PCs. The thin-client mantra, however, is finally sinking in with the rise in power costs. NComputing, only a few years old, has already installed over one million of its sub-$100 desktops. Wyse is also seeing an increase in sales.

• Geothermal Cooling: In the 1830s, Lord Kelvin began to record ground temperatures. He discovered that a few feet below the surface they remain relatively constant throughout the year. Then in the 1940s, Robert Webber tinkered with the concept and came up with the first geothermal heat pumps. Throughout most of the U.S., the temperature of the ground about five feet below the surface remains roughly constant throughout the year: 45 degrees to 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the northern parts of the country and 50 degrees to 70 degrees in the south. Pipes that bring that air in during the summer provide cooling (as well as heating in the winter). Although geo cooling has been growing in popularity, it's still not as popular as evaporative cooling, first engineered by the Egyptians.

• Tribal Warfare, Malaria, Limited Life Spans: Again. Never out of style, but definitely on the comeback. The food riots of 2008 and the ongoing disagreements over water use in drought stricke areas are just a precursor. But locavores are encouraging people to grow their own produce too and eat food in a 100-mile radius.

Maybe this last one can go out of fashion.

Venture capital firms have invested almost $20 billion into hundreds of greentech startups since 2005. Very few of these firms will actually make it. At Greentech Media, we put our energy reporters and analysts to the task of picking fifty VC startups in greentech that have at least a fighting chance of succeeding as VC-funded startups and making an impact on our energy-intensive lives.

Methodology: We spread the names of 500 VC-funded firms on the Greentech Media dance floor and cut the head off of a chicken. Wherever the chicken landed - that was a winner. We stopped when we ran out of chickens.

Solar

Brightsource Energy: Big-name investors, a large war chest, a partnership with construction-giant Bechtel, and contracts with large utilities in California, BrightSource plans on building some of the biggest solar thermal plants in the world. Solar thermal? You collect heat from the sun on mirrors and boil water. The Romans could have done it. Now the challenge is getting past further environmental objections to its first 396-megawatt power plant.

Chromasun: Air conditioning accounts for fifty percent of the demand for power during peak periods in California, according to Peter Le Lievre, founder of Chromasun. It's an enormous problem. Chromasun uses mirrors to gather heat. The heat is used to boil a liquid with a refrigerant. The refrigerant boils off and, voila, you have solar air conditioning.

Enphase Energy: This well-funded microinverter innovator has shipped more than 120,000 units for residential and continues to grow. Microinverter? It connects solar panels to homes. Boring, maybe, but a $2 billion market.

eSolar: Fifteen months ago, eSolar was on the ropes. It desperately sought funds to build solar thermal power plants. It then switched strategies and decided to license its technology and sell equipment, leaving the actual building of the power plants to others. Since then, it's signed deals that will lead to gigawatts worth of its solar technology planted in China, India, Africa and the Middle East. Funding from Google, India's Acme Group, Oak Investment Partners and NRG Energy.

Innovalight: It has ink that can create electricity from the sun. Instead of trying to make and sell panels on its own, it licenses the technology to other companies. This could be one of the last novel, "new" type of solar cells to make it out for a while.

Nanosolar: CIGS--or copper, indium, gallium, selenide--solar cells are cheaper than regular solar cells but produce almost as much power. Too bad getting them to cooperate is tougher than organizing a Van Halen reunion. Nanosolar started in 2002 and received an early amount of money from Larry and Sergey at Google. Allegedly, the company is in mass production.

Petra Solar: Not so much a new technology as a new way to install things. Petra Solar and its more than $50 million in VC funds is exploiting an untapped sales channel - solar panels on utility and power poles.

SolarCity: The first company to exploit software to cut the cost of installing solar panels in a big way. One of California's largest installers is expanding nationwide.

Solyndra: Another CIGS company, but with a way out panel. It's tubular shaped. Critics say it won't work, but investors have put nearly a billion into it. The federal government has also given it loans. It hopes to go public soon.

Suniva: Think regular crystalline solar cells on steroids. It has raised $125 million.

SunRun: SunRun sells "home solar as a monthly service." They own the panels, but buy power from them. The company has seen 8 to 10 times growth over last year.

Smart Grid and EV Infrastructure

Arcadian Networks: Arcadian Networks designs and delivers wireless communication networks to connect utilities to all of their equipment in the field. The key here is that Arcadian can provision channels to reduce interference. Better Place: You other love 'em or hate 'em. The company wants to build charging stations for electric cars. And instead of forcing car owners to own the battery, they will own it and swap it out whenever you want it. But is it too weird for consumers and car makers. Investors have put over $500 million into it. The first networks go live in Israel and Denmark next year.

CPower: Demand response is one of the big growth areas of smart grid. Demand response companies curb your air conditioners and pool pumps during hot days when the utilities need power. They can also curb the heater if your power bills are high. Two demand response companies--EnerNoc and Comverge--have already gone public.

Coulomb: Electric charging stations. Like Better Place, but you own your own battery.

EcoLogic Analytics: Radios for the smart grid. A few big utilities have already adopted it. You will never know it's there but it will cut your power bills.

eMeter: It created an application that can absorb data from millions of meters and determine what exactly is going on out there.

Proximetry: Something like a hybrid of eMeter and Arcadian. Dynamic networking and visualization software. Again, you will never know it's there, but it will impact you. Silver Spring Networks: Started by a father and son company, Silver Springs makes radios to connect homes to utilities. It had a near death experience a few years ago, but lately it has landed deals with PG&E and others. An initial public offering may occur soon.

SmartSynch: A start-up out of Mississippi? Yes. It has equipment that does the same things that the equipment that Silver Spring does, but SmartSynch uses the existing cellular networks. The Tennessee Valley Authority selected SmartSynch to serve as the communications backbone in its renewable program.

Tendril Networks: Home area networks. Tendril wants to hook up your fridge, dryer and other appliances to networks to reduce power consumption. They have a stylish home console that tells you how much power you're using. Trilliant: Another competitor to Silver Spring and SmartSynch. For these companies, life is like Top Chef: Utilities audition them all and then give the winner multimillion dollar contracts.

Green Buildings, Lighting

Adura Technologies: Approximately 85 percent of commercial office buildings in the U.S. are illuminated inside with fluorescent tube lights. In the vast majority of cases, these bulbs can't be dimmed or turned off remotely. Only around 1 percent of lights in California office buildings are networked. Adura has created a wireless mesh system that effectively flips the lights off when you're not around and dims them when the sun is out. In a recent test conducted by PG&E, Adura managed to cut the power delivered to lights by 72 percent.

Bridgelux: Bridgelux is focused on lowering the cost of LED-based solid-state lighting to a penny per lumen -- a disruptive price achieved through clever packaging and innovating in the expitaxial processes of building the phosphor-coated film. Early this year, new CEO and ex-Seagate CEO, Bill Watkins took over the reins.

Optimum Energy: Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy in the U.S. and 76 percent of the electricity. Optimum makes software that dynamically controls the chillers - the enormous machines that cool water for air conditioning systems in skyscrapers. According to the company, there are more than 150,000 buildings that can use their product and if the software was used in each one, 75 gigawatts could be taken off the grid. Adobe has installed it.

Recurve: Formerly Sustainable Spaces. They do energy efficiency retrofits. Recurve is assembling a dynamic software package that will allow contractors large and small around the world cut down the time, cost and errors in conducting retrofits. A lot of the employees come from Google--you can't say that about other construction companies. In fact, a number of large contractors are testing it out now. Co-founder Matt Golden is also one of the driving forces behind the $6 billion Cash for Caulkers program recently introduced by Obama.

Redwood Systems: Redwood replaces lighting wires and regular light bulbs with Ethernet cables and LEDs. Suddenly, you have a network in your ceiling that every light, smoke detector and other device can link into.

Serious Materials: Drywall is made by cooking rock at high temperature. Serious replaces that with a process like instant pudding: you just put chemicals in a pan and they gel. It also makes windows that insulate buildings. It won the contract to put windows into the Empire State Building.

Biofuels and Biochemicals

Amyris: Spun out of UC Berkeley, Amyris has genetically modified microbes that eat sugar and secrete medicine that could be used to fight malaria. Tweak the genes a bit and it secretes fuel. It has a deal to start making ethanol in Brazil. LS9: The company's scientists have engineered a strain of e coli with a genome that can convert sugars into a fatty acid methyl ester which is chemically equivalent to California Clean diesel. It's a completely unnatural act but could lead to $45 a barrel biodiesel. It is working with Procter and Gamble on green chemicals and Chevron on fuel. Another highlight: one of the founders is noted UC Berkeley scientist Chris Somerville.

Sapphire Energy: A genetically modified algae. The algae feeds on carbon dioxide and sunlight in ponds and makes a hydrocarbon. A totally unnatural act, and Sapphire isn't there yet, but if it works it could be worth a fortune. But it's a big if. Bill Gates' VC firm invested in it.

Solazyme: To date, the most successful algae firm by far. It feeds algae sugar and then ferments them in beer brewing kettles. The algae can then be made into fuel, food additives and make up supplements. Started by two guys who met on the first day of college (they were roommates), Solazyme has landed deals with Unilever, Chevron and the Department of Defense. Look out for it.

Synthetic Genomics: Started by Craig Venter, the cantankerous scientist that cracked the human genome. Exxon put $300 million into the company.

Batteries, Fuel Cells, Energy Storage

Bloom Energy: Put in gas in one end, get electricity out the other. It's taken ten years and investors have put in $400 million, but Bloom has started shipping. Soon, the data on how well it works will start trickling out.

Deeya Energy: A few years ago, flow batteries were barely understood exotic pieces of equipment. Now at least five start-ups have received funding. Deeya was first. Flow batteries? The electrolyte flows in and out constantly, so the battery never gets un-charged. Utilities and cell phone carriers that need remote power will be the primary customers.

EEStor: This ultracapacitor aspirant makes the list by virtue of the hype and craziness that surrounds it. It says its device can drive an electric car can power an electric car 300 miles and the cars can get recharged in a few minutes. Dreamy? Yes, but is it real?

General Compression. The cheapest way to store energy is to shove air into caves, compress it, and then release it into a turbine when you need power. General Compression, along with SustainX and Isentropic Energy, want to change that by shoving the air into big tanks. You don't have to worry about finding massive caves.

Transportation

Coda Automotive: Later this year, Coda will attempt to market an all-electric, mid-priced sedan to American drivers. The car gets made in China and so does the battery, but a lot of the engineering comes from the U.S. A Chinese bank has agreed to lend $450 million to the battery venture. Investors include Hank "Give me $800 billion, no questions asked" Paulson. BYD counts Warren Buffet as an investor.

Fisker Automotive: The Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid that comes out later this year. It will cost around $90,000 but will be one of the most luxurious and powerful hybrids out there. Hendrik Fisker is a noted car designer who has worked with, among others, Aston Martin.

Tesla Motors: The little EV company that might. Tesla has shipped about 1,000 units of their speedy Roadster model, opened up retail outlets in the U.S. and Europe, The next step is building the all-electric sedan.

Other Energy -- Wind, Nuclear, Cleaner Coal, Geothermal

Laurus Energy: Think underground cigar lighter. Laurus digs a deep hole to apply heat to a buried vein of coal. The coal turns to gas. The gas comes up another vent and is run through a power plant. And a lot of that pollution from coal stays underground. The technology comes originally from the old Soviet Union. It is currently working with a Native American tribe in Alaska to build a UCG vein with a power plant.

NuScale: has a nuclear reactor that could fit in your game room but produce several megawatts of power. Put several together and you have a power plant. The key is that it could be cheaper than regular power plants. From Oregon state. Nordic Windpower: In Berkeley, California by way of Sweden. Nordic has a two-bladed wind turbine. It may not produce as much power as a three-blader but it costs less.

Potter Drilling: Geothermal provided 4.5 percent of California's power in 2007. Potter, founded by oil industry alums, has come up with a way to drill that's five times as fast and less costly. Google.org is one of its investors.

Ze-Gen: Ze-Gen dips organic landfill waste into molten iron and turns it into biogas. Cue the Ozzy.

Water

Oasys: This Yale start-up promotes forward osmosis to take the salt out of seawater. It is less energy intensive than the reverse osmosis technology throughout now in the industry.

Miox: It purifies water with salt. Clorox did this 100 years ago but Miox has made it more efficient. Water companies now won't have to truck chlorine all over the place.

Purfresh: If you drink bottled water or eat bagged organic lettuce, you've encountered Purfresh. The company, backed by Foundation Capital, kills microbes with ozinated water. Growers use it to keep food fresh on the way to store shelves and bottlers use it to sterilize plastic. Orders go up every time an e coli outbreak occurs. Like Serious Materials, Purfresh is expanding from its base to become a full-service water and food company.

Green IT

Hara: Software that tells you how much power your company consumes. impressive list of customers to date, including Coca Cola, News Corp., Akamai, Intuit, Brocade and Safeway.

Sandforce: The company has created a chip that makes it possible for search companies, banks and other companies with large datacenters to swap out storage systems made out of hard drives with drives made of flash memory. Sounds wonky, yes, but the last time we visited they were hiring like crazy.