Green Options

Around 1300 c.e. the Yao and Zhuang people of Guangdong Province in Southern China faced a serious problem.  In the Longsheng area there was a growing population, but their mountainous surroundings gave them very little land that could be used for farming.  They needed more food and so they turned to technology for the solution.  What they did was to terrace their mountainsides even up to slopes of 45%. I’m sure that the method was perfected over the 400 years of building.  What they were able to do is still an impressive example of civil engineering, even today.  Using stones and mud they built terrace walls that stand firm even with the torrential downpours that are common in the area.  They used bamboo piping to distribute water to each paddy - some so narrow that they only have room for two rows of rice.  This production system has remained productive for centuries when many other contemporary farming societies around the world simply depleted one area and moved on to the next.  These terraces are called Longji, or the ”Dragon’s Spine” and they now extend over 66 square kilometers.  They are both beautiful and inspiring.

Welcome to another episode of “If college students can do it, why can’t the rest of the world figure it out too?”

An enterprising and organized group of undergraduate and graduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have fitted an old sail boat with a spiffy set of hydrogen fuel cells and plan to run the boat from Manhattan to upstate New York later this month in a “green power” tour of sorts.

I love it when college students do this kind of stuff. Seriously. If I could have stayed in college forever, I would have. Believe me, I tried.

In yesterday’s Disruptive Innovation panel at SoCap09 “Three Successful Approaches to Scaling Impact”, Kevin Jones moderated a panel of three very different but equally disruptive business models. Instead of establishing a nonprofit organization to increase computer access around the world, founder Mark Beckford explained that NComputing is a for-profit company leveraging existing distributing channels and repair services in developing countries. Their hardware and software solution, which they call “the $70 PC”, can actually yield more margin and profit for distributors than more expensive computers with high-cost distribution networks.

NComputing is also using a technical solution to green PC use. With distributed computing, nComputing systems draw less than five watts, using 90% less energy than a typical PC, and can be run by solar power or a battery.

Sungeeta Chowdry of the Acumen Fund spoke about the Ripple Effect Project, their collaboration with IDEO (represented by Sally Madsen) to create solutions for customer-centered, sustainable and affordable delivery of water.

They brought together twenty organizations (both for-profit and nonprofit) on the ground in India and East Africa, in addition to the nonprofit Gates foundation, the private company IDEO and the Acumen social venture fund, for a complex cross-sector collaboration. IDEO led a human-centered design process, which means rapid prototyping, speaking to potential users immediately, iterating while continuing to listen, and coming up with a fairly quick solution. The resulting projects are commercial water sales operations, with some unusual aspects such as government ownership of the land and/or equipment in some places.

So why is water sales a more effective and scalable solution than donated aid? Some of the answers are compliance and aligning incentives. Madsen and Chowdry explained that people aren’t always able to make the best health decisions. Using a standard business practice of customer segmentation, IDEO put together a set of behavior profiles, so on-the-ground organizations could talk about more than health, such as by emphasizing the status of buying clean water or following  government direction.

I’ve heard this conversation a number of times at the small-to-medium sized enterprises (SME) I work with:

Green Vendor: “So Mr. CEO, how many of my carbon neutral, biodegradable, BPA-free whoozamacallits would you like to purchase?”

After a  White House announcement last April regarding the provision of $777 million to fund 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC’s) advancing innovation in clean energy technology, the Department of Energy (DOE) recognized the completion of the funding process last Thursday. The investment represents a much-needed show of governmental support for the research and development of the numerous energy breakthroughs necessary to transition the U.S from dirty to clean energy.

Among the list of 46, 31 centers are affiliated with universities, twelve are DOE national laboratories, two are non-profit organizations, and one is a corporate research laboratory. In total, the DOE has awarded $377 million in funding this year, with $277 million coming from the economic stimulus package (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -ARRA) and the additional $100 million provided by the DOE’s FY2009 budget.

Last Wednesday, the Senate passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3183), appropriating $34.3 billion in energy spending for FY2010. Although the bill made good on Obama’s campaign promise to shut down Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility and funds numerous Army Corps of Engineers’ water initiatives, the bill is shockingly silent with regard to Obama’s energy education program RE-ENERGYSE.

A recent article by TIME’s Bryan Walsh also calls attention to Congress’s stinginess with Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu’s proposed “energy innovation hubs,” to which the House appropriated $35 million of $280 million he suggested. This allotment is enough to pay for one hub, not the eight R&D centers called for in Chu’s proposal.

Two Kenyan students have invented a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their phones as they pedal.

Deemed a “dynamo-powered smart charger”, the device should make it more economical for the 17.5 million Kenyans who use mobile phones to charge them. Even more impressive, the environmentally-friendly phone charger was originally built from scraps retrieved from a junkyard.

A Spanish company called Turtle Airships is working on plans to build a luxurious solar-powered blimp which can take passengers from New York to Paris.

Perhaps the only thing cooler than being powered by lightweight photovoltaic cells, this airship is also designed to rest on land or water.

The Dilemmas Project, a multi-media platform for engaging citizen participation around the ongoing dilemmas ordinary people are facing every day.

Smart social entrepreneurs and their like-minded investors would be smart to think about the breadth of opportunities that a cell phone creates for citizens of emerging markets.

The 2009 Sustainability Conference kicked off last night in Monterey, CA with opening remarks from among others, Owen Rogers, Partner and Experience Design Lead of IDEO.   A self-described non-expert in sustainability none-the-less first laid out five principals on branding then asked whether sustainability could be a brand?

Whether there is sound reasoning or “the answer” to how brands can change the world to positive effect is not the point.  Owen, [...]