Business Can Address Global Warming… With a Level Playing Field
Can a cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions harness market forces to address climate change? As I noted on Monday, that’s the thesis of Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn’s new book Earth: The Sequel. To support this claim, Krupp and Horn focus on the innovative ecopreneurial efforts happening around the world in the broad field of clean technology. From thin-film solar to algae biodiesel to an Alaskan ice palace powered (and kept frozen) by geothermal energy, Earth: The Sequel tells the stories of scientists, business people, and outright dreamers experimenting with both current incarnations, and the next generation, of renewable energy technologies. A few of these companies include:
- Australian solar thermal company Ausra
- Solar thin-film company First Solar
- Greenfuel Technologies, a pioneer in algae biofuels
- AquaEnergy Group, the creator of technology for harnessing wave power
Of course, the technologies under development by the companies profiled in Earth: The Sequel aren’t cheap; in almost every case, major investors, such as Vinod Khosla and John Doerr, have backed these start-ups with significant funding. At one level, some might argue that the market is already working: capital is flowing to promising ideas.
