the greener side

Green is good. Green is healthy.

So take that, Gordon Gekko--er, Ivan Boesky. I poked around the Cleantech Forum a bit this week. Lots of gray and navy blue suits there, with few of the jeans-and-polos found at dot-com dealmaking events, but it was relatively laid back nevertheless when you consider all the money-matchmaking involved. The $3.6 billion poured into the emerging clean tech sector in 2006 is twice the 2004 amount for North America and Europe. There are billions and billions of dollars just waiting to anoint the next clean, green, money-making machine. Startup CEOs and scientists were snapping  wishbones, crossing fingers, trading cards.

Want to gobble up clean stocks? Be on the lookout for the IPO of some yet-unpopular, cleantech cousin of Google! But which company will it be? One that can print thin-film solar panels? A large-scale  maker of biofuel blends? A startup that's making LED bulbs cheaper?

I wandered around some booths and learned about Group IV Semiconductor, backed by $10 million and working to make silicon-based, energy-efficient LED lightbulbs that might sell for a mere $3 a pop by 2010. Cheaper, white LED bulbs could be the holy grail of bright, low-energy lighting. SpringStar is working to get rid of things that bug you without pesticides with gizmos that mimic insects' mating calls and perfumes. However, there's no bedbug treatment yet because mimicking their stinky pheromones would make your boudoir smell pretty skanky. Engineers at Lawrence Berkeley Labs are building air quality sensors that they hope they can shrink to fit in or on cell phones. Here's more show-and-tell.

In the adjoining rooms, each panel seemed to be running nearly an hour late. At a talk about corporate market drivers, Ali Iz of G.E. said his company has been snapping up great money-making green businesses, but it needs to figure out how to support innovation that's not yet profitable without spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

PG&E, the villain of Erin Brokovich, has greened nearly every bus station in San Francisco with ads for its eco-friendly efforts in recent months. During the Cleantech Forum, PG&E let loose that it's donating a year of office space to hot startups Adura Technologies (makes wireless lighting sensors) and GreenVolts (working on cheaper, more concentrated solar panels). I planned to make it to the mayor's announcement about launching a cleantech S.F. business campus near the former PG&E plant, but I was interrupted by friends who were wine tasting a block away. Cabbing it home two champagne flutes later, there was no hybrid to flag down. But that could change soon too.

What's next? If you're dying to get rich off of companies built to keep the planet from dying, then scroll down and look in the left column for my updated "Green Money" links of lots of cleantech-related blogs. The tickers at Sustainable Business can be useful too.

 

Electric, green cars generating buzz

I first saw real, live electric cars at the San Francisco Solar Homes tour about a year ago, then again in January at the ZAP display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (pictures here), and then ran into another ZAP booth at the Maker Faire a few months ago. But my hands were too full then to write about them. Lazy.

Thanks to "Who Killed the Electric Car?" as well as pricey oil and the end of the world as we know it supposedly being nigh, Zero Air Pollution (ZAP) vehicles are in high demand. They're cute and zippy, but you can only drive the Xebra about 40mph for 40 miles before needing to plug it in again. And as you can glean from the photos, the interior is less than luxurious--more along the lines of a Yugo. Take heart, however; the plastic seat coverings are removable and were probably for display only. I'm 5' 5.5" and fit comfortably in the front, though you might feel cramped if you're taller. But who needs leg room and speed when you're just running errands around town?

In San Francisco, at least, a dawdling Xebra might be perfect. I've come to believe that so many drivers here are simply too stoned to enter the freeway on-ramp without first pausing to take in the view and breathe in that ominpresent scent of non-native eucalyptus. This is frustrating to a native of Chicago, where we drive (yes, defensively) as if steering a tommy gun. And have patience; charging the Xebra takes about six hours. Once you're rolling, though, it only winds up costing a couple of pennies per mile worth of electricity.

The Santa Rosa-based ZAP company sells a whole line of two, three and four-wheeled electric cars, scooters, bikes, and ATVs, many of which Brazilian drivers have enjoyed for some time. An ethanol car is planned for next year. ZAP owns the U.S. rights to distribute Smart cars, which you may have snapped a photo of on some European vacation.

You can buy a ZAP Xebra for around $10,000 from a handful of U.S. dealerships in Santa Rosa, CA; Elizabeth, CO; Salem, OR; Mesa, AZ; Reno, NV; Exeter, NH; Vandergrift, PA; Kirkland and Fife, WA; and West Palm Beach, FL. But expect a wait list.  The company is enjoying record sales, which is just about 300 cars, yet for now it's operating at a loss.

As for higher-end electric autos, the first batch of electric Tesla sports cars, which cost close to six figures each, have already sold out. See a slideshow of ZAP cars here, and check out vintage tiny cars at the Microcar Museum.

If you're partial to your old VW van and live in Northern California, you can contact Larry to help you convert the beast to a plug-in electric engine for around $4,000. Never mind, I misplaced his e-mail. Let me know if you find it.

tags: green cars electric cars zap

Sustainability, classified

Some accuse Craigslist of wiping out the income for struggling independent newspapers. But Craigslist's free classified ads have more fans than haters. Where else can you find a sweet apartment and furnish it for free in an afternoon? Apartment listings and recycled furniture are merely the point of entry for the no-frills, freaks-friendly community site. Craigslist has become a global phenomenon--hooked people up with homes, husbands, and heartbreaks; and inspired a movie that will show you so I don't have to describe what may be your own lifestyle, especially if you're a green-minded city-dweller.

Maybe you tap into Craigslist to find raw foodists to cart off your dusty food dehydrator, or to locate a stuck-in-the-90s taker for those shameful Girbauds, without lumping your junk into landfills. You might rely on the site to trade up, like founder Craig himself did, from some old Saturn to an eco-friendlier Prius. Of course it's where I met and then parted with a biodiesel 1981 Mercedes 300D (RIP).

Like eBay or the newer Freecycle, Craigslist can help you live a less wasteful lifestyle outside of the mall matrix. Not only that, but as an empire of 21 employees, Craigslist itself is a sustainable enterprise.  Craig expresses no desire to cash in on the multimillions he could earn in days by popping up a few text ads and he seems driven by altriusm, according to this News.com interview.

tags: craigslist

Check, please: what do we owe nature?

Never mind how polluted it might be, at least the air we breathe is still free. But what if you had to pay for it--and all the other essential freebies that nature provides? Columbia University Ecology Prof. Shahid Naheem imagines:

Our most vital utilities and services — such as the provisioning of breathable air, potable water, fertile soils, productive fisheries, equitable climate, environmental security, and much more — are all provided for us by millions of species that work around the clock.
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And the plants, animals, and microorganisms that provide these services have never sent us a bill.
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Nine years ago, I took part in a study that estimated nature’s services as worth in the neighborhood of 33 trillion dollars a year.  Translate that into modern currency, divide by the 6.5 billion people estimated to currently inhabit the Earth, and every man, woman, and child would get a bill for about $500 each month. 

If we adjust payments so that the biggest users, say the wealthiest nations, pay the most, then the typical bill for a family of 4 in the United States would be more like $13,000 per month. 

Such back-of-the-envelope calculations are wacky, to be sure, but they do drive home the message – biodiversity does a lot for us and asks for nothing in return.

 

Update: Jeff at Sustainablog points to a new study that puts a price tag on natural treasures ($10K for a coral reef, anyone?), and he points out: "If you're feeling a little squeamish about such an exercise, keep in mind that ecosystems come out on top in a cost-benefit analysis."

Gambling on a green future

Eyeing a sustainable future and willing to bet on it? If green mutual funds aren't slow enough for you, then dig up $200 and place a Long Bet. This project of the Long Now Foundation, makers of the 10,000 year clock, lets you gamble online with noted geniuses and famous futurists.

On the dim side, today's featured wager, placed by knighted astrophysicist Martin Rees, foresees that one event of bioterror or bioerror (rising "from inadvertance rather than evil intent") will wipe out a million souls by 2020. So far the odds are 50/50--the same odds Rees gives our species for lasting another century.

Other predictions are on the brighter side: Also within 14 years, could solar energy be as cheap as fossil fuels? Will the average household keep a room to make a self-sustaining water supply? Will we make huge strides toward clean energy within a decade? And when will people stop denying global warming? To add your wager to the public debate, just don't expect to get your money back; all proceeds will go to charity.

Greener credit: priceless

Plastic is poison in so many ways. Take credit cards; it's not that they'd suddenly be eco-friendly if they were made of kenaf. Instead, credit cards seduce us to live unsustainably. One day you're signing up on campus to get a free teddy bear (ugh--mine wears a bomber jacket and goggles), the next thing you know you're swimming with dolphins in Cancun on a trip that you'll be paying off as a grandparent--if you can afford to have a family in the first place.

Your fault for spending as if MTV cared to film your life. Yet creditors sneer, gladly handing you a fatter line of borrowed money than you can possibly snort. They like you cracked out on consumer debt better than when you soberly pay them back. That's just their business, sort of like the paparazzi and Whitney Houston.

On top of that, your personally unsustainable lifestyle has global ramifications. The road to easy credit is littered with landfills. When you instantly gratify a whim by charging the latest, most incredibly shrinking iPod or whatever, you feed the myth that newness is better than something borrowed or mended. The annoying cycle of mass consumption that we all bitch about but participate in keeps spinning like some fractal screensaver in a stoner's dorm room.

You spend more because you can, you save less because you can't imagine the future, and soon there's less cash in your kitty. You may no longer use credit cards just to keep up with the Joneses; falling incomes and rising debt mean that you're charging basics like gas, health care, and groceries. Creditors often gouge the neediest consumers with outlandish interest rates, trapping them in this cycle.

The more debt you hold onto, the more that Visa, Mastercard, and friends profit. The stronger creditors are, the more power they have to push people around. After decades of handshaking in D.C., creditors uncorked the Veuve last October when a bankruptcy law started making it harder for you to get a clean slate if your finances fall apart (that law might be backfiring on them). And credit card companies generally support politicians with an atrocious disregard for ecological and social woes.

What's my point? What can you do to escape consumer madness, beyond joining the Compact, observing Buy Nothing Day, or following tips from blogs such Frugal for Life? To start, ignore the zero-percent bait and just say no if you're about to get a new credit card--even one that donates to a needy cause. If you're already hooked, take out a more sustainable loan and pay it off. I don't mean a credit card, line of credit, mortgage, or family handout. Instead, consider Prosper or Zopa--peer-to-peer credit services that take banks out of the picture. You already use the web to trade music and movies, so it naturally follows that someone would turn the net into a P2P lending system.

The concept is sort of like Modest Needs, which lets you donate to or receive life-saving cash from willing strangers. Prosper and Zopa are even more like Kiva--which lets you lend to microbusinesses in the developing world--except that they serve the "first world." Zopa is U.K.-only but plans to come to the U.S. too.
Lots of Prosper borrowers are looking for help in paying off high interest rate credit cards. Others want to finance big expenses such as yanking 21 bad teeth, weight loss surgery, or a small business upgrade. These aren't shameless beggars like Save Karyn; Prosper borrowers join for free but must pay back lenders with interest. Feeling generous? You can loan to people in $50 increments; the more small loans you make, the more likely you are to get the money back.

Prosper encourages borrowers to join one of its groups, which can add street cred to a credit score. You can start your own group or join one of the nearly 600 clusters already created by veterans, doctors, college alumni, green-minded people, etc. Prosper and Zopa provide a democratic, off-the-grid alternative to the consumer credit matrix, and have the potential to change the way people borrow and dole out dollars. I'm curious to see how these services will develop, and if imitators will crop up. Maybe social networking sites will build a microlending feature into their community networks.

technorati tags: money credit sustainability environment finance green

Zap your junk mail

Each week I get a pile of snailmail credit card offers that would start at zero percent for a few months before trapping me in high-interest-rate hell. I've wanted for a long time to tell these companies to stop wasting paper and harassing me at  home. Lo and behold, Urban Eco Inc. shows how. Visit Opt Out Prescreen, run by the major consumer credit reporting companies, and fill out your name, social security number, and birthday. Pick whether you want to get off of those credit card and insurance junk mail lists either forever or for half a decade. Masochists can "opt in" to offers. Why didn't I find this sooner?

Anti-shopaholics get global attention

We're not the only ones jawing about the Compacters, San Franciscans who have made a vow of shopping via resale or not at all. The concept is getting a response around the world that some of the group's charter members find "insane." Some  responses are positive, others constructive criticism, but then there's the vitriol. What's the big deal about a few people opting not to buy shiny new things? The SF Chronicle followed up last week:

More than 350 people have joined the Compact, and chapters are appearing in virtually every U.S. city, as well as London, Sydney, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Toronto, Edmonton, New Zealand, Spain, Romania and other international locales.
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But, like all instant celebrities, the Compact has been subjected to ridicule and criticism as well. There is even an anti-Compact group that has sprung up on an Internet news and discussion site.

The original Compacters aren't sure what to make of the backlash. They were never out to convert anyone, start a political movement or inflict dogma on anyone else. The intention was merely to "reduce the impact of consumer culture in our lives" in a light-hearted and social manner.

CES trumpets eWaste recycling

Like I promised, I did go to Green Saturday at CES (but only after staggering halfway back to the hotel twice before committing); it’s just taken me a while to get over the flu to tell you about it. The hour-long presentation awarded tech companies for their efforts to recycle e-waste. The Environmental Protection Agency bragged about its new Plug-In to e-Cycling Program, which aims to reduce the two million tons of e-waste trashed each year by sponsoring trade-in events with makers and sellers of electronics. The EPA’s trying to create a certification program for recycling PCs, monitors, keyboards, TVs, DVD players and VCRs, cell phones, and so on. Vendors in the room also got props for removing lead and other heavy metals from circuit boards, making flame retardants without halogen, and reducing the amount of waste packaging.

“Anybody who walks through this exhibition hall will realize that we’re making real progress,” said EPA Assistant Administrator Tom Dunne. I sort of beg to differ, but maybe I'm expecting the future to arrive in an unrealistic lightning flash.

CES 2006: the greenest gadget show yet?

Next week I'll find out just how comfortable my dorky Earth shoes really are at the Consumer Electronics Show, the world's most sprawling orgy of all things new and digital in the planet's capital of excess and unsustainability, Las Vegas. CES will devote a full day to clean technology, which I missed in the past. Green Saturday "will focus on the consumer electronics industry's efforts in ecodesign, recycling and reuse." A panel on electronic waste a day earlier will feature speakers from the EPA, Sony, Best Buy, and Scientific American. Products launched at CES in the past included the VCR, CD player, camcorder, plasma TV, HDTV, and Xbox. Will any eco-friendly technologies launch next? Even if so, I'll be on the lookout for how America's largest tradeshow handles its own phenomenal amount of waste. Thousands of exhibitors from hundreds of countries will likely dismantle and discard their display booths, stages, and press kits as usual. How much recycling will happen? I'll try to keep you posted.