Wind power at a tiny fishermen island in Pakistan

Is this the beginning of a “Butterfly effect“?

Will small steps like this make a lasting difference in how communities view their energy security and usage? I have often wondered why communities in cities, towns and villages that have rampant power shortages don;t come together and install their own distributed power generation systems. Instalation of wind turbines, distributed solar, or even large diesel generators would be so much more efficient (and in the long term cost-effective) than the UPS/small gen-set system that is currently prevalent.

In the 80’s, when security was abysmal in cities, communities (mohallas) came together to install gates, hire their own guards, and created locally/self-protected neighborhoods. That was a good example of a community banding together for something more substantial than just an annual Haleem meal cookout.

Let’s hope Pakistanis will learn a lesson from these fishermen. For more details, click here:

KHAROCHHAN, Pakistan: A tiny island of fishermen is light years ahead of the rest of Pakistan, powering homes and businesses with wind turbines – protecting the environment and improving the quality of life.

The government may lack the cash to harness hydro, wind and solar resources on a large scale in the electricity-starved country but charities are lighting the way forward by putting wind power to work in remote villages.

…

Lying 150 kilometers due south of Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, Kharochhan is an island of thatched homes where fishermen scrape by on $75 a month and never dreamed of having electricity.

Khosla is right. Hype around cleantech created by those who don’t get it.

Agree with Vinod. Hype has not helped cleantech. We need people who understand technology, get the long-term development cycle in clean technologies, and understand the impact of disruptive technology on society.

Khosla, a legendary venture capitalist and one of the most active investors in cleantech through his firm Khosla Ventures, said some of the books that have helped generate buzz were “probably written by English majors who could not get a real job,” he said onstage at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford University.

Read more here on WSJ Blogs.

Obama’s laser sharp focus on energy…carbon cap within 1 year?

Last night I chose to listen to Obama rather than join a conference with a few lawyers discussing international company registration procedures. I am told (by the lawyers themselves) that I made a wise decision….

…I was elated to see Obama deliver a powerful speech. His body language and his verbage were refreshing and motivating. and that was his most important goal – to rise the morale of a nation that is heavily snowed under in these unprecedented economic times.

…I was leisurely listening to his speech when he said something that surprised me and made me sit up and listen the rest of his speech even more attentively. I asked my wife “Did I just hear him say he wants a carbon cap legislation within 1 year”. Well, she had not paid attention, so I didn’t get the confirmation but this morning when I read the transcript, it turned out to be true. He has made energy one of his top three priorities in the economic recovery program and has placed carbon cap legislation squarely in the middle of it. This could be big…not just for clean energy development in the USA, but also for the rest of the world to observe if the USA would indeed lead the world on this issue.

Here is the section of Obama’s first speech to the congress that focused on energy:

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21^st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders—and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history—an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

–President Barak Obama, February 24, 2009

Energy is where the action is at…

If you were still wondering why so many VCs are flocking to the energy sector, here is one quick reason why: Energy is where the action is at…, no not just in the financial markets (where oil has traded between $39 and $147 all in the same year!), but importantly in the academic world where transformative discoveries are being made at a very rapid pace. MIT is one of the most prestigious engineering universities, and it is quite telling that many of its most prominent discoveries of last year were related to the energy and cleantech sector.

Check this out from MIT News:

MIT discoveries top magazine’s list of year’s best

December 16, 2008

Five discoveries from MIT have been named to Discover Magazine’s Top 100 Stories of 2008. The list appears in the magazine’s December issue.

Coming in at #21 is Professor Daniel Nocera’s discovery of a simple, inexpensive method to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which can be stored to power a fuel cell. The process, reported in Science in August, could lead to a practical way to store solar energy for use when the sun is not shining.

Biofuels/biochemicals, automotive, Green Tie Gala

A few articles that focused on some of the sectors that I am looking at these days. Check them out…

Xconomy:
Never Mind That Bailout: Venture Funding for Auto Innovation Accelerates As Startups Race to Leave Detroit in its Own Dust by Bruce Bigelow
Plunging Oil Prices Require Alternative Fuel Startups to Take a Long View by Bruce Bigelow

C|NET
Eyes turn to auto start-ups’ funding, aid requests by Martin LaMonica

with Governor Duval Patrick (MA) at the annual NECEC Gala

And finally, a nod of thanks to the New England Clean Energy Council for inviting me to their first annual Green Tie Gala. It was a great event, a celebration of the ‘energy’ present in the New England area to promote and commercialize clean energy technologies. New England has certainly become the hot bed of cleantech startups, but more importantly, the Massachusetts government has shown its leadeship by staying way ahead of the everyone else in sponsoring, promoting and providing support to clean energyand energy efficency initiatives in the region.  Kudos to Nick D’Arbeloff, Trish Fields,  and the rest of the NECEC team.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

Under its new President, Susan Hockfield, MIT has taken a leadership role in the discussions regarding science, technology, business, entrepreneurship and policy in energy and the environment. Here is an op-ed from her in today’s Boston Globe. I look forward to attending the MIT Energy Conference this coming weekend. I invite you to visit GEO2’s booth on the friday night’s Energy Showcase.

MIT’s burgeoning role in the green movement

by Susan Hockfield

April 7, 2008

BOSTON MAGAZINE has ranked MIT’s work on energy and the environment as No. 2 on its list of “61 Best New Things About Boston.” It’s unusual praise for MIT; our research is more often noticed in academic journals. But the magazine’s listing says something important: people beyond the university research community and the green movement are eager for answers to our energy and environmental challenges.

The challenges are many. How do we meet the aspirations of people around the world for a healthy, comfortable, productive life, without irreparably damaging the planet? How will we in the developed world preserve our quality of life, while shifting to renewable technologies? At the same time, how do we enable the developing world to reach a standard of living that grants access to modern comforts? How, for example, will we get electricity to the 1 billion people who don’t yet have it?

At MIT we are inventing real energy and climate solutions – from large-scale technologies that capture carbon emissions and dramatic new ways to tap deep geothermal energy, to smaller-scale ideas such as lithium-ion batteries to revolutionize the electric car and new materials that could make solar energy as cheap and dependable as coal.