ExclusiveLast month, we began a series of articles looking at progressive issues in the world of equity investment. Our first piece, VCs, Angels and Investing in Women: What Are They Not Thinking?, explored the female business community’s relationship with those groups that play such a major role in driving our economy and business values. What follows is the second article in the series. It focuses on entrepreneurial investment in clean tech and green business.

At the opening of what would become the legendarily (and to some, notoriously) “pro-business” 1980s, President Ronald Reagan took clear and immediate steps to show his commitment to supply-side capitalism. He weakened and busted unions, initiated an unprecedented deregulation movement, and changed tax law to favor corporate interests. He was the champion of “trickle down” economics and, depending whether one sees the man as heroic or demonic, his legacy casts a bright light or dark shadow on us to this day.

In the shadow department, Reagan took an extremely dim view of alternative energy and the budding green movement, in general. This was in part evidenced by his halving the Solar Institute’s budget from 1980 to 1982 and, in 1986, symbolically removing solar panels from the White House.

The panels were clearly a symbolic gesture in the first place. President Jimmy Carter had placed them on the Pennsylvania Avenue mansion in 1979 as a display of American ingenuity and to send a message to that we, as a nation, were committed to exploring environmentally friendly ways to wean ourselves off foreign oil (a national addiction that continues to grip us 30 years later and would, less than a year after the panels went up, play a key role in Carter losing the Presidency). At the installation ceremony, Carter said: “No one can ever embargo the sun or interrupt its delivery to us.”

What was Ronald Reagan saying to the entrepreneurial community when he ripped those solar panels from the roof of the White House – and, through his policies, the nascent alternative energy industry up by its delicate new roots? How did this figure into a free market proposition? Was it a really pro-business? Or simply pro-existing-business?

Better Late than Never

Thirteen years after Ronald Reagan took office, Nancy Floyd got into the green-energy investment business. It was 1993 and it was, as she puts it, “a lonely game.”

Floyd had the chops: In 1982, she founded NFC Energy Corporation, one of the country’s first wind development firms. There she put together more than $30 million in projects and three years later sold the company for a 25-fold return on the original investment. Then, in 1985, she helped found PacTel Spectrum Services which was sold to IBM in 1987.

Yet despite the financial gravitas of the messenger (and a few others like her), the question in the early 1990s remained: when it came to raising green funds, were investors ready to listen?

“At the time, the only market driver was the deregulation of utilities,” remembers Floyd. “There were really no other players or considerations. And though the political winds had changed [with the entrance of the Clinton Administration], our crisis memories are short. OPEC, gas lines, all of it had had been forgotten. Gas was cheap, consumers were apathetic, and the climate crisis was anything but mainstream. Right now, only 50 percent of people believe that [global warming] is real. You can imagine what it was like 20 years ago.”

But Floyd and her small community set out to educate investors as to the possibilities. It was a forward-thinking proposition, but some saw the opportunity (read: a looming crisis) and a discussion around clean tech and “doable” alternative energy began to take shape. This discussion was broad based, and included both environmentalist concerns as well as ROI to be realized by dealing with national and global energy challenges.

Slowly, things began to change, and as we entered the new millennium, says Floyd, forces subtle and less so had brought some hard realities to consumer (and thus investor) consciousness. From Al Gore to Osama bin Laden, climate and cultural realizations had exposed a powerful new marketplace. For investors, an opportunity for “doing well by doing good” had arrived.

“We were [by 2004] and continue to be at a true inflection point,” says Floyd. “Globally, the status quo is untenable. It’s not a spot crisis any more. Big issues have to be resolved and they represent [market] drivers that will play out over decades. It’s not a matter of politics or tree hugging. This is about national and consumer requirements, and business – not on an ideological level, but on a bottom line level.”

Indeed, green investing seems to have come of age. According to Cleantech Group, 13 percent of all venture capital dollars are now going green – making it the largest sector in VC. Comparing just the last quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of this year, investments in clean-tech deals were up 26 percent (54 percent over the same time period last year). Since January, green companies have raised $1.1 billion, and a accompanying surge in green technology jobs appears to be in the wings. Not bad for a down economy – if it wasn’t clear just a few years ago, it’s clear now: this once “progressive” investment arena has achieved lift-off.

For her part, Floyd is no longer a lone wolf. She is founder and Managing Director of Nth Power, a “nothing else but” green tech venture capital firm focused on “energy technology, materials and other related businesses.” The San Francisco-based group currently manages $420 million that’s invested in 58 companies, including “market leaders” in renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.), energy efficiency, smart grid, clean transportation and green buildings.

And while her efforts clearly target the “doing good” part of the equation, “doing well” for her investors remains paramount. “Our investors are big pensions and corporations,” she points out. “’While we’re differentiated as clean tech, consciousness is a small issue. What they want from us is to look at teams, strategies and execution plans. What’s important is money. And it can be made in clean tech.”

The Game Board – Clean Tech and Double Bottom Line

To understand today’s robust, green equity-investment community, it helps to understand two primary investment angles – “clean tech” and “double bottom line.”

Floyd’s Nth Power is a VC firm dedicated to clean tech. “It” believes that “the way society values and uses energy is in the midst of a significant transformation will lead to the widespread adoption of energy technologies and the creation of new companies led by a new breed of energy entrepreneurs. With the growing consumer demand for reliable, digital quality power, questions regarding the viability (and price volatility) of coal, oil and other fossil fuels, and the growing threat of global climate change, the opportunity for technology innovation in the energy sector has never been greater.”

Quite a mission/vision/pitch. But the bottom line is that there are clean tech markets to be tapped and mastered. Aside from those market leaders mentioned earlier, these also include biofuel, conservation, recycling and waste reduction, sustainable agriculture and manufacturing, and much more.

The other camp, or investment approach, is the much-discussed double bottom line (or triple or quadruple or whatever the case may be). This view says that one should measure the pay off of investments in more than one way: hence the – at least – “double.” Cash return on equity remains the driver, of course. But another measurement might be, say, job creation, or literacy or poverty alleviation – or an environmentally positive impact. (We’ll further explore the broader benefits of double bottom line investing in an upcoming article in this series.)

A perfect example of such a VC firm is DBL Investors, which was created from the spin-off of the Bay Area Equity Fund I from JPMorgan in January 2008. The group’s double bottom line strategy is “to invest in companies with the potential do deliver top-tier venture capital returns while working with [its] companies to enable social, environmental and economic improvement in the regions in which they operate.”

One of the firm’s two Managing Partners is Nancy Pfund. Formerly a Managing Director at JP Morgan, her financial background and focus on wealth creation is matched by her commitment to outcomes such as eliminating poverty. She explains her firm’s relationship with green investing: “Our second bottom line is having a positive impact on the communities where our companies end up doing business. That can be a positive environmental impact, and that can be by creating jobs though clean tech. Many of our companies do many positive things, not just one.”

Her partner, Cynthia Ringo, is formerly a Managing Director of VantagePoint Venture Partners. “We play in the venture capital space, which is of course driven by innovation,” she says. “Any venture capitalist is looking for disruptive companies that will displace incumbents and generate wealth. We also happen to be looking at poverty alleviation – sort of giving a lifeline to people. Clean tech is fantastic at that.”

As it was for Floyd, 2004 was an important transition time for Pfund and Ringo’s double bottom line approach. “Our target was $75 million,” says Pfund. “It took us a few years to do it but we did close in 2004. We had lots and lots of investors, including banks, pension funds, foundations, etc. At that time, clean tech was not what it is today, so we didn’t focus our marketing on that, per se, but we did focus on a broader double bottom line. In the end, though, 60 percent of the fund went toward clean tech.”

Says Ringo: “Clean tech is perhaps the most obvious way to accomplish our mission, because we will not take a reduction in a financial return in order to accomplish a social goal, and this concept is well understood in this sector. The business factors related to clean tech are very strong.”

Raising their second fund in 2008 was even tougher, given the economic environment. “But we just had our final close,” says Pfund. “It was for about $140 million, so we almost doubled the size from the first time around. Part of that is because our focus is now on the Western United States and not just Northern California and the other part is out strong track record. But, still, 50 percent of this fund will be green focused.”

The reasons for success in clean tech investment are increasingly consumer driven, and they’re not just about climate change. “Where’s that consumer pull coming from?” asks Ringo. “Maybe it’s because people want to reduce the amount of money that they’re spending on their utilities or on transportation. Maybe they are concerned about the health impact of certain types of products. Looking back [prior to the changes of the early ‘00s], there was not a lot of consumer pull and those that were making demands were called tree-huggers and other derogatory names like that. It was a much smaller demographic than it is today. Now, if you speak to a panel of mothers who range in age from 25 to 45, how high do you think their concerns around issues of health for their family go? Very.”

Where Angels Come to Play

Whether the focus is in pure clean tech or double bottom line, angel investors are, of course, also in the green mix. By definition, however, these have traditionally been individual players in arena, gathering their own contacts and research to make smart decisions. But one group, Northwest Energy Angels, is taking a pooled intelligence approach to mining these rich opportunities.

The Seattle-based non-profit is a membership organization of private investors that only funds clean tech entrepreneurs. They believe that through such investment they can find “the intersection of our desire to make successful angel investments, our personal values and the world we want to leave our children.” The group is comprised of “seasoned angel investors and venture capitalists, as well as new angels learning by participating in a cooperative and supportive environment” that place “a high value on sustainability, the ecosystems that support life on earth and social responsibility.”

Kiki Tidwell is a leading clean tech angel investor who sits on the Northwest Energy Angels board of directors. Last July, she was admitted to the Kauffman Fellows Program, “a highly sought-after two-year program dedicated exclusively to the world of venture capital and the cultivation of new high-technology, high-growth, high-impact companies.”

Her background leaves little question as to why she’s sought out that clean tech sweet spot where making a profit meets making a difference.

“I was in computers back in 1982, teaching people how to use the first mini-computers,” she recalls. “I was right there during the start up of that industry and to me clean tech has the same vibe. We don’t know what will be the next Microsoft but there will be huge winners. On the philanthropy side, I’ve seen how renewable energy and our tremendous natural resources can have a major impact, especially in rural economic development. (Tidwell has lived in Idaho since 1981 and is the president of the Tidwell Idaho Foundation, as well as Idaho Land & Pine, Inc.)

“When I was serving on the board of the Idaho Community Foundation – the Governor’s Council on Families and Children – I saw these tiny farm communities struggling to meet their social service needs and keep their farms going year round, even when the cost of irrigation pumping runs into the millions. Approaches using geothermal, solar, wind and biomass resources are going to be critical to these farm communities.”

Tidwell says angels face a different investment proposition than VC investors. “I think one of the main differences is that because it’s our own money we [angels] are investing, we have the luxury as to invest in the one out of a hundred opportunities that looks good to us. And we don’t have to deploy capital in a ten-year timeframe. That said, the venture capitalist has resources devoted to understanding some of the issues, as well as more time to devote to helping companies post-investment.”

The point of her group, then, is to deal with some of these issues by promoting clean tech and educating angels around some of the science and business issues that are in play.

“By banding together, we can share a lot of information,” she says. “We have speakers who come in to address specific technologies. We have discussion groups between investors about issues in our portfolio companies. We have presenting companies giving us pitches once a month.”

A Leg Up

Whether it’s clean tech or double bottom line investing, VC or angel money, what was once a cutting edge approach to equity investment is now not only big business – it’s big politics and policy, too.

“It’s a very complex sector,” says Floyd. “There are so many considerations given the policy and regulatory overlay. Federally and globally there are a multitude of regulations to be aware of and, of course, there’s a whole world of incentives out there.”

Mastering these polices, regulations and incentives thus becomes a major value-add for groups like Nth Power and DBL. For green investors, working with the likes of Floyd, Pfund and Ringo is like having the combination of a good agent who knows the people you should know, and a good financial specialist who knows how to work every regulation and incentive detail to your monetary advantage.

DBL realized this early on during their first play. “It started with the first fund and actually morphed into a big idea,” says DBL’s Pfund. “We had to think of what’s in it for a company to site in a low-income neighborhood. And so we thought, well, when you go into these targeted economic zones like Richmond or parts of Oakland [California] you can get benefits in terms of tax treatment or low interest loans or even grants at times. We saw that worked very well, so we kind of layered on other ways to navigate that public/private sector interface to the benefit of both parties.”

This approach is particularly important in the green sector. “You are being watched by everyone from the local chapter of the Sierra Club to the mayor to the governor, and they can either help or hurt your business,” explains Pfund. “Reaching out and embracing that is part of what we advocate; we have been able to show how that’s beneficial and companies end up doing it themselves once they get off the ground.”

Shifting Winds

It’s no secret that this thriving arena has been the beneficiary of a type of affirmative action in recent years, with government playing a helpful role and, in some ways, simply getting out of the way. As the nation has warmed to the notion that Washington and State Capital USA do have roles to play in encouraging clean tech and environmental protection, the flames of this investment community are stoked.

Conversely, as seen during the ’80s, a lack of attention and accompanying incentives can allow those flames to all but die out. And it’s also no secret that there’s clearly a different political climate now than there was just two years ago when Barack Obama took office – and, incidentally, replaced the solar panels on the White House.

Yes, enter the Tea Party and science-deniers and the success of campaigns well-financed by a Supreme Court-loosed, corporate political-giving system that’s hostile to those potentially “disruptive” entrepreneurs that DBL’s Ringo speaks about. Add to that a growing public intolerance for government subsidies – at least for those that are on the agenda of media savvy interests – and, well, what’s a well-meaning, robust-but-still-requiring-incentives investment community to do?

“The pitch of the entire discussion [around green tech and the development of green-friendly business] has to change,” says Pfund. “We have to ask, what’s the subject matter that we’re speaking and thinking about when it comes to green investing? Certainly it’s very political and we get huge questions about the role of the Tea Party or the Republican Congress on a lot of the programs that are subsidizing clean tech. And those are good questions that are not easy to answer, so you have to develop a plan B. Clean tech is cleaner and getting cheaper, but it’s not as cheap as coal and natural gas. We just aren’t there yet, so that’s not the story.

“It gets back to this notion of connectedness,” she says. “I made a speech at Stanford [University] recently on large-scale solar in the deserts and [Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan] George Schultz was in the audience. He more or less said ‘I agree with you but you should ditch the environmental argument and just focus on energy security and our over-dependence on foreign oil.’ He’s not alone in saying that.

“Some Republicans, and some Democrats for that matter, hate the clean tech argument. They like the energy security argument, so he is saying face facts. The Republicans are a potent political force, so we need to speak their language. You do whatever you can to get it sold. And you don’t want to be pigeonholed into saying that this makes sense only from a global warming point of view and have people not want to talk to you. You don’t want to sabotage your argument by making it unnecessarily narrow.”

All told, it’s like any effective marketing strategy. You size up your audience and figure out what will be most appealing message. Says Tidwell, who is particularly interested in smart grid technology, about positioning: “This is not about tree hugging. This is about financial gain for investors, consumer benefit and energy security.”

The Color of Money

In the end, it might be counterintuitive to think mindsets that have been saddled with identifiers ranging from “progressive” (the most diplomatic) to “environmentalist wacko” (dismissive) could not only point to money-making propositions, but to the money making propositions that have the power to drive our economy and national security for decades to come.

Looking back, Ronald Reagan’s (and other “pro-business” leaders like him) commitment to existing enterprise at the expense of entrepreneurial activity was shortsighted on its surface. Forward-thinking government support, if not outright incentive is the cornerstone of what it means to be pro-business. 

For now, the Floyds, Pfunds, Ringos and Tidwells of the world go to sleep dreaming about two kinds of green.

“What I wake up thinking about is what any entrepreneur thinks about,” says Floyd. “The challenges faced by individual young companies.”

Image: quinn.anya

QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait till oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” – Thomas Edison

Image: jurvetson

The White House is going solar (again). Two weeks ago, Nancy Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced at a “GreenGov” symposium plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the executive residence next spring. This, they say, is “a project that demonstrates American solar technologies are available, reliable, and ready for installation in homes throughout the country.” Nice. But while the Obama administration’s promotion and support of alternative energy is encouraging, if not exactly aggressive, I’m reading these greening of the White House stories and am not sure whether to be encouraged or depressed. To be sure, this solar panel installation is a good thing. Likewise, it was a good thing four presidencies and three decades ago – when we did it the first time.

Maybe it’s because we’re staring down the barrel, so to speak, of a 1994 redo; a tragic, almost identical backslide to the one that took place on the Hill in the midterms of 15-plus years ago. With this history repeating itself right now, the idea of traction on issues like solar power seems so fleeting. To wit, I bring you Jimmy Carter, who installed similar panels on the mansion to much fanfare in 1979.

It was a move supporting his energy policy, which he discussed in a famous televised speech a few years prior: “Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.” he told us. “It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.”

Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy put an end to that nonsense – immediately and completely. “The budget for the [Solar Energy Research] Institute – which President Jimmy Carter had created to spearhead solar innovation – was slashed [under Reagan] from $124 million in 1980 to $59 million in 1982. Scientists who had left tenured university jobs to work [on the project] were given two weeks’ notice and no severance pay,” Arthur Allen wrote in Mother Jones back in 2000, just months before another Big Oil president would take office. “By the end of 1985, when Congress and the administration allowed tax credits for solar homes to lapse, the dream of a solar era had faded”¦ Solar water heating went from a billion-dollar industry to peanuts overnight; thousands of sun-minded businesses went bankrupt.”

In 1986, when work was done to fix a leaky roof, President Reagan took down the panels. “By ripping the solar thermal (aka solar hot water) panels off the White House roof in the mid 80s to make a “˜statement’ against alternative energy – and for oil – Reagan was instrumental in killing the U.S. solar thermal industry,” says Lisa Margonelli, Director of the Energy Productivity Initiative at the New America Foundation. Sadly, she also informs us that the Virginia company that made the White House panels was out of business by 1991.

So here we are again, more than a quarter of century later, and Obama’s repeat of Carter’s gesture leaves us to wonder where we would be today “if only.” Think about 30 years of intensive, subsidized investment in solar power – or wind, for that matter. How different would our world be today? I’m not just talking about global warming and environmental issues here. I’m talking about jobs. I’m talking about geopolitics. I’m talking about war and peace.

Ironically, as recent as last month, in an effort to avoid comparison to the ill-fated, one-term Carter administration, the Obama White House looked like it was about to balk at installing the panels. So the turnaround (albeit symbolic) this close to election time does indeed show some alternative energy chops.

I hope they’ll still be there in 2015.

Image: Beverly & Pack

If you thought ”Titantic” was a compelling disaster film, try wrapping your brain around the submersion of an entire nation – one of the most breathtaking and remote places on earth. This is the story currently being shot by award-winning documentary filmmaker Jon Shenk. He is trailing President Mohamed Nasheed to deliver this essential an message about how climate change can literally engulf us.

“If we get inundated with water from the effects of too much carbon in the atmosphere, then this planet is going to be a very unpleasant place to be,” says Shenk, who adds that the Maldives struggle packs a human message. “Hundreds of millions of refugees, famine – the U.S. and Europe will not be immune from this. Much of Florida will be underwater. So, I hope this film ends up being a story about people who are doing what they can to help the world.”

Shenk’s company, ActualFilms, has spent the past year interviewing the president who has been shopping for a new country to house the current inhabitants of nearly 1,200 islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. Global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise, and the Maldives is only eight feet above sea level at its highest point. Nasheed isn’t waiting around to sink or swim, and his plight promises to be a fascinating one to observe on the screen.

“I’m not interested in scaring people or overwhelming viewers with science and other information, but I hope people watch the film and see a group of people who are frightened about their future and who are using whatever tools they have at their disposal to prepare themselves,” says Shenk. “Nasheed and Maldivians are an example of people whose nation, way of life, and identity will very likely be erased by climate change.”

Slated for release in May 2010, Dirty Business uncovers the true social and environmental costs of coal power, following visionaries leading the path to an alternative energy future. The series of stories are shot in China, Saskatchewan, Kansas, West Virgina, Nevada and New York, with Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell examining the pitfalls of a continued dependency on 19th century technology linked as the largest single source of greenhouse gases. Along with the families battling the devastation on the front lines, the documentary features industry reps, political leaders, civil servants and environmental experts – all trying to piece the conflict together.

Split Estate warns, “What you don’t know CAN hurt you” and maps a tragedy in the making as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West, deal with their rural homes being threatened by polluted waters left unprotected by the oil and gas industry. The citizens frustrated by the erosion of their civil liberties, communities and health, share their struggle of clashing with interest of an industry that assures residents it is a “good neighbor.” In additional to meeting victims like Laura Amos (the proverbial canary in the coalmine) the documentary features civil servants, industry reps, political leaders and environmental activists, all trying to piece together the difficult conflict of energy versus humanity.

Garbage Dreams, which first aired the end of April, is a coming of age tale of three teenage boys in the world’s largest garbage village of Mokkatam on the outskirts of Cairo – home to 60,000 Zaballeen (Arabic for garbage people). They survive by recycling 80 percent of their trash, and when faced with the threat of the globalization of their trade by disposal companies, the villagers must make hard choices about how to sustain their community. The trailer shows the enormous burden the teenagers “endure” while combing for waste amid crowded rooftops where as geese, chickens and goats grazed on remnants of waste.

As Dreams director Mai Iskander so eloquently describes the children at work: “I filmed them day after day, scavenging for tiny bits of cardboard and plastic, the hard, dangerous and dreary work of carrying and sorting garbage with their bare hands, breathing in the dust of the plastic granulators and fabric grinders, making a tiny living from tiny bits of trash.” Iskander says he hopes the world will realize that it is these dreamers who will become world leaders as they save the Earth while lifting themselves out of poverty. The film has scored 21 awards including Al Gore Reel Current and Humanitas winner of the IDA (International Documentary Association).

“Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance?” Is the haunting question aptly posed in the film, The Age of Stupid, which started out as a documentary but was morphed into a futuristic drama following seven characters and narrated by  Pete Postlethwaite. The award-winning actor plays a shell-shocked lone survivor in the devastated future world of 2055 – reflecting on footage from 2008 and questioning why we sat back instead of moving on climate change.

A co-production between Franny Armstrong, first-time producer Lizzie Gillett and John Battsek’s company, Passion Pictures, was first released in 2009 to rave reviews. The New York Times wrote: “The film is a scorching appeal for humans to avoid knowingly up-ending the earth’s climate, delivered form the vantage point of 2055, when the giant London Eye Ferris wheel looks more like a waterwheel,with its bottom immersed in the Thames, along with much of central London.”

Unlike other green docs in recent years, Stupid uses dramatization to heighten emotions in prompting us to take action while we can. Filmmakers like Shenk believe that going this extra mile works better in getting people – especially Americans consumed with jobs and kids and busy lives – to care about the cause.

“I think if people saw this has a human problem they would be more likely to prioritize the issue,” Shenk finds. “I think much of the written material and documentaries about climate have focused on the facts – and the message communicated is not quite working. Movies can be great for moving hearts. Once you have the heart, the mind follows.”

To learn more about where to view these films and how to host community screenings and events, visit Working Films.

Images: Chi King, Mnn, Age of Stupid, Dirty Business, Split Estate, Haumaldives

This week, developer Jim Gordon received the news he’s dreamed of hearing for nine long years – Cape Wind is a go. The U.S.’s first offshore coastal waters windfarm, comprising 24 square miles of turbines that promise to offset a hundred million gallons of oil every year, will be situated in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod. Not everyone is delighted at the news (NIMBYs included), and local residents are set for more legal wranglings before building work commences. Nevertheless, the success of the Cape Wind proposal is a milestone in America’s clean energy industry and is sure to catalyze other offshore windfarm projects.

So what will our coastlines look like in a future dominated by coast-hugging wind power? We can catch a glimpse by looking at Denmark’s Horns Rev 2 (91 turbines) or the impressively expansive Robin Rigg windfarm in the Solway Firth off the Scottish coast.

How would you feel about such a view in your backyard?

Further reading:

Offshore wind energy: clean, but anything but cheap – National Geographic.

List of proposed offshore wind projects in North America – OffshoreWind.Net.

Researchers study feasibility of giant deep-ocean wind turbine platforms – Physorg.

Image: phault

Projected to launch in Africa mid-summer, the Solar Pebble will quite possibly prove to be a life-changer for rural African communities.

Created by three university students in the UK, the industrial design and sustainable strategist consultancy, Plus Minus Design, will shed light on some of Africa’s most rural and isolated communities. The innovative, and cost effective, solar-powered LED light will hopefully replace most of the kerosene lanterns currently in use by most of these societies.

The light, otherwise known as the Solar Pebble, costs under $3 to manufacture and will stay lit for 22.5 hours when fully charged. In addition to being eco-friendly, replacing the need for kerosene will help reduce fires and respiratory health conditions, as well as save money. Currently, the average family in Malawi spends 20 percent of their income on the fuel.

In addition to lighting, the Solar Pebble will also charge mobile phones and portable radios. While these items are common in the villages, places to charge them are not. By increasing radio power, the design team hopes to increase awareness in the rural communities about HIV/AIDS education through radio programs.

Plus Minus Design was guided by the organization Solar Aid, which works to reduce climate change and poverty around the world by providing sustainable, renewable power to poverty-stricken communities.

The designers believe that design, sustainability and humanitarian efforts can, together, provide a profitable business solution. In an article for the University of Leeds, Adam Robinson one of the founders said, “We believe that sustainability doesn’t need to be a financial burden for companies. It’s an opportunity to increase market share, sales and profits. What we offer is a design service that not only creates new products, but also takes the whole production process into account.”

Editor’s note: Article by Katie Leavitt. Originally published by our friends at Tonic.com. Tonic is a digital media company and news source dedicated to promoting the good that happens each day around the world. Tonic tells the stories of people and organizations who are working to make a difference, by inspiring good in themselves and others. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Tonic on Twitter, too!

At this point it’s fairly common knowledge that coal mining is dangerous and destructive for both miners and the environment. Image-wise, it ranks up there with baby seal clubbing and lead-based pacifiers. Surface mining produces toxic runoff that affects water quality, releases methane from the crust into the atmosphere, and often destroys local flora and fauna. Last week’s explosion at Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 miners was a reminder of the toll that mining takes on human life as well.

All of the miners who died in the explosion worked for Massey Energy, a coal-extracting company with a checkered safety and environmental record. At an anti-union rally last year, Massey CEO Don Blankenship announced that the Mine Safety and Health Administration was “as silly as global warming,” which should give you an idea about his commitment to environmental stewardship. Massey’s Environmental Performance page leads with an announcement in a “36 percent reduction in citations from state regulatory agencies” since 2007. That’s sort of like saying they’ve had a 100 percent reduction in avoidable deaths since last Monday; true, but hardly something to brag about.

Coal is hardly the answer to American dependence on foreign oil – it’s just another dangerous and dirty fossil fuel. Right now it’s generating more than half of the country’s energy, while huge swaths of Tennessee and Virginia are slashed and burned and miners get buried underground. But hey, the last time I checked solar panels never killed anybody.

Image: LHOON

So, Lady Reader, you want to be green. You want to live sustainably, reduce your carbon footprint, minimize the ecological havoc your lifestyle is wreaking on the planet and grow herbs on your windowsill. Fabulous. But you’re no dumpster-diving freegan. You don’t want to stop wearing makeup and start composting your tampons. You’re an American: you don’t just want to look good, you want to look good forever and ever.

Your (fashion-forward) clothes are sustainably made. Your skin and haircare products are as pure and wholesome as Justin Bieber’s smile. It’s time to tackle the final frontier and try some eco-friendly plastic surgery. Letting time take its toll on the human frame may be “ecologically sound” and “part of the natural life cycle” but it’s also ugly and full of neck flap. So what’s a eco- and body-image-conscious woman to do?

The Japanese, always at the forefront of mind-bendingly terrifying advances in science and medicine, recently pioneered a “natural breast implant” made from human fat and stem cells instead of the usual grab-bag of PVC, platinum and other chemicals. There are already a handful of American surgeons performing the procedure (as seen in Life & Style Magazine!).

But the real prize has to go to Dr. Craig Alan Bittner, Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and former liposuctionist to the stars, for his ingenious solution to the problem of what to do with all that leftover celebrity fat. Normally, the fat removed by liposuction is incinerated or otherwise disposed of a fairly carbon-intensive process. The ingenious doctor, rather than waste such a perfectly good resource, claimed to have converted his car to run on “lipodiesel.” Clean, efficient, eco-friendly human fat. And you were proud of yourself for driving a hybrid. He’s also packed up shop and moved to South America after a slew of lawsuits and malpractice accusations, where he’s presumably injecting jaguars with free-range Botox. It’s a brave new world. Why not try a brave new you?

ConspiracyofHappiness

Perhaps the luck of the Irish will help make green dreams come true when it comes to the country’s goal to shift away from fossil fuels. Situated at the end of the supply chain and currently 90 percent dependent on imported oil, Ireland hopes to get 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 – far exceeding the EU’s target of 16 percent.

But luck might not be necessary in a nation driven by an urgent need for employment. Ireland sees its financial difficulties and depressed economy not as a hurdle to going green, but a major motivator. Switching to wind power and other renewables would not only provide thousands of jobs, but stabilize dramatic swings in oil and gas prices. Additionally, Ireland’s prospects are looking far sunnier than its trademark misty gray skies.

“We have doubled our renewable energy. We can double it and double it again,” says Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s minister for communications, energy and natural resources. “It is the perfect answer to the recessionary blues.”

Of course, it’s not as simple as throwing up some wind turbines and calling it a day. Just as it is here in America, one of the biggest obstacles is an aging electrical grid – but a grid interconnector directly from Ireland to Britain is currently being built, and with an energy minister who’s devoted to renewables, more improvements are sure to come.

What’s the biggest thing this island nation has going for it? Shoreline, and lots of it. Ireland has enough land and ocean space to provide its own wind power and even have enough to export to other countries. Five offshore wind farm projects are in the pipeline and marine energy is a possibility in the future.

Ireland is looking beyond the estimated $1.33 billion price tag, seeing it as an investment in the future – for both its people and the environment. Perhaps we should sit back and take some notes.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Energy, that is. With few energy resources of its own, Japan is literally reaching for the stars in its attempt to turn unlimited clean energy into reality by 2030.

The nation’s plan, known as the Space Solar Power System (SSPS), involves positioning huge, floating photovoltaic dishes to hover in the geostationary orbit just outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

These photovoltaic dishes would harvest the solar energy that, at this level, is at least five times stronger than on earth and beam it down to earth through lasers and microwaves. On earth, gigantic antennae, located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs, would collect and store the solar energy.

This controversial plan sounds like something you’d only find in a Sci-Fi novel.

But the Japanese government thinks it has huge potential. To that end, it has established the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer (USEF), a consortium of companies (including Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp) and scientists who will be working on finding ways of turning the SSPS into reality.

Image: Velo Steve