Sustainable energy, check; low emissions, check; hundreds of rows of parked cars, huh?

If you haven’t already heard of Abengoa, which is based in Seville, southern Spain, you soon will: it’s coming to the U.S. in a big way. The multinational tech company is currently building two major solar thermal power stations, both due for completion in 2013. One of these, Solana in Arizona, will be the largest of its kind in the world with a stratospheric budget of $2 billion. With an output of 280MW, it will be able to power 70,000 homes. It will also give a massive jolt to the local economy, and spur some new office space.

As you know, we love poking our heads into OPC (Other People’s Cubicles). What we’ve discovered is that high-tech companies these days tend to lead the way in offering quirky, stimulating workplaces for their employees. While the headquarters of this technology company gets the thumbs up in terms of sustainability, it’s not as creative as you’d expect for a modern, cutting-edge company. It also has some unexpectedly backwards policies in terms of fume-spewing and clock-watching.

Abengoa’s Campus Palmas Altas (meaning: Tall Palms) makes their own electricity using a variety of methods, including photo-voltaic panels, parabolic troughs, and a tri-generation plant (which produces electricity, heat and cold). In all, they produce 70% of the energy they consume. Impressive – this is 164,000 square feet of offices we’re talking about.

Their premises – seven low-rise blocks – are cooled using vigas frias (chilled beams), metal pipes that run through the ceiling, filled with cold water. The temperature of the liquid adjusts to the air, keeping the 2,500 boffins at a comfortable, constant temperature. That is no mean feat in Seville, where summer temperatures often top 115 degrees.

Other ways of dealing with the fierce Andalucian sun include self-shading. The buildings are arranged in a linear layout so that each block protects the next from those rays. But they make the most of natural lighting, thanks to glass walls; there are also horizontal shades, and some buildings have huge fixed-position glass screens, which cut the glare by up to 40%.

Such is the sustainable nature of this complex that’s been certified as LEED Platinum, the first to earn this distinction in Europe. It also won the Excellence in Design Award from the American Institute of Architects’ UK Chapter.

However, some aspects of the campus strike us as strange, from the uninspiring buildings to the wholly un-ecological transport situation. Unnerving, too: the monitoring of employees’ movements. I’m talking, spooky, Big Brother-type monitoring.

In terms of the building’s design, as award-winning and sustainable as it may be, it leans towards the prosaic rather than the stunningly visual. Architect Richard Rogers, Pritzker Prize winner, maverick designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and, closer to home, World Trade Center Tower 3, says the scheme “creates a new model for the business park, one that is… more compact and urban than conventional business parks”.

Moreover, since Abengoa required such a large site, the offices are located in a dead area next to a freeway. As such, public transport is virtually non-existent thus creating a major sticking point. How is that such an ostensibly green company could end up with a gargantuan car parking area sprawled out next to it? It’s as big as the campus itself and a visible reminder of polluting emissions and personal accountability thereof.

The spaces closest to the offices (under them, in fact) are for pregnant women, those with young children at the on-site nursery (highly innovative in backwards southern Spain), and those with mobility issues. Social awareness 10 points; pollution control, 0 points.

To be fair, the company is trying to implement various alternative transport ideas – cycle lanes, carpooling, free shuttle buses – but for a visitor, the first impression of this company, whose motto is “innovative technology for sustainability,” smacks of, “we heart fossil fuels.”

With an on-site gym and restaurants, Abengoa is doing its best to keep its 2,500 employees around all day – it’s very unusual in Andalucia not to nip home for lunch at ones mom’s place (most under 35s live at home) followed by a siesta. You might be thinking, and…so what? But for a Spaniard, that comes as a major culture shock. All activities, including restaurant visits and photocopying, are monitored by their electronic ID tag. Any and all transgressions are penalized.

These curtailments in movement have led to the nicknames “Centro Penitenciario Abengoa” and “Palmatraz” among staff.

Abengoa is a force to be reckoned with in the solar power world. They’ve just secured $400 million of funding from a U.S. private equity firm and are behind a $2 billion solar power project in the Mojave Desert. Indeed, they are showing us the way forward in the green economy. But let’s hope they sort out some buses soon – and advance their work/life initiatives into the 21^st Century.

Images: Panal Lira; Mark Bentley Photography; El Mundo; David Aureo

Students are once again vying to design and build the most cost-effective, energy-efficient and prettiest solar-powered home.

Two must-sees in Washington, DC this fall: one, the newly unveiled (though not officially dedicated due to hurricane upset) monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., designed by Chinese sculptor Master Lei Yixin. The other, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon installation on the National Mall, from September 23-October 2, 2011.

The Decathlon is an award-winning collaborative program that engages teams from colleges across the world to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and pretty. The winner is the team that does it best, mindfully creating according to affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence. It’s a free biennial event totally open to the public, who get to tour homes fathomed in nearby Maryland and as far imagined as New Zealand.

The purpose of the event is to educate student participants and the public at large about using clean-energy, the cost-effectiveness of energy-efficient construction and appliances, and providing students with training for the clean-energy workforce. Since 2002, the first year of the event, 72 houses have competed. Those houses are now dotted throughout the United States and the world serving educational, conservation, and community-oriented functions.

This year, nineteen teams are competing from the United States, Belgium, Canada, China and New Zealand. Here are a few we’re keeping our eye on.

From Middlebury College, “Self-Reliance.” A two-bedroom, 990-ft2 house designed for a family of four.

“First Light,” from Victoria University of Wellington, inspired by the traditional New Zealand holiday home—the “Kiwi bach.”

From the University of Maryland “WaterShed” proposes solutions to water and energy shortages.

CHIP from SCI-Arc is a design motivated by California’s “soaring land costs and urban sprawl.” It’s meant to be a minimal-footprint, affordable dwelling that offers a solution to the challenges of home ownership.

Out of Belgium, Ghent University’s E-Cube aims for simplicity stripped of nonessential components and finishes.

Visit Solar Decathlon for a full list of the participating teams, and tell us…what’s your favorite?

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

There are (or were) few things as wonderfully tech-free as the little red schoolhouse. A single room, a few wooden desks, a corresponding number of quaint textbooks (paper) and, well, okay, a chalkboard. I guess that counts for technology. But, still, write on it 100 times: “Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Keep it simple”¦” And then add: “With nothing toxic. With nothing toxic. With nothing toxic”¦”

Unfortunately, the classroom has not been immune from the hazards of “progress,” both in terms of its impact on our environment as well as on the health of the people (namely, kids) who benefit from it. But from asbestos to lead paint, where our children learn has rightly been on the forefront of our society’s efforts to clean itself up. And this summer, the Bolsa Knolls Middle School in Salinas, California, turned such efforts into a proactive initiative by installing new, environmentally friendly schoolrooms for its sixth and seventh graders.

The modular classrooms are dubbed Gen7, by their West Coast manufacturer, American Modular Systems (AMS). The prefab “green learning spaces” were constructed off-site and delivered to Bolsa Knolls over the summer, just in time for the start of the school year.

To create the classrooms, AMS started with green and efficient electrical and mechanical systems and integrated them into its established ”building envelope.” The finished product contains mostly recycled and recyclable materials, and low and zero VOC (volatile organic compound) interiors. Insulation in the walls and roof make for a quiet learning space and minimize heat and cooling loss. (Oh, and how’s this for school cool: One of the recycled materials used in the structures’ insulation is denim fabric scraps.) Meanwhile smart lighting is provided by “natural daylight harvesting.”

Test results: the whole shebang exceeds California’s Title 24 Energy Code by more than 30 percent.

The off-site construction method, says AMS, means reduced energy demands, without chemicals or toxins or waste requiring landfills required at the project location, which is good for the local community. And “because our Gen7 schoolrooms are modular, they can be installed and ready for students in as few as 90 days,” said Tony Sarich, AMS’ vice president of operation. Read: over the summer. (Summer. As in “where did that go?”)

Here’s some more info for our loyal “Spec-Heads”: Smart Thermal Displacement Ventilation (TDV) system reduces electricity use and costs by 35 percent; grid-neutral design structure; programmable lighting that’s natural daylight harvesting; Low-E, solar band 60 dual-glazed operable windows and programmable Energy Star-rated tubular skylights that lower electricity usage. Oh, and the roof is designed to allow the installation of photo-voltaic power panels. Okay, folks, now settle down.

Behind the scenes, AMS is also promoting itself as an excellent green corporate citizen “dedicated to earth-friendly manufacturing practices.” Its facilities “employ a range of green practices, including daylight harvesting at its 280,000-square-foot enclosed manufacturing space, efficient office lighting and heating/cooling, effective water-saving devices and have installed a rooftop solar-capturing system to offset energy usage.” Want more? Its site even mentions that plant employees carpool to work and jobsites in “modern, CA emission-compliant vehicles.”

The results of all this could be dramatic: According to AMS, kids attending green schools are posting “20 percent higher test scores, fewer absences due to respiratory illness, lower faculty healthcare costs and higher teacher retention.” Also big on the agenda is money savings, which can mean strapped school systems end up with more green. According to The Californian, Trevor Miller, the district’s facilities consultant, each 1,000-square-foot classroom costs the district about $180,000 or half the cost of a conventional classroom. Write that a hundred times: “Half the cost. Half the cost. Half…”

Also see: Crisp Green

While not exactly embarking on a grand plan to steal Mother Nature’s secret of photosynthesis (like those crazy Chinese guys we talked about yesterday who Shanghaied the leaf), French designer Vivien Muller is also looking at leaves of green for energy-generating design inspiration.

Muller’s Electree is an indoor “sculpture imitating a bonsai,” its leaves being 54 mini photovoltaic panels. The device/artwork stores solar energy in a battery hidden in the sculpture’s base which feeds a USB port where you can recharge your cellphones, cameras, iWhatevers and other devices.

While its initial release is a limited edition of 20 “specimens” (gotta love the French), Designboom reports a “small family-run company” now produces the product and is hoping to manufacture Electree in a bigger series and at a lower price point than its out-of-the-gate $6,000-plus.

Electree comes in magnetized modules than can be assembled pretty much any which way so you can produce “une infinité de forme différentes.” (Yes, please.) This also means you can aim your mini solar pick-ups right at the Sun to increase the device’s effectiveness.

Muller also sees major growth opportunity for Electree and posits the development of what it calls the Electree City, an even larger plant - really tree-sized this time - whose leaves are solar panels. A solar-paneled shade tree. Hmmm. Maybe one’s coming soon to a park near you. “Nature has selected for a million years the most effective structures to capture energy from the sun,” says the designer. “That is why the sculpture was inspired by the plant.”

Not from the Hill or the Street this time, but I just had to bring this up…

China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases and biggest energy consumer. That’s staggering and all the more terrifying, knowing the rate and capacity at which industry has evolved and grown there. There is one area, however, where China is attempting to curtail its deep carbon footprint.

Meet the straddle bus.

In an effort to go green and relieve traffic congestion without widening roads to accommodate more cars, the Shenzhen Huashi Future ParkingEquipment company is developing a ”3D Express Coach” (also known as a “three-dimensional fast bus”). I think of it more as a pretend-you’re-in-a-video-game adventure ride: It’s less dangerous-sounding that way.

Here’s how it works: The monorail on steroids will allow cars less than two meters high to travel underneath the upper level of the vehicle which will be carrying passengers, who were not rendered in the drafter’s graphic seen above, but are most certainly laughing at the screaming drivers and passengers in the cars below them (“My god, the tunnel – it won’t stop following me!”)

According to China Hush, the 6-meter-wide 3D Express Coach will be powered by a combination of electricity and solar energy, and will be able to travel up to 60 kilometers per hour carrying some 1200 to 1400 passengers. You read that right. A large Greyhound bus houses 49 passengers. A typical passenger plane seats roughly 300. This behemoth is green, certainly not lean, and if it goes out of control, God help us all.

And it’s set for construction in Beijing’s Mentougou district by the end of this year. The Chairman of the Huashi Future Parking Equipment company boasts that it will only take a year and $73 million to build and operate the thing. Which is why I get ever more frustrated every time I see the still unfinished San Francisco Bay Bridge lazily huddled in the ocean like a section of braces that an orthodontist forgot to remove from a kid’s mouth.

You hear that, Bay Bridge? China’s built one of you that can drive.

Necessity, it’s said, is the mother of invention. Small wonder, then, that a new small wonder designed to put computing into the hands of masses has been born in a country with, well, plenty of masses. The government of India has released a prototype tablet computer that it says will sell out of the gate for a mere $35.

The touchscreen tablet can draw solar power and runs on a variation of Linux and has no internal storage, though it’s memory-card ready. On the what-it-does-have-front, those oh-so-few beans will get you a built-in word processor, video conferencing capabilities and, most important, a connection to the internet. Cloud-based computing is a key factor in the device’s low ticket price and compact architecture, as users can access web-based tools and applications through a browser as opposed to programs installed locally on the computer itself.

According to Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal, the device is designed for students and low-income families, and will be made available to 110 million Indian schoolchildren as early as next year. Quoted in the guardian.co.uk, Sibal says, “The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35, including memory, display, everything.”

At $35, PCWorld, calls the device “virtually disposable,” in comparing it with the $100 XO computer developed by MIT and used in the One Laptop Per Child program. Who knows, the technology might even one-day give Apple’s $500 iPad a run for its money; India says it’s looking for manufacturing partner to mass-produce the device and eventually push the price down to $10. Yeah, that’s right. $10.

Image: seeveeaar