Cleanweb Hackathon Returns to NYC

Cleanweb Hackers Hacking in NYC, January 2012

The Cleanweb Hackathon returns to NYC tomorrow, Friday 9/28, at AlleyNYC.

I can't make it this time around, but you can read my thoughts on the January Cleanweb Hackathon here. 

The Hackathon brings together software developers, designers and entrepreneurs to brainstorm solutions to vexing problems in energy, waste, water, energy efficiency and many other issues facing our resource constrained world.

Those of you familiar with the Hackathon concept know it is an intensive developer session in which apps leveraging web 3.0, mobile, and social media technologies are built in a little over a 24-hour period. 

As in previous Hackathons around the country (and across the pond), the teams will be plied and supplied with APIs and pizza, datasets and coffee as they race against the clock to get their app built. On Sunday, the teams will present their apps to a select panel of judges.

The Friday night kick-off features a presentation by Mark Grundy of the Carbon War Room to focus developers on solving big issues in key sectors that align with the city's long-term sustainability plan, PLANYC. 

This event is part of the Cleanweb Hackathon series that was started in San Francisco in September 2011 by Blake Burris and Sunil Paul and later mushroomed into a global movement with Cleanweb communities and events in cities throughout North America, the UK and Europe in 2012.

For NYC hackathon details and registration: http://nyc.cleanweb.co/

For an overview on Cleanweb, check out: http://www.slideshare.net/blake/why-cleanweb-will-beat-cleantech

Wish I could be there! Hack-on!

Man the Lifeboats and Consider the Hype Cycle

I had an email exchange the other day with my friend John Moore of Acorn Energy, a long-time energy entrepreneur and investor, who wrote to me, almost as an afterthought, "FWIW, I am seeing interest in cleantech crumble with the Indexes."

"I'm beginning to think that cleantech may have to wait until my kids' generation takes over," I responded. 

Then John reminded me of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Technology and added, "Usually big things happen after the parade has passed." 

Gartner Hype Cycle for Technology

"I strive to dwell on the slope of enlightenment," I responded.

Later in the week I spoke with a cleantech investor who was bemoaning the state of things.

Usually an optimist, this investor said it was getting harder and harder to maintain that position.

While family offices, strategics, and international investors (read China) are entering the game, from this investor's perspective, the cleantech investing scene looks pretty bleak. 

The funds still investing seem to be doing follow-on rounds to shore up their existing portfolios. And a number of investors have left or are leaving funds and flocking to positions at companies (or even big four accounting and advisory firms -- ahem).

"But perhaps," this investor offered. "Perhaps cleantech investing will be stronger with a smaller group of dedicated people."

I couldn't help thinking of that Gartner Hype Cycle and especially the through of disillusionment. Perhaps that's where we are now and maybe, just maybe, we'll climb the slope of enlightenment to reach the plateau of productivity.

May it happen in our lifetime.

Is the Sky Falling for Cleantech Investment?

As Henny Penny cried, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling."

And to look at the latest report on quarterly cleantech venture investment released last week by Cleantech Group, one might think the same is true for this sector.

"Measured by dollars invested, cleantech venture investment fell 14 percent compared to the previous quarter ($1.88 billion) and was off 25 percent from 2Q11 ($2.15 billion),” according to the Cleantech Group. “The number of deals recorded in 2Q12 was 155, compared to 197 in 1Q12. The tally may rise again once all investors have reported all deals."

But does it really mean the sky is falling?

“Despite headwinds facing the sector and global economic instability, we continue to observe top tier funds such as Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, and others actively investing into cleantech,” said Cleantech Group CEO Sheeraz Haji in a press release. 

“While some may be ducking ‘cleantech’ as a label in North America," Haji noted, "growth in technologies addressing resource and energy challenges remains strong and both corporate and investor interest remains high.”

"The dip in cleantech venture capital this year is not unexpected," Dallas Kachan of Kachan & Co., wrote in an email to me last week. "We forecasted a decrease in cleantech VC in 2012 due to a tightening in the investor fundraising climate, waning policy support in the developed world, perennial concerns about IRRs in cleantech and macro-economic turbulence and other factors.”

Another factor may be that investors who were dabbling in cleantech the past couple of years have fled the sector, which may have artificially inflated the numbers in previously quarters and years.

I've also been hearing from several investors and entrepreneurs with whom I speak to regularly, that there's still an overall belt-tightening in the investor world.

Other investors may not be convinced the sector will thrive without a carbon price, which we won't see any time before the November election -- if then!


The news isn't all grim, however, and venture capital is not the only money in the sector.

Increasingly, big companies are filling the gap from the venture community and those firms that are in it for the long haul are making follow-on investments. 

"The largest companies in the world are buying their way into clean technology markets," Kachan noted in the same email exchange, "supplementing the role of traditional private equity and evidencing a maturation of the cleantech sector. A decrease in venture is being made up for by a rise in corporate involvement in cleantech."

Still, there has been a shakeout in cleantech companies as subsidies get pulled and follow-on money ceases its flow.

"A lot of cleantech startups have been getting shaken out and will continue to do so," wrote Rob Day in his excellent take on the Cleantech Group findings.

Day also noted some positive news, however, that Limited Partners (LPs) "finally appear to be slowly getting   back into the habit of funding cleantech venture capital firms. So I think we'll see a pickup in deal flow in the second half of the year. But probably not enough to forestall the ongoing shakeout."

As Day and others have noted, deal counts may be more indicative than dollars when it comes to judging the overall health of investing in the sector.

The top two sub-sectors in terms of deal counts in the Cleantech Group report? Energy efficiency and water.

How to Save a Planet - On a Budget: New ebook featuring The Green Skeptic

My insights on cleantech investing are featured in a new ebook from The Energy Collective. How to Save a Planet - On a Budget. 

Built from the webinar we did last November, the book offers insights from over a dozen experts in the field and includes pertinent information for companies, investors, and clean energy advocates. 

The book asks the critical question, How can we drive progress to a clean energy economy when governments are broke and investment is scarce?

My thoughts can be found in Chapter 3, "The Changing Shape of Clean Tech Investment."  

Download it free here: How to Save a Planet - On a Budget

For those concerned about the planet’s well-being, it’s one of the crucial questions of our time, one that may have implications for our environment for generations. In a time of financial scarcity, our goal at TheEnergyCollective.com is to figure out how companies and governments can shift to greener, cleaner consumption of energy, and, most importantly, how they will pay for the infrastructure projects that are essential to limiting our output of climate change-causing greenhouse gases.

To that end, we conversed with a diverse group of experts and examined case studies that describe viable solutions to our climate crisis in the midst of an economic crisis. We hope this content will be of interest to energy professionals looking to learn about where the industry is going, those in cleantech interested in financing solutions, those in government hoping to improve local infrastructure, and advocates, journalists, policymakers and policy wonks looking for the latest insight on market solutions to climate problems. 

We cover:

• Paying the true cost of energy through carbon pricing
• Can carbon markets drive green innovation and infrastructure?
• Public-private cooperation for a greener economy
• The economic case for green infrastructure
• Cleantech startups and the venture capital funding climate
• Federal policy and cleantech

Featuring Input from:

• Gernot Wagner, Environmental Defense Fund
• Marc Gunther, FORTUNE
• Jesse Jenkins, Breakthrough Institute
• Will Coleman, Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Thiemo Gropp, co-founder, DESERTEC Foundation
• Andrew Carman, Head of Americas for Project & Structured Finance - Infrastructure, Cities & Industry, Siemens Financial Services, Inc.
• Jo Danko, Global Director for Sustainable Solutions, CH2M HILL
• Lucas Merrill Brown, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford
• Kirk Edelman, President and CEO, Siemens Financial Services U.S
• Lane Burt, Technical Policy Director, USGBC
• Lee Thiessen, Executive Director for Climate Change Policy and British Columbia’s Climate Action Secretariat
• Janet Peace, VP of Business and Markets Strategies, C2ES
• Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria
• Scott Edward Anderson, founder, VerdeStrategy

Download it free here: How to Save a Planet - On a Budget

Baby You Can Drive My (Electric) Car - EVS26

Electric vehicles have come a long way since the days for the botched EV-1 experiment of the 1990s. 

Fisker Karma

Formerly considered tin cans without much oomph or sex appeal, EVs took a back seat to the more trendy hybrids (Prius) and powerful SUVs.

Yet, if this year's EVS26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center proves one thing to me it's that electric vehicles range from the sexy sports cars (Fisker Karma and Tesla S) to a rather sedate sedan from Coda Automotive.

In between are new arrivals, such as Lexus and Lotus, and major players like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt.

Trucks and motorcycles, too, including the improbable, gorgeous Siemens Smart Chopper, were well represented, along with personal mobility devices such a GM's EN-V and a proliferation of electric bicycles.

There was not much in the way of fleet vehicles at this year's EVS, certainly not compared to when the show was in Shenzen, China, according to some. But we know from talking to several at the show that partnerships with FedEx, UPS, and companies like PepsiCo loom large in the sector.

Charging technologies were heavily represented, including a few wireless options.

The trouble with electric vehicles, however, is their reputation as de-featured, boring, and even unexciting. What gets lost, according to acolytes, is that these cars are fun to drive.

Drive a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Volt, and I have to agree: they are boring. Why? Because they drive just like a regular car, a little quicker pick up at acceleration perhaps, but essentially you're driving a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle made by Nissan or Chevy.

Siemens Smart Chopper

Okay, there is an on/off button like the one on your computer, but it's not very different from their other offerings.

The Tesla and Fisker and Remy, as well as the Qualcomm-Halo-sponsored racing car, however; now, you're talking something that will give your heart a little race.

A few take-aways from the show:

1.) We've got a loooong way to go before mass adoption of these vehicles will happen.
2.) There are more entrepreneurial charging methods/technologies out there than will likely survive, and
3.) The "cool factor"/fun to drive conundrum must be addressed if we're ever going to get the public to switch to EVs.

Finally, things like range anxiety, cost, and perceived risk are still all very real obstacles to widespread public adoption.


But make them fun to drive and we will drive.

Why Can't Water Get No Respect?

Matt Damon with Water.org CamelBak Groove bottle 

We take it for granted, yet we can't live with out it. We are made of water -- more than 60 percent water.

But so is the clothing we wear and the food and drink we consume.

Think about it. A pair of stonewashed jeans takes roughly 500 gallons of water, including growing, dyeing and processing the cotton. A t-shirt? 700 gallons. The cup of coffee I'm drinking as I write this? 35 gallons. A pint of beer? 20 gallons. 


Over 130 gallons of water to make a 2-liter bottle of soda (not sure if that counts making the bottle itself); and that hamburger adds another 630 gallons.


Pretty twisted, huh?

According to water.org, the average American uses 176 gallons of water per day compared to 5 gallons of water the average African family uses each day.


That five-minute shower my teenage son takes uses more water than the average person in a developing country slum uses for an entire day -- if they can get access.


Last night, water.org received the World Social Impact Award from the World Policy Institute at its 50th Anniversary celebration.

Those of us in the audience were grouped by issues and asked to get into dialogue with our table mates. I sat at one of the water tables.

We were led in our discussion by Sanjay Bhatnagar of WaterHealth International and Dr. Upmanu Lall, the Alan and Carol Silberstein Professor of Engineering at Columbia University and director of the Columbia Water Center.

Our table quickly came up with a critical question: Why can't water get no respect?

Water is the Rodney Dangerfield of natural resources. And yet it's critical to our lives and livelihoods; indeed, our very survival depends on it.

We didn't have any answers, other than the usual fact that water isn't priced appropriately and it is relatively abundant. Perhaps we need price signals like we have for oil that tell us how much our water actually costs, one of our group suggested.

Dr. Lall shared with us some research he's privy to concerning a technology that may solve the production of clean drinking water. But our group was pretty clear that access will continue to be an issue that we need to address.

And that's why organizations like water.org -- although they may be just a drop in the bucket of needs -- are so important and deserving of recognition.