Andy Swan's "Elite Eight for Entrepreneurship"

As I head out on vacation, I leave you with Andy Swan's

"Elite Eight for Entrepreneurship"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you have what it takes to make the Final Four?  To win it all?

Earth Hour: Why My Lights Were On

Image via Wikipedia

If you drove by my house last night at 8:30 PM EDT you would have noticed my lights were on, music was playing, and a small group of friends were gathered to enjoy each others' company and conversation.

Whither Earth Hour? The now annual global "action" that tries to get people to turn off their lights for 60 minutes as a stand against climate change. Not in my home.

What I don't like about Earth Hour is it sends the wrong message. It sends a message of deprivation and loss rather than prosperity through innovation.

Two billion people in the world currently live without access to electricity. They rely on kerosene and candles for their lighting needs, sources that are dangerous, expensive, and polluting.

The societal benefits brought to the world by electricity and access to light have been well-documented. Indeed, the relationship between total energy consumption and productivity and wealth creation suggests that the benefits of electricity generation are at least of the same order of magnitude as economic development itself, according to several articles in the journal Energy Economics.

Why would anyone want to go back to the Dark Ages, even for an hour?

How much better would it be if we promoted prosperity through innovation and made the most efficient electricity and lighting available to the most people. Turning out the lights is just empty symbolism.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Turn Out the Lights: Earth Hour is Tonight at 8:30 (laist.com)
• My Own Earth Hour (michellemalkin.com)
• City goes dark for Earth hour (thestar.com)
• Lights out for Earth Hour (cbc.ca)
• Earth Hour (mikeaxelrod.com)
• Lights Go Out Around The World For Earth Hour (news.sky.com)

2nd Annual Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum

Cleantech interest is alive and well in the Greater Philadelphia area.

Over 380 people showed up at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia tonight for the 2nd Annual Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum co-presented by BlankRome and the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic.

The capacity audience heard opening keynote remarks from the Honorable C.H. "Bud" Albright, former Under Secretary of Energy and now a Senior VP for Policy and Government Affairs with CenterPoint Energy, along with an investor panel, and five presenting companies.

"I'm a policy guy," Albright opened. "And I also believe we can solve our energy problems with technology."

But, Albright continued, "those policies must be focused on the realities today and quickly get out of the way of the market. We need to let the creativity that exists develop."

Part of that reality is that fossil fuels will be around for some time to come, Albright offered, and we need transition strategies, pointing to energy efficiency and transportation fuels as the low-hanging fruit.

"The winners will be those who see the need and meet the need," said Albright.

The investor panel expressed cautious optimism about investing in the sector and a sigh of relief that 2009 was over.

"We're still going to take time to come out," said Kef Kasdin, a general partner with Battelle Ventures. "But we see some optimism in raising capital."

Mary Kay James, a managing partner with DuPont Ventures said they are seeing growth in potential new investments to the point where they are hiring staff to handle analysis.

"The most important thing to drive investment is consistency," suggested Michael Donnelly of GE Equity. "We need consistency in policy. Wind investment, for example, has been a yo-yo" because of the inconsistency of tax credits and incentives.

Michael Bevan, a managing partner at Element Partners, is experiencing higher failure rates, and has been defensive with regard to reserves. "We still have a fair amount of dry powder," Bevan said.

The five companies presenting were:

AE Polysilicon, a Fairless Hills-based manufacturer of high-purity grade polysilicon for use in crystalline silicon solar panels.

BlackGold Biofuels, the Philadelphia-based company with its first brown grease to biodiesel treatment plant now going up in San Francisco.

Community Energy, which was the leading early developer of utility scale wind power projects and markets that is now trying to do the same thing in the solar space.

FiniteCarbon, a forest development company that provides a single-source solution for creating and monetizing carbon credits.

Momentum Dynamics, the Malvern-based company developing proprietary technologies that will allow electric vehicles to be recharged wirelessly, either parked or in motion.

Several other companies exhibited, including AdaptivEnergy, ChiSage Systems, NanoPack, Netronix, Sun & Earth, and Y-Carbon.

The forum, organized in part by Tom Dwyer and Lou Rappaport from BlankRome (with help from Lorrie Scott), along with the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, was sponsored by Fairmount Partners, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Fesnak and Associates, PECO, Drexel's College of Engineering, Turner, the MAC Alliance and New Jersey Economic Development Authority, among others.


(Disclosure: I am co-founder of the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, and an advisor to BlackGold Biofuels.)

World Water Day: Stand Up for Water and Sanitation?

Today, March 22, 2010, is World Water Day, an attempt to raise awareness about the importance of clean water and the thousands of people who still do not have access to clean, healthy water resources.

World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.  Each year, it has a different sanctioned theme, determined by the UN Water Group.  This year's theme is "Clean Water for a Healthy World."

Clean water scarcity is a serious situation affecting more than 2.5 billion people.  Lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation leads to more deaths among children than malaria, HIV/AIDS and TB combined, according to the UN. 

In addition 4000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable water-related illnesses such as diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.

Serious stuff and in need of attention.  It's hard to believe that in the 21st century some parts of the world are without simple sanitation and access to water.  World Water Day is an attempt to shed light on this problem.

In one of the sillier actions associated with the "celebration" this year, a coalition led by the group End Water Poverty, along with Freshwater Action Network, and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre has organized a Guinness World Record attempt to form the world's largest toilet queue.

To participate, you need to gather at least 25 people and have them wait on line to use the bathroom in a public place from 10 minutes up to 24 hours.

What seems like a joke from the days of Monty Python is actually a "serious" attempt to capture the imaginations of the caring public and the World Record.  (And you wonder why I'm a skeptic!)

(Did you know there was a record for longest toilet waiting line? The current record for an individual queue stands at over 868 people, according to organizars.)

Remember: don't cut in line and wash your hands after you go.
 

Jack Donaghy and the Future of Manufacturing in America

Image via Wikipedia

Jack Donaghy is the archetypal American businessman.  He's a striver who thinks he can get to the top through hard work, innovation and creativity -- and okay not a small dose of cronyism -- really, by making things.

But, Jack, played by Alec Baldwin, is a dying breed.  As he points out in last night's episode of 30 Rock, we've become a nation of consumers rather than a nation of makers.

Jack's company has been bought by a cable network from (ahem) Philadelphia, which as one character says in the episode, "doesn't make anything and has no expectations of innovative ideas from its executives."

Despite this, Jack is determined to make something, to use his creativity to create value.

"We need to get back to doing what American businessmen do best," Jack tells his new colleagues. "Making things."

I think Jack is onto something.  And I'm reminded of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with Sheila Kennedy of Kennedy & Violich (KVA) in Boston.

Sheila is an architect, designer, and innovator.  She makes things.  Beautiful things.  Practical things.  Some of the things she makes are going to change the world.  Actually, they are already changing the world.

Her Portable Light Project, for example, is bringing flexible photvoltaics into fabricated products that can be integrated into blankets, handbags, or other useful items to provide a small amount of energy to charge a cell phone or provide lighting for rural villagers without access to power grids.

Soft House is another project of KVA MATx.  Soft House transforms household curtains into a set of energy harvesting textiles generating up to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity -- about half the daily power needs of an average American household.

Sheila makes things.  Yet she was telling me that we've lost the art of making things.  Prototypes, for instance.  It's getting increasingly difficult to find someone in this country to actually make a prototype.  If a designer wants a prototype, she very often has to go overseas to get it made.  Why?

We have become a nation of consumers and packagers and marketers of other people's fabrications.  We've even taken to referring to our economy as a "service economy," as if all we can do now is serve others.  And serve them what?  OPM -- other peoples' makings.

It's really quite extraordinary.  And we're seeing it now in the cleantech sector, too.  The manufacturing, research and development in the sector is shifting oversees, has been for years, but is starting to accelerate now as China, India and others ramp up their capacity to make the products and technologies to meet the energy needs of the future. 

When our economy gets too far from the art of manufacturing, of making real, tangible things, it's a bit like what Ezra Pound said about poetry getting too far from music; it begins to atrophy.

There are some hopeful signs, as Sheila and I discussed.  One of these is Etsy, a consumer web marketplace for other peoples' makings; specifically handmade products, art, books, jewelry, handbags, woodworking, and almost everything else you can imagine.

"Your place to buy and sell all things handmade..." is a great tag line.  We need more hopeful efforts to rebuild manufacturing in this country.  The future of manufacturing in America may be smaller, more localized production and distribution, and it certainly requires a more patient, long-term view.

Perhaps then Americans can get back to what we do best, as Jack Donaghy says: making things.

"Cleantech Companies to Watch" in Philadelphia

One has an odorous solution to a growing risk...

One takes brown grease and turns it into gold (well, diesel fuel)...

One takes the wait out of recharging Electric Vehicles with the ease we've come to expect with EZPass at toll booths on the turnpike...

These were three of the promising start-ups from the mid-Atlantic region that presented  last night at the Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Philadelphia's "Cleantech Companies to Watch" program.

Held at the Haub School of Business at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, the event was part of an ongoing series of entrepreneur-focused programming offered by the organization for its members.

Enersol, which we've been familiar with since last year, has developed a technology to odorize hydrogen gas. Why? Because, as Founder and CEO Patrick Flynn says, "with the growing demand for hydrogen in industrial and commercial applications there is an increased risk of accidental escape and combustion of this highly flammable, odorless gas."

That smell you smell with natural gas that tells you when you have a leak? It's added for the same reason. Without it, sensors would have to detect any leak and, while they are generally reliable, the risk of accidents increases as use of the gas becomes more ubiquitous.

Recently named one of Always On GoingGreen East's Top 50 companies, BlackGold Biofuels is no stranger to readers of this blog. (CEO Emily Landsburg was a part of the first cohort of GoodCompany Ventures last summer and we've continued to work together.)  But what was really impressive is she made this presentation -- and didn't skip a beat -- just six days after giving birth to her first child, Max, who was in the audience.

BlackGold has a patent-pending technology to convert sewer grease -- a multimillion dollar municipal pain in the, well, sewer -- into biodiesel.  Literally turning a liability into an asset. They are installing their first full-scale plant in the city of San Francisco, having beat out two west coast competitors.

Very intriguing was the final presenter, Momentum Dynamics, which is developing a game-changing proprietary technology that solves one of the biggest issues facing the electric vehicle market: it's wired. Not only that, but as inventor and CEO Andrew Daga said, full-cycle charging reduces battery life and takes a minimum of 30 minutes to charge.

So, where once the car provided freedom, electric vehicles as currently being developed require you to plug in, which means you need to be able to do so at home, office, wherever and whenever. But you can't and won't; we all forget to charge our phones, don't we?

Momentum's solution charges automatically, whether parked overnight or for just a few minutes or even while traveling at normal speeds. Think the EZPass lane compared to cash-only toll lanes.  This breakthrough gives EV drivers, as Momentum's tag line says, "Freedom to move."

"The Entrepreneurs Forum hasn't had an opportunity to focus on cleantech in the past," said Dan Ross, the EF's executive director. "But we felt it is an emerging growth area in the region."

The Forum intends to look for other ways to spotlight cleantech entrepreneurs in the Greater Philadelphia area.