The Green Skeptic

The Future of Biofuels: What's Hot, Hype, and Possible

2012-01-27T08:55:00.001-05:00

Renmatix Super Converter

What is the future of BioFuels?

From algae to switchgrass and wood waste to sewer grease, many advances in next generation biofuels are being made today. But what is realistic and how do you cut through the hope and hype to get at viable solutions?

The US military is one of the largest investors in advanced biofuels development and is in a position to make the market ripe for commercialization on a massive scale. Can it do for biofuels what it did for GPS and the Internet?

I'll be moderating an informative and lively dialogue with industry experts, entrepreneurs and investors on the current state and future potential of this emerging growth sector.

Featuring:
Mike Hamilton, CEO, Renmatix, Inc.
Sam Gabbita, Partner, Element Partners
Steve McCracken, Director of Strategic Marketing & Sales, AMERIgreen Energy

A Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology & Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic event, it takes place Thursday, February 16, 2012, at the offices of Morgan Lewis in Philadelphia.

You can register today at: The Future of Biofuels

(Full disclosure: I am a co-founder and board member of the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic, a business network for cleantech entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers.)

Cleanweb Hackathon Focuses on Killer Apps Built in a Day...or Two

2012-01-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

Hackers hacking at Cleanweb Hackathon, NYC.

What if you put a bunch of developers in the room, gave them access to datasets and APIs and set them loose on the planet's resource problems over a weekend?

Well, the folks behind Cleanweb Hackathon did just that on Saturday and Sunday in New York City.

The result may just be the start of a revolution in cleanweb solutions. The cleanweb, as defined by the hackathon's organizers, uses information technology, the Internet, and social media to address the issues of energy, transportation, and smart grid.

"Information technology is the most powerful lever we have to address resource constraints," as Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures told the audience at NYU's Tisch Center of the Arts before Sunday's project presentations.

Some of the intriguing projects from this weekend include TripWatchers, which founder Ryan Rzepecki calls the "Weight Watchers for vehicle owners," allows drivers to log their routes, track vehicle-related expenses and receive suggestions for how to reduce the impact of their travel such as potential car pooling and public transportation alternatives.

The audience choice award and best overall hack went to Econofy "E-Star," a web-based rating system of consumer products that allows for visual comparison shopping around energy efficiency.

Another cool hack was NYC BLDG, which tracks the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of city buildings in real-time and puts them into competition.

Hackers will hack for food.

And building on the "Occupy Rooftops" theme of its community solar day back in November, SolarMosaic created Mosaic Map, a web app that maps solar projects socially and in real-time. The idea is to allow project developers to find financing and generate leads for financiers such as, well, SolarMosaic.

The original Cleanweb Hackathon was held last September in San Francisco and another is planned for later this year. There's even a Bay Area-based business incubator for the cleanweb called Greenstart.

Dave Graham, founder of Greenstart, said "If Y Combinator had a love child with IDEO at the intersection of energy and IT, it would be Greenstart." Greenstart has invested in nine companies so far, putting them through a 12-week intensive program. Graham noted there is a March 5th deadline for the next round of applicants.

I've long argued for more focus on the killer apps that will make a difference today in the cleantech and energy space. Cleanweb drives us closer to a more capital and energy efficient model. Events like this one may be the start of a cleanweb revolution.

Tar Sands, Pipelines and Nukes: The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

2012-01-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

This morning I sat down with Charles Payne on FOX Business's Varney & Co to talk tar sands, the Keystone XL pipeline, and environmental victories.

My opinions shouldn't surprise you if you're a regular reader of The Green Skeptic.

Here's the video:

And here is a link in the event that your browser doesn't accept the format:

The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

The Green Skeptic Goes Black to Protest #SOPA and #PIPA

2012-01-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

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For more information, go to Google

CleanWeb Hackathon Brings Its Disruptive Energy to New York

2012-01-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

There's no question that the energy infrastructure is ripe for disruption. Outmoded, inefficient systems and distribution, and an entitlement mindset has ruled the day in the utility industry for decades.

Enter the CleanWeb Hackathon. Its founders propose to apply information technology to resource constraints, building apps and hacks that combine new, sustainable business models and leverage the mobile and social web.

For 24 hours this weekend in New York attendees will tackle utility, transport, and smart grid datasets and see what they can "hack" out of them.

The first CleanWeb Hackathon, held last September in San Francisco, generated such ideas as Dr. Wattson, which helps you sleuth-out energy plan savings, GroMunity, an online community for sharing and trading home garden crops, helping out neighbors, and ridding your community of food waste, and Toxicslayar, a mobile app that shows toxic chemical releases from thousands of US facilities.

Not many of these ideas survived past the weekend incubator, but the concept of applying the innovation of the web and mobile technologies to energy, transportation, and smart grid is a good one.

Sunil Paul of Spring Ventures, the brainchild behind the CleanWeb Hackathon, describes the concept as marrying information technology with green initiatives.

"Information technology is actually going to prove as valuable as the application of new materials and nano-technology and bio-technology have been for the environment," Paul told an audience last year.

It's not just about apps, however. Other examples of CleanWeb innovations include sharing services such as AirBnB, ZipCar, Spride, and even NeighborGoods, which all help reduce an individual's consumption of resources and impact on the planet.

Now CleanWeb comes to New York and taps into the tech ecosystem here -- 24 hours in the city that never sleeps should yield some innovative ideas.

For more information about the CleanWeb Hackathon or to register to attend, go to CleanWeb Hackathon.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Protecting and Saving

2012-01-10T16:10:00.000-05:00

This post originally appeared on The Green Skeptic in March 2008, when I was about to speak at the Aspen Environment Forum. It's reprinted here as I am on hiatus from writing the blog. I promise to be back at it soon. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this piece. --Scott

##

Everything we think about saving or protecting ecosystems and habitats is wrong.

This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, where tomorrow morning I'll be on a Panel called "Nature's Place: Saving Ecosystems and Habitats."

For the better part of 15 years I worked with The Nature Conservancy to save some of the world's "Last Great Places" around the world (I left in August; see my posts reflecting on my career at TNC
and here.

I consider myself a conservationist, not an environmentalist. What I mean by that is a conservative and prudent approach to our use of resources that requires us to manage them for the long-term -- for the benefit of people today and for future generations.

The Green Skeptic grew out of an increasing concern about our relationship to the natural world and how we protect it. I am a skeptic in the sense that I believe we need to constantly challenge the assumptions we have about "saving ecosystems and habitats."

In my view, we operate under four basic assumptions:

1. We can continue to "save" or "protect" ecosystems and habitats from harm in perpetuity;
2. We can ignore basic human needs and treat poverty alleviation as a separate issue from the environment;
3. We can entrust protection to governments and corporate NGOs;
4. We can't trust human ingenuity and community to manage its own resources.

First, I need to step back and look at the words we use. (I am a poet, so words matter to me.) Specifically, "protecting" and "saving."

Both imply we need to keep ecosystems and habitats from something. The American Heritage Dictionary defines protecting as "To keep from being damaged, attacked, stolen, or injured; guard." When we use the word protecting in terms of ecosystems and habitats, we are guarding nature from something or someone, presumably humans.

Saving is a little less problematic, as it implies a conservative approach to the future (as in saving seed corn for next year's sowing). Still, the AHD's first definition is "To rescue from harm, danger, or loss." It's not until definition number three that we get to the conservative impulse: "To avoid spending (e.g. money) so as to keep or accumulate it."

The question is not about what we should save, but how and for what purpose.

Is it hubris to assume we have protected or saved anything? We promote the fact that percentages of ecosystems or habitats are protected, but they continue to be encroached upon -- see the Amazon Rainforest for example.

What have we really saved if massive changes from climate change or the drive for much-needed economic development will have significant impact on the future status and makeup of places, habitats, and ecosystems?

Climate change will disrupt many ecosystems that exist today -- much as the Internet disrupted print media, the travel industry, TV, bookstores, you name it. It will change everything.

So the question is what are we really protecting when we talk about protecting ecosystems and habitat? Will the places we select for protection today be the same 10-20 years from now? Probably not.

Ecosystems are constantly changing, either from "external" (human) or "internal" (natural) forces. Change is inevitable and could, in the face of global warming, be dramatic.

Shouldn't we be preparing for the changes and begin to think about how we adapt to some of the most likely changes, those brought on by climate change or economic development or basic human needs, such as for food and energy?

Demand for energy and food will drive economic development for years to come and we can't continue to ignore these drivers to "save" the natural, non-human world.

This leads me to assumption two, which is about ignoring basic human needs. It's irrational for us to think that people in developing countries, many of whose basic human needs are not being met, will care deeply about the non-human natural world.

Yet, we continue to have blind faith in our cause and ignore the needs of real people.

I recently returned from India where the extreme poverty is evident almost everywhere you look. Also evident is a growing middle class that strives for the kind of lifestyle we have here in the west, specifically the US, with its inherent accelerated pace and impacts.

Who are we to say that people in developing countries have no right to the kind of lifestyle we have exported for decades? We can not convince, persuade or cajole or even pay people -- Americans as much as people in developing nations -- to "come around to our way of thinking," and yet this is what I hear whenever I talk to environmentalists.

And we can't ask poor people around the world to forgo the comforts of the lifestyle we have been living, and which they wish to copy, "for the sake of the planet" or to set aside their habitats and ecosystems for the sake of humanity. No country wants to become an ecological reserve for the world, especially if it means it cannot pursue economic prosperity.

Try floating this idea with people who go hungry every night for lack of food or money to buy food and see what kind of reaction you get.

In the end, poor people matter. And the governments of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and African countries must be concerned first and foremost with the well-being of their people. I'm not saying that human well-being isn't tied to ecosystem health; I'm a strong believer that economic growth is tied to those resources.

I believe we can no longer separate the issue of economic development and poverty alleviation from ecosystem health. We also can't expect that governments whose people aren't meeting basic needs to protect their habitats over the economic well-being of their people.

Which leads me to assumption three: increasingly, we are entrusting protection of habitats and ecosystems with the wrong people. Governments have a mandate to improve the economic health of their country and people.

Yet we continue to have faith that these governments will "do the right thing" and enforce laws protecting their forests or other ecosystems in the face of seemingly insurmountable economic obstacles.

Why do we think that is a good strategy? What indicators do we have that tell us this strategy will succeed where it hasn't in the past? Why do we think that the World Bank program to pay countries to "avoid deforestation" will be any more successful than their previous grand plans?

The same goes for NGOs. NGOs are basically corporations that serve a set of shareholders (donors in this case) who subscribe to a specific idea of Nature and a specific set of outcomes, outcomes that may not necessarily be shared by all stakeholders.

This idea of Nature has for a long time discounted the needs of people both today and in the future. To illustrate this, one only need look at the environmental community's approach to government debt.

Conservation groups (my old employers among them) have promoted using a country's debt as leverage to gain conservation protection. The debt-for-nature swap was an innovation of the past couple of decades and a noble one. But it was also painfully ignorant of the true nature of that debt -- in many cases "dictator debt" incurred by regimes that did not have its people's best interests in mind.

Now that we have a more clear understanding of how that debt was derived, and can no longer ignore its immoral origins, we need to give up or adjust the debt-for-nature swap concept and join the call for debt forgiveness. That will free some countries from having to exploit their natural resources to pay down that debt.

Yet, many in the environmental community continue to push the debt-for-nature strategy, because they can't let go of a good thing that advances their agenda.

How is this different from any corporation -- a sector many environmentalists attack -- that advances its agenda at the expense of people here and abroad? Can we really trust ecosystems and habitats to big government or big international non-governmental corporations?

In the end, wouldn't a better approach be to put our trust in the people and the communities where these ecosystems and habitats are found? They have the most at stake in managing these resources, as their needs and livelihoods are most closely tied to the lands and waters.

I believe human beings are basically good. I also believe that, given the opportunity, communities will manage their common interests and keep each other in check. This is the open-source community approach one finds in social networks and in business models such as eBay.

I also believe that human beings are the most creative and adaptable species on the planet -- just look at the variety of habitats, climates, and conditions we inhabit. Our resilience as a species is astounding. I argue that we need to embrace this resourcefulness and apply it to overcoming ecological shifts, climate change, and loss of ecosystems and habitats.

We need to unleash the power of human creativity to find new ways to "save" those places for future use by both human and non-human species.

Unleashing this human capacity will require suspending our assumptions. We will need to focus more on community-based or "commons-based" management (as Jonathan Rowe of the West Marin Commons in California calls it in a recent essay in The State of the World 2008).

We need a people-centered conservation that addresses the real needs of real people, and to empower individual entrepreneurs and communities to manage their resources cooperatively rather than impose grand plans from Washington.

We need to clearly draw the lines connecting economic prosperity with ecological health and human well-being.

And, finally, we need to unleash human creativity to find new technological solutions as well as new ways of living with nature.

This may, in the end, be our only hope to really save habitat and ecosystems – and, ultimately, to save ourselves.

Thrivancy: The Practice of Happiness

2012-01-05T07:58:00.000-05:00

My apologies to those who have been looking for new posts from The Green Skeptic. I've been on a brief hiatus the past few weeks for the holidays and to sort out some personal issues. I'll be back at it soon.

Meanwhile, I want to share with you some words of wisdom from my good friend Jack Ricchiuto, whose new book, The Joy of Thriving is coming out on January 15th (to correspond with his 60th birthday). You can read more about Jack and his work at DesigningLife.com and @zenext and about the book at JoyofThriving.com:

Happiness: The New Face of Thrivancy

Jack Ricchiuto

In societies where success is measured in units of economic advantage, happiness is talked about more as pursuit rather than practice.

Even though the US has lost its world leader status in more categories than most faithful nationals are willing to admit, it still retains global dominance in how to make the symbols of happiness more significant than the experience itself.

Since the 1950s, personal wealth in the US has doubled and happiness has declined. People with over $125 million in net worth are barely happier than the norm. Americans making more than $10 million annually are not significantly happier than the average. In the US and globally, 75% of employees are unhappy in their work at annual costs of over $300 billion. In the meantime, the country launched by Puritans annually spends $1.2 trillion on things they don't need, yielding ephemeral satisfaction that wanes before the next cycle of the moon.

In the recent survey I conducted with 300 people from around the world, the happiest people report that happiness is about practice rather than purchase, doing rather than debt.

92% of the happiest people say that their happiness is about what they focus on in the present. 96% report that happiness is a choice and as a practice, it can be learned. All of the evidence from the neurosciences strongly agree.

Peer reviewed neuroscience research empirically demonstrates that individuals can be trained to be 25 percent happier through various training programs in six weeks. As much as marketers would like to have us believe, there is little empirical evidence that authentic happiness can be measured in square feet, per capita income or big boxes per square mile.

"We can make Gross National Happiness more inspiring and engaging than Gross Domestic Product."

All demographic variables combined, including age, sex, income, race, and education, are responsible for only 15 percent of the difference in happiness levels between individuals. From my research, happiness flows from the prime practices of appreciation, generosity, interest, lightness and easy.

Appreciation is a grateful and passionate heart. Generosity is sharing what brings mutual joy. Interest is discovering new people, spaces, and things. Lightness is a sense of aliveness. Easy is the grace of simple. At least one practice is possible in every moment of your life however it is.

Happy people savor the pleasure of moments. They do not limit life's simple pleasures by multitasking them into seconds rather than minutes. They are thankful and delighted in joyful vision of the future. In measuring abundance from a happiness perspective, they shift from net worth to net gratitude.

They freely offer and invite sharing what brings mutual joy without the strings of reciprocity. With a desire to liberate themselves from the clutter of anxiety in their relationships, they share more from generosity than reciprocity. Happy people know that generosity is not where we lose ourselves. It is where we find ourselves.

They love their questions for the wonder unpeeled. Each of us has a different tolerance and love of questions, mystery, and the unknown. The happiest people on the planet are ridiculously in love with their questions. They decide how interesting their life and world is.

They have a delicious sense of humor and play in the abundant space of serendipity. They love by the principle that life does not necessarily get better by taking everything, including ourselves, too seriously. Happiness becomes more accessible by making our smile the most worn item in our wardrobe.

They do whatever they can to turn difficult into easy and complicated into simple. They reclaim authorship over the way things are easy and difficult. It is clear to them that when we make things easier, we have more courage to take on what we call the impossible.

In the study I conducted, the number one source of happiness for the happiest people is by far the joy of discovering new people, places, and things. 67% of the happiest people believe you cannot become "too happy" and 80% report that if they did, it would lead to a greater life of being caring and passionate. As it turns out, happiness profoundly shapes the contours of our life and world.

In over 200 studies, author of "The How of Happiness," Sonja Lyubomirsky, and her research colleagues find that happiness leads to being more productive, generous, creative, courageous, realistic, passionate, resilient, and healthier. What other qualities do you want to have and have around you in your life, work, and world?

9/11 victims who practiced gratitude were the quickest to be resilient and return to optimism. Higher gratitude people are consistently more helpful toward others in their life, work, and communities.

University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscience research shows that happiness practices restructure the brain in ways that elevate our set-points. Set-points are the normal levels of happiness we personally experience and do not change with any kind of welcome or unwelcome events.

Harvard studies tracking 4,700 people over twenty years find that happiness spreads across three degrees of connection in personal and social networks for up to a year. When we understand the power of networks and the contagious character of joy, it becomes clear that happiness is a personal, social, and political act.

Each additional happy connection in our life is worth an increase of 9% in happiness where a $10k raise would increase happiness by 2%. British researchers find that a single smile releases the same brain stimulation as 2,000 pieces of chocolate. University of California at San Diego study, researchers find that because of these dynamics, the increased happiness of a friend's friend is worth the happiness of a $5,000 raise.

All of this has important implications for how we think about happiness as practice in our life, relationships, workplaces, and communities.

Happiness has unique power beyond classic economic indicators. Now that we have the science to support the efficacy and possibility of happiness, we can have conversations about happy workplaces and happy communities. We can shift from average household income to average household happiness. We can make Gross National Happiness more inspiring and engaging than Gross Domestic Product.

The Joy of Thriving

No era since the beginning of recorded human history has been so poised for making happiness the prime indicator of our thrivancy. When happiness is finally understood as a practice, we start becoming more innovative in designing our personal and shared spaces for happiness as a design principle rather than naively expect it to be the byproduct of wishful thinking.

Happy communities have more civic celebrations than public hearings. Happy workspaces become vibrant cultures of talent engagement, discovery, and generosity.

The realization that happiness is not about things but about the practices of happiness, creates profound implications for the design of public policy, civic spaces, workplaces, social networks, technology. how we raise and engage the next generation, how we go about our well-being, and how we become a happier planet.

The promise is transformative. Happier people are better friends and lovers, leaders and peers, neighbors and citizens. When happiness becomes a choice, all kinds of new doors open up to our personal and collective thrivancy. --Jack Ricchiuto, author of The Joy of Thriving, reprinted by permission of the author.

An Email from Santa to Climate Skeptics: An Annual Green SkepticTradition

2011-12-23T06:49:00.001-05:00

A few Christmases ago, I published this email from Santa, which arrived on the night before the night before Christmas. Readers had so much fun with it, it's become an annual tradition. Enjoy!

And have a Happy Holiday.

Scott, aka The Green Skeptic
_______________________

TO: Global Warming Skeptics
FROM: Santa Claus
DATE: A few nights before Xmas
SUBJECT: My Christmas List
_________________________

This is Santa, writing from the North Pole. Soon I'll be gathering all the toys for all the good little girls and boys and packing them in my sleigh to begin our journey, our night of nights.

The reindeer, however, are starting to complain about hoof-rot. Apparently, they've been standing around in too much slush. This has put me in a decidedly prickly mood this Christmas.

You know me; I'm not a single-issue guy. I believe that as long as you are good, and I mean good for goodness' sake, you deserve some slack on the other stuff. I'm an equal opportunity distributor. I know whether you've been bad or good or just plain evil. You also know I'm not one to discriminate against one group of people or another, believers or non-believers.

But this year is different. This year, I'm making a few changes to my list. I'm checking it twice and have decided that the naughty include any one of you out there who do not believe in global warming. All you climate change skeptics out there, you are on the naughty list this year.

Oh, you know who you are. And I've got one special gift for you: Nothing but COAL. You like the stuff so much -- and it's such a big part of what's leading to climate change -- you might as well have bags and bags of it and nothing more.

Make no mistake. Global warming is happening. You don't have to show me any scientific reports, although some nifty ones have shown up in my email box lately, sent to me from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

No, you don't have to convince me; I'm a believer. All I have to do is look out my window to my back yard, what's left of it! It's a soupy mess out there.

We usually have a good bit of ice up here at the North Pole -- and early. That's important, too; you see, every year the elves and I construct a temporary workshop up here where we make the toys and assemble the other goodies. The earlier the ice, the sooner we get started.

Although I have figured out a way to deliver the entire shipment of gifts on my list in one night, I still haven't perfected the manufacturing process. I can't speed it up. (Some of that I blame on the unions.) We need all the ice we can get up here for there is no solid ground.

But this year, the ice cover was the lowest it's been in almost 30 years. And at least one of those science groups studying this stuff tells me that, according to their models, by 2040, we'll have mostly open water up here. (They sent me this short animation clip, which sends chills up my spine: Arctic Ice Melt.)

Mrs. Claus has even started looking for Houseboats on Craig's List!

So, dear boys and girls, you better not pout or cry or whine or deny climate change any longer. And I'm telling you why: because climate change is coming to town. Time's a wasting. We need to do something about this now, before it's too late. Or before I have to move all of my operations to the South Pole!

Here's wishing a carbon-neutral Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

S. Claus, North Pole

Wind Industry Just Hot Air? The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

2011-12-22T08:30:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday I sat down with Stuart Varney & Company on FOX Business to talk about wind power and the relative merits of distributed generation versus big wind farms, including the need for transmission and grid infrastructure improvements to make big wind viable.

Here's the video:

And here's a link in case the player doesn't work in your browser: Green Skeptic on FOX Business

What Energy Efficient Light Bulb Regulations Mean: The Green Skeptic on WSJ.com

2011-12-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

GE Lighting Institute's Mary Beth Gotti and The Green Skeptic's Scott Edward Anderson join Wendy Bounds on WSJ.com's LunchBreak to discuss new energy efficient federal light bulb regulations that take effect on January 1, 2012.

Here's a link to the original: LunchBreak

The Energy Collective Podcast: Cleantech, the Venture Capital Climate, and Policy

2011-12-15T13:21:00.000-05:00

We had a lively and informative discussion about Cleantech Investing on The Energy Collective a couple of weeks ago, with Will Coleman of Mohr Davidow, Dan Shugar of SunPower and Solaria, and yours truly, moderated by Jess Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute.

Here's how Amelia Timbers described it on The Energy Collective blog:

Will began with "cleantech investing 101", and explained how the macro economic situation and IPO backlog is affecting the venture capital world. He points to the patterns in cleantech venture capital as it matures as an industry of its own. He also points to the importance of large organizations getting involved in cleantech startups. Coleman discussed the complexity of technology risk and financing when startups are scaling from demonstration scale to commercialization.

Scott gave an example of corporate partnerships as a means of acheiving scale, and details the sophisticated 'balancing act' required by management teams in these situations. Scott also offers his insight on operating in China.

Dan Shugar explains his experience in solar, from Sunpower to Solaria, and who remains a strong advocate of renewables. Dan emphasizes the need for growing companies to operate leanly and to operate on as much a cash basis as possible.

And here are the slides and audio recording (about 1 1/2 hours long). You can also download the Podcast here: "How to Save the Planet on a Budget, Part 3"

How to Save a Planet - On a Budget: Cleantech, the Venture Capital Climate, and Policy

View more presentations from Social Media Today

And here is a video of the slides with audio recording:

Let me know what you think about our conversation.

My Interview with Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell's Entrepreneur-in-Residence

2011-12-13T10:50:00.000-05:00

While speaking at SXSW ECO back in early October, I was interviewed by Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell's Entreprenuer-in-Residence. We talked about being a skeptic in a green-enthusiast world and about looking for the killer apps in cleantech that are here today rather than waiting for the game-changing platforms of tomorrow.

Here is the interview:

And here is a link to the interview on YouTube, in case the player doesn't work in your browser: Green Skeptic on EIR at DELL

A Data Tonic for Impact Investors: GIIN's New Metrics

2011-12-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

The quest for common language and metrics may not be the Holy Grail, but for impact investors it's pretty close.

Now, the folks at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) have provided, if not the grail, at least a tonic for the growing community of impact investors.

Broadly defined, impact investors deliberately set out to invest for social and environmental impact. (Yes, really.) Until now, it's been difficult for such investors to fully evaluate their investments by financial performance data alone.

The new report is called Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) and it supplies the first holistic performance analysis for the impact investing industry.

A number of organizations have tried to develop their own metrics for social and environmental performance -- at Ashoka we long had one set of impact metrics in development -- but typically these have been inconsistent, inefficient and don't allow for comparisons across the board.

The new report coming out of GIIN's IRIS initiative presents early findings from nearly 2,400 organizations, ranging from microfinance institutions to mission-driven organizations. There is still a long way to go, but the hope is adoption of the IRIS methodology by a wider audience of companies, organizations, and funds will strengthen the market intelligence of this growing asset class.

And more and better data with proper comparative analysis should lead to better informed investments across the impact investing community and make for a more efficient and effective use of capital. Now that sounds like good gin to me.

You can download the report here (PDF): Data Driven: A Performance Analysis for the Impact Investing Industry

A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies: My Presentation from IMPACT 2011

2011-11-30T22:02:00.002-05:00

Today I presented "A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies: A case study of what leads to a successful exit or a stunning failure" at the IMPACT 2011 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic in Philadelphia, PA.

I told the stories of Solyndra and CPower and how they failed and succeeded, respectively.

Here are my slides from the presentation:

Scott Edward Anderson A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies

View more presentations from Scott Edward Anderson.

And here is a transcript of my notes/talking points on Scribd: A Tale of Two Cleantech Companies

7th Inning Stretch: A Note of Thanks from The Green Skeptic

2011-11-23T10:07:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite quotes about the writer-reader relationship is from Walter Lowenfels. I keep it at the top of my poetry blog as a reminder. Lowenfels wrote,

"One reader is a miracle; two, a mass movement."

I try to keep those words in mind every day as a writer.

On this the seventh anniversary of The Green Skeptic, I want to thank you, dear readers. I am grateful for your support, your comments, and your readership. I hope you are finding some sustenance here.

Seven years ago I wrote in the first post for this blog,

"As 'The Green Skeptic' I propose to create a web voice that is at once environmentally concerned, while remaining skeptical about our methods of communication and action. My blog will explore current environmental issues in a pragmatic fashion, debunking environmental myths, while supporting market-based solutions that compliment actions taken both locally and globally."

While this blog is about "challenging assumptions about how we live on the earth and protect our environment," it is also about the practice of writing.

Two bloggers I read regularly wrote eloquently about writing this week, Fred Wilson and Joshua Brown.

Fred wrote on A VC that through blogging

"I have learned to love writing. It's creative. It's a puzzle. How do I tell the story? How do I get my point across? How do I do it crisply and clearly? How do I end it on a strong note?"

Joshua, who writes the excellent blog, The Reformed Broker, suggested,

"It is in the writing that I discover what I actually think. It is in the writing and the communicating of ideas and concepts that they truly become mine. This is a cognitive learning thing that is very widely understood in the education world. When I'm blogging there are two things that are happening - you, the reader, are being exposed to something I think might be important and I, the writer, am crystallizing my own beliefs and understanding of the topic at hand."

Writing is important to me. As I've written elsewhere on this blog,

"I have always been a writer -- it's all I've really ever wanted to be. Sure, I do a lot of other things, always have, much of which I've stopped doing over the years. But I'll never stop writing. It's who I am. I'm a writer."

As we mark this seventh year of The Green Skeptic together, I want to thank you again for reading. I hope to keep up my end of the bargain moving forward with good, informed writing about the issues, a healthy skepticism about both hyperbole and hysteria and, most of all, a respect for you, my readers.

Happy Thanksgiving.

IMPACT 2011 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic to Feature Cleantech

2011-11-22T14:45:00.000-05:00

IMPACT 2011 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic, the annual conference put on by PACT (the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies), will take place a week from today and tomorrow (November 29 & 30) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Crystal Tea Room.

On Wednesday, the 30th, I'll be telling a "Tale of Two Cleantech Companies," offering perspective on a success story and a failure (hint: one of them is Solyndra) and Monday Night Football's Ron Jaworski, known to his fans as "Jaws," will be the keynote over lunch. Timothy C. Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will close the 29th as keynote speaker.

A rich cleantech track has been developed for this year's conference, including panels offering investors's perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of investing in clean energy technology and fund managers's perspectives on energy efficiency finance.

Panelists include representatives from Meidlinger Partners, SJF Ventures, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Blue Hill Partners, New Venture Partners, DB Climate Change Advisors, Transcend Equity Development Corp and the City of Philadelphia.

14 cleantech companies will present, including

AHI Technologies
Alencon Systems, Inc.
e2e Materials, Inc.
FieldView Solutions, Inc.
Holganix, LLC
LED Saving Solutions
Liberty Hydro, Inc.
Local Food Systems, Inc.
MATCOR, Inc.
Organica Sustainable Water, LLC
Proterro
Quench
Rho Renewables, Inc.
WhiteOptics LLC

See the full agenda here, including non-cleantech related agenda items.

Hope to see you there!

Create Value, Don't Trade Value

2011-11-18T11:38:00.021-05:00

"The problem society faces is that the best way to become rich is to trade value, not create value."

--Roger Martin, Dean of The Rotman School and author of Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, in interview with Steven Goldbach of Monitor Group

What is it about this statement that pisses me off? I mean no disrespect to Dean Martin (sorry, I couldn't resist), he's just the messenger, and I know he bemoans the truth of his statement as much as I do. But the fact that he's correct makes it even more troublesome.

We have completely forgotten what value is as a society. Winning is great in sports and in business, but it isn't great if it is at the expense of values and creating values.

Take Penn State as an example.

Officials at Penn State may have covered up the hateful and abhorrent crimes allegedly purported by one of its coaches over a decade because acknowledging and doing something about it might harm the mega-million dollar cash cow of its football program.

That's trading value not creating value.

Trading value creates harm because its driver is greed and its time horizon is temporary.

Creating value creates something lasting and beneficial, not just for stakeholders and stockholders, but for customers and all of society.

Apple creates value.

Mortgage-backed securities traded value.

We need more people creating value, lasting value, if we want our economy and our lives to thrive.

Will Wireless Vehicle Charging Become Like EZPass?

2011-11-15T13:36:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

A rather poor diagram of inductive charging.

Qualcomm, long a leader in the wireless and mobile space, is expanding into in the electric vehicle (EV) charging market with its acquisition last week of HaloIPT.

The acquisition, reportedly $70 million, has some in the EV charging space scratching their heads. Not because of Qualcomm's interest, but because they went after such a small player in the space.

HaloITP developed its wireless electric car charging technology out of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Wireless inductive charging, a process explained here allows an electric vehicle to drive over or near a mat that provides a charge without plugging in.

I've written about the need for and benefits of wireless EV charging technologies previously on this blog and, in the interest of full disclosure, I've done some advisory work with one company, Momentum Dynamics of Malvern, Pennsylvania.

According to sources close to Momentum, the company has already bested Halo, which had been doing 7,200 watts, achieving 30,000 watts. That's the level of power needed for commercial vehicles, which is Momentum's target market, and almost 10 times more powerful than WiTricity and Evatran can transmit 3,300 watts (more or less the capability of a low-powered Level 2 plug-in charger).

Momentum has been regularly getting 10,000 watts with greater than 90 percent efficiency. They are so efficient, my source tells me, "you can keep your fingers on them and barely detect that they are warm."

Toyota and GM are investor-partners in WiTricity and Powermat, respectively, and Nissan, meanwhile, is reportedly working on its own wireless charging technology. And Google tested Evatran's technology earlier this year.

With a big wireless player like Qualcomm moving into the space, is it only a matter of time before wireless EV charging becomes EZ and as ubiquitous as wireless toll collecting?

Can #poetryday Save Our Souls?

2011-11-11T09:51:00.077-05:00

Seamus HeaneyOn Thursday Umair Haque, self-described author, blogger, thinker, and reformer, suggested #poetryday on Twitter as an antidote to the usual "endless series of tweets about (no offense) trivial stuff" that ordinarily fills his stream.

For some of us -- poets and readers -- everyday is poetry day, but the more I thought about it and saw how others were responding to it, the more I started to think he may be onto something.

I'm not convinced that "poetry is the opposite of the profit motive," as one responder wrote, but I do believe with Seamus Heaney that poetry is "an anthropological necessity because if you didn't have poetry, everything would slip back into media speak."

We need poetry and the attention of the poet because, in Heaney's words, it "helps us to live our lives in the face of destruction."

"I keep getting this funny feeling that our degeneration and the fact that we treat great poetry like stupid rambling might be connected," Umair wrote in another Tweet.

Poet and lecturer David Whyte has been talking about the need for reconnecting with poetry for nearly two decades.

"Corporate America desperately needs the powers historically associated with the poetic imagination not only to see their way through the present whirligig of change, but also, because poetry asks for accountability to a human community, for rootedness and responsibility even as it changes," Whyte wrote in The Heart Aroused, his 1994 book about poetry and the need for more soul in the workplace.

We may never get the news from poetry, as William Carlos Williams posited, but turning away from poetry may prevent us from achieving what Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky called "the goal of our species."

(Disclosure: The author is an award-winning poet who also blogs about poetry at seapoetry.wordpress.com.)

Acumen Fund's 10 Lessons Learned About Getting Beyond Poverty

2011-11-10T11:23:00.000-05:00

Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund

Five years ago I sat down with Jacqueline Novogratz to talk about Acumen Fund. She was just about to leave for a trip to Africa and I was just beginning to think about leaving The Nature Conservancy.

To my mind at the time the Conservancy had moved away from its core strength of supporting work on-the-ground and in-the-water -- we were more focused on large-scale global planning.

We had moved to the side of the "Planners" versus the "Searchers," to use William Easterly's nomenclature from his critique of Western efforts to "Aid the Rest," White Man's Burden.

"Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in demand," Easterly wrote. "Planners apply global blueprints [emphasis mine]; Searchers adapt to local conditions. Planners at the top lack knowledge of the bottom; Searchers find out what the reality is at the bottom. Planners never hear whether the planned got what it needed; Searchers find out if the customer is satisfied..."

Acumen Fund was on the side of the Searchers, the entrepreneurs. I wanted to get back to working with entrepreneurs who were doing real work.

There were three things I really liked about Acumen Fund:

1.) They were investing not donating -- and they were all about results.
2.) They thought like a Venture Fund, only with a more patient, long-term view.
3.) Jacqueline. She was direct and didn't beat around the bush.

I need to explain that last bullet.

I was coming from a big, non-profit corporation, which operated in many ways like a Fortune 500 company. Five years into its life Acumen was still more like a small and nimble start-up fund.

As entrepreneurial as I was -- I'd started several print and online media ventures over the years -- and despite how intrapraneurial I had been in my time with the Conservancy, Jacqueline saw that I wouldn't fit into Acumen at that time.

"Have you thought about starting something on your own?" Jacqueline asked.

(I ended up going to Ashoka as their vice president for global development before moving on to start my own endeavors.)

I continue to follow, support, and be impressed by Acumen's progress. They have an impressive record of success.

Tonight and tomorrow Jacqueline and Acumen Fund are celebrating 10 years of creating a world beyond poverty by investing patient capital in social enterprises, emerging leaders, and breakthrough ideas.

Since 2001, the fund has invested more than $65 million in enterprises providing access to water, health, alternative energy, housing and agricultural services to low-income customers in South Asia and Africa. Their global community of emerging leaders combines the tools of business and philanthropy, making the world a better place.

Here are 10 Things Acumen Fund has learned over the past 10 years:

1. Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

2. Neither grants nor markets alone will solve the problems of poverty.

3. Poverty is a description of someone’s economic situation, it does not describe who someone is.

4. We won’t succeed in the long term without cultivating local leaders, local money, and strong local communities.

5. Great people, every time, no exceptions.

6. Great technology alone is not the answer.

7. If failing is not an option, you’ve ruled out success as well.

8. Governments rarely invent solutions, but they can scale what works.

9. There is no currency like trust, and there are no shortcuts to earning it.

10. Patient capital investing is built upon a system of values; it is not a series of steps to be followed.

You can learn more about Acumen Fund here and download their Lessons Learned here.

Congratulations Jacqueline and Acumen Fund on ten years of success -- and here's to the next ten years!

Alaska and United Make For Greener Friendly Skies

2011-11-09T09:22:00.000-05:00


This Eskimo has reason to smile.

As one of the worst storms in the last 40 years heads for the Alaska coast, Alaska Airlines prepares to storm the future by launching the first of 75 scheduled biofuels-powered flights.

The first will depart from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEATAC) heading for Washington Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.

The second will head from SEATAC to Portland, OR. Both will be powered by a blend of jet fuel and 20 percent biofuel derived from used cooking oil.

Using social media to promote this flight, Alaska will host a Twitter-based discussion onboard the first flight, which the airline is calling "#FlyGreen Chat," to talk about the future of aviation, sustainability, and environmental awareness.

United Continental made history on Monday when the first commercial biofuels-powered flight completed a trip from Houston to Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

United announced Monday that it signed a letter of intent with Solazyme Inc., which provided the biofuel for Monday's Continental flight, to buy 20 million gallons of algae-derived biofuel annually.

Solazyme is one of the US Navy's partners supplying jet and other fuels for its fleets in the air and water, as I wrote about in The Energy Collective in September.

You can learn more about Alaska Airlines Greener Skies Initiative and its biofuels program at Greener Skies Initiative and join the conversation on Twitter by following #FlyGreen.

Remember When Boxing Was King? RIP Joe Frazier

2011-11-08T09:40:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in my house I have a postcard signed by Jack Dempsey.

The card is just like the one depicted here and the signature is virtually the same, although I think it says, "Hey, Scott --" over his name. My father got it for me while on a business trip to New York.

As a kid, I was a boxing nut. Of course it was hard not to be in those days -- the 70s -- with Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, the "Thrilla in Manila," the "Rumble in the Jungle," and all that "float like a butterfly and stinging like a bee" poetry.

I followed every fight, read every book I could, from Joe Louis's autobiography My Life to A.J. Liebling's The Sweet Science, and watched every boxing film from "Rocky" to "Raging Bull" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight" to "The Harder They Fall."

My brothers and I used to don socks stuffed with socks and have three-round fights on the "ring" of our parents' king-sized bed until we broke the box spring.

Boxing was king back then. But as the 70s came to a close and Frazier and Ali retired and then Ali's battle with Parkinson's shed light on the brutality of boxing, I lost interest.

By the time Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear, I was long over my obsession with boxing.

Watching Muhammad Ali deteriorate over the years proved a knock-out for me and the sport. (Don't even get me started on cage fighting.)

The death of Smokin' Joe Frazier brought me back to those days when boxing was king this morning.

"Life doesn't run away from nobody," Joe Frazier once said. "Life runs at people."

Rest in Peace, Joe.

Beacon Power and Other Gov't VC Bets: The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

2011-11-03T12:49:00.000-05:00

I sat down yesterday with Stuart Varney, Elizabeth MacDonald and company to talk about Beacon Power's bankruptcy and what the government should and should not be doing in clean energy. Hint: It's not playing venture capitalist.

Here's the video:

And here is a link if the player doesn't work in your browser: Green Skeptic on FOX Business

Falling Up: The Choices We Make May Be Our Own

2011-11-01T07:51:00.000-05:00

Letchworth Gorge by J. Stephen Conn, used by permission.

When I was 15 years old I was hiking in Letchworth Gorge in upstate New York. (Here is a picture of the gorge, left.) A beautiful place.

Despite the warnings or perhaps because of them -- I was a teenager after all -- I got too close to the edge. And I fell. I fell for what seemed like a long way and a long time, but in reality it was perhaps just a matter of seconds.

Time dragged, however, like a cartoon character falling off a cliff – think of Bugs Bunny falling, eating a carrot, reading War and Peace, and filing his nails. I was remarkably calm, at peace, really. One with the fall, it was a true Buddhist moment.

And then it was over. Somehow there was a branch or root and my arm reached out to grab it – I remember the jerking feeling like a parachute opening…I was safe. I'd fallen but I didn't die. I had a second chance.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, I climbed back up to the top of the gorge.

That memory has been haunting me lately. I shared this story in my talk at SXSW last month and again with a group of leaders at a retreat last week.

Why am I reminded of this story now? Well, as I wrote in an earlier post on this blog, I think our economy is in free-fall and we seriously need to change.

The latest example of a society in free-fall is the news of a "celebrity marriage" failing after 72 days.

According to Twitter sources that include some celebrities allegedly close to the situation, the wedding earned the bride $17.9 million. Really? $17.9 million for a marriage that lasted 72 days?

No wonder people like Lawrence Lessig think our society could fall like Rome.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can change the outcome. We can adopt a new game plan.

But we can't change the world if we aren't first prepared to change within ourselves and live the lives we know we can live, be the people we know we can be, and take the actions we are compelled to take.

The choice is ours, but we must be conscious as we make our choices. We need to stop compromising in our lives, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. And we need to deliver lasting value, to innovate, and finally, to inspire and be inspired.

When you're free-falling, you have two choices: keep falling to the bottom or grab the first available branch, scamper back up to the top and create a new path forward. Call it "falling up."

Which do you choose? And what are you waiting for?

From The Green Skeptic Archives: Caring, or A New Conservation Ethic

2011-10-27T08:47:00.004-05:00

My son Jasper tagging a saltwater croc, Mexico, January 2005

[Note: While on hiatus this week, I'm re-posting gems from The Green Skeptic Archives. This post originally appeared on 7 October 2005.--SEA]

Over the past several weeks, in the conference centers of Monterey, the wilderness of Yosemite, and the halls of my company's offices in suburban Washington, our talk has been about drawing a closer connection between conservation and people.

We've come a long way, but still have miles to go before we can say we've expanded the boundaries of our own conservation ethic.

I've been thinking a lot lately about conservation ethic. One phrase that keeps coming back to me is Robert Michael Pyle's statement that "People who care conserve, people who don't know don't care." It's a powerful truism and one to which we should pay heed.

Our movement is often accused of being elitist and defeatist and, frankly, those criticisms are far too often accurate. Beautiful photos of pristine places beg the question, "What about the people?"

(Pyle's words came back to me during tonight's playoff battle of the Sox. It was late in the game, my beloved Red Sox had bases loaded and blew several chances to tie the game or take the lead. Johnny Damon was up, surely ready to play the hero. My nine-year old son, who learned to care about baseball -- and my team -- during the 2003 ALCS, was on tenterhooks: would Damon do it? When the Caveman struck out, stranding three base runners and turning the BoSox into WoeSox once again, my son was apoplectic. "Now I know you are a true fan," I told him. "You really cared." I haven't seen him that upset since he learned that polar bears were losing habitat to global warming!)

We need a new conservation ethic that clearly redefines the human + nature equation: that human beings are not apart from, but rather a part of nature. We need to articulate the real connections between conservation and restoration of the earth's natural functions -- also known as ecosystem services -- and their real implications for the people of the earth.

Moreover, that we care about people as much as the earth's other species. Without this, we will sink in a downward spiral of our own making.

Whether we're talking about food, fuel, fiber for clothing or paper or a myriad of other goods and services nature provides, we need to stop "seeing the natural world as a resource for the economy," as James Gustave Speth writes in his book, Red Sky at Morning, "rather than seeing the economy as nested in the natural world."

We have obligations to the world that go beyond our self-interest, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, and until we own up to this our conservation ethic will ring false for the majority of the world's people. Our new conservation ethic must be as inclusive as it is pragmatic, and as interconnected to the other issues of our time -- poverty alleviation, terrorism, AIDS/HIV -- as to the natural world we hold dear.

We need to remember this whether we're on higher ground in one of this nation's important National Parks, the sterile corridors of an office in northern Virginia, or the cozy confines of that little bandbox of a ballpark that is Fenway.