cleantech stories ::

imagine cleantech  by MA Neff

Unprecedented social and tech networks are crossing long-held mindsets, turning attention to a shared focus: Designing new ways to reverse a deteriorating environment. Here's a look at changes to come when design thinking influences major organizations — or at least your next big initiative.

Psychologist Richard Farson, founder of the nonprofit Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, CA, holds that it is time we become design-driven. Designers are well suited as leaders, he says: they're adept at recognizing context and historical perspectives in the arts, sciences and humanities; they appreciate working in ensembles and often are environmentally aware and are willing to stretch beyond the limits of technology; designers depend on a high level of creative thinking and appreciate esthetic dimensions of leadership. The first step, then, is for designers to begin to imagine themselves as leaders of design firms, of communities, of cultural organizations, of corporations and especially as board members. In Farson's thinking, "design may soon become the byword of leadership and management."

[Management by Design, by Richard Farson, Western Behavioral Sciences Institute]

chatter ::

Midway through 2009 as he was about to step down as Royal Dutch Shellís CEO, 62-year-old Jeroen van der Veer said, ìAt university I learned you have supply and demand and the two are at equilibrium by price.î Such 1970ís thinking becomes less convincing each time it's recited and thatís because the planet has never been here before: so close to clean tech, so far from equilibrium and so worth working toward on all sides. What it will take to legitimize the price of a green economy is developing technologies that increase the supplies of clean energy (wind, solar, etc.) and reduce the demand for dirty energy (coal, oil, natural gas). Certainly, there is ample entrepreneurial spirit in the U.S. and beyond to feed such technology innovation. Still so far no breakthrough or incremental improvements have reached the magnitude needed to drive down the price of clean energy.

The second thing it will take to get the price right for clean energy is government policy. Thereís economic policy like the $167 billion stimulus package which is slated to provide $32.7 billion in direct grants to cleantech companies and $134 billion in loan guarantees to investors in large projects. Then thereís policy by way of renewable energy standards. These will need to be decided among businesses and governments, from agency to agency, state to state and from nation to nation. As the G8 Summit in July 2009 foretold, neither developing nations or larger ones such as China, India, Brazil or Russia are ready to jump on the lower emissions train.

Despite slack policy standards, the information technology economy has forged ahead. In the business of clean technology, sophisticated tools and eager minds have glimpsed the prize. Evidence is blogged daily by a proliferation of carbon traders and can be measured by the $5.8 billion in venture funding awarded to cleantech in 2008. Last century, when Shellís departed CEO attended college, price may have been taught as a function of world markets. This December, according to the stances of nearly 200 nations attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, it may be learned instead that the price of clean technology is not nearly as dear as the avoidance of political hazard.

[Final Words from Shell's Departing CEO, by Jad Mouawad, Green Inc, New York Times Blog, June 30, 2009] • [The Elusive Green Economy, by Joshua Green, Atlantic Magazine, July/August, 2009] • [ Report to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the SmartGrid Interoperability Standards Roadmap, prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute, June 17, 2009.]