Competition opens doors to green business; local legislation and incentives follow
By Bill Picture
Published: November, 2006
A standing-room only crowd filled the North Light Court of San Francisco’s City Hall on Sept. 26 to honor the winners of the first annual California Clean Tech Open. The competition, the brainchild of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Club of Northern California, is intended to encourage innovation in environmentally conscious or clean technology, related to renewal energy, energy efficiency, pollution reduction and resource conservation.
Since the call for submissions went out in April, more than 150 proposals were submitted. Of those, 43 finalists were chosen, from which five winners were selected and announced at the awards ceremony in San Francisco. Three of the winners are based in the Bay Area. Each winner received a combination of cash and professional services to help put their winning ideas into action.
Energy
Adura Technologies, Inc. was the winner in the Energy Efficiency category. The Berkeley-based company has developed technology that will allow businesses to turn off unnecessary lights in commercial office buildings, where a single switch generally controls several panels of lighting. Adura’s control can be installed in less than five minutes per fixture and will save businesses more than 50 percent on lighting energy costs.
Transportation
Palo Alto-based KiteShip was the winner in the Transportation category. Large ships now consume 10 percent of the world’s fuel and produce three times more pollution than all of the automobiles in the world put together. KiteShip has developed a very large retractable kite that provides sail power without the need for a fixed mast. The sail will reduce a ship’s fuel consumption by 25 percent, and vastly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
Renewables
Another Berkeley company, GreenVolts, was the winner in the Renewables category. GreenVolts has developed High Concentration Photovoltaic technology that produces energy at half the cost of traditional solar panels.
In a rousing speech, guest speaker Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and founder of Menlo Park-based Khosla Ventures, pushed for entrepreneurs to focus more attention on finding feasible ways to reduce petroleum consumption. Khosla, one of the nation’s most outspoken and influential advocates for the use of clean-burning and high-octane ethanol, went on to offer up decreased petroleum consumption as a possible solution to many of the world’s most pressing problems.
Terrorism, pollution, climate crisis – they all have a common root, Khosla explained. That common root is petroleum.
Khosla downplayed recent advancements in solar power, explaining that the high cost of installing solar panels makes this renewable energy source’s adoption by the masses unlikely any time soon. Instead, he pointed to battery technology as a better means of reducing coal consumption for power generation.
Battery technology is one of the most urgent needs, he said, but one of the slowest to innovate.
Government
The following day, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32, which requires that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced 25 percent statewide by 2020. The law is the first of its kind in the country.
It’s time to get serious, added San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who also spoke at the California Clean Tech Open event. We can’t wait another day.
Among Newsom’s ideas for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in San Francisco is to insist that The City’s taxi companies switch to cleaner-burning alternative fuels.
To further encourage developments in clean technology, Newsom has offered a payroll tax exemption to clean tech companies that wish to do business in San Francisco.
Clean tech is where it’s at, he added. This is where we connect the ideological divide between economic growth and environmental stewardship.
For information about California Clean Tech Open, visit www.cacleantech.org.
