The price of implementing clean energy by Tony Green

I read an article written by Michelle Kraus as a Special to the Mercury News titled,” Clean tech in the future but funding is another story” which talked about the challenges of investing in clean tech. The piece reported the credit needed to fund renewable energy projects, which are extremely capital intensive, has become a challenge with the struggling economy.

Many of the ventures, in spite of their fascinating technology, are not making any money, really profit, and contain no guarantees their technology is scalable, i.e. able to be adopted in large scale.

Unless a company enjoys access to wealthy people or banks willing to loan money into these ventures or provide an available line of credit surviving it may be difficult to get these businesses to generate enough sales to sustain them, let’s be honest, bootstrapping can only go so far.

The fact remains without the financial support the alternative energies need promising technologies and companies who can change the way we live such as Google, Cisco, and Microsoft might not become the companies they are today.
The reality is VC’s, angels and other institutional investors built Silicon Valley from its beginnings as much as the innovators who founded companies and their dedicated employees are the investors whose money to allowed these innovators to chase their dreams.

Now what? The current circumstances require innovative solutions to these problems be determined. Necessity is the mother and father of invention. People will find a way. Our energy future depends on it.

Back to High school by Tony Green

Last month I had the opportunity to visit Woodside High School on Woodside, California to discuss Green careers with 10th graders. My trip was a part of an engineering outreach program sponsored by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council (SVEC) where an engineer took an hour to speak with students.

My presentation walked through what types of energy could be classified as renewable, the definition of a green job, as well as the factors which will result in four million green jobs by 2038 and why they wanted to be on the side of folks with the skills required to be hired in these jobs.

In short, I recommended the students, “Live it, learn it, and hit the books”.
While I was at Woodside I got a chance to visit a garden the tenth graders planted and landscaped and even included a chicken coop. The plan involved growing vegetables organically and learning the principles of composting. The on-hands approach seems to be an excellent way to learn a bit more about the environment the green movement is intended to protect.

A while later another student stepped into the classroom, he was not in either of the classes I spoke with, who wanted to share his idea to create a method to generate energy using the water that came from the water company. What would be achievable if everyone aggressively pursued ways to make the world a better place?

In my view, it is wonderful the renewable energy awareness is beginning to creep into our schooling. Ultimately the adoption of green will be dependent on everyone being educated about alternative energy and are aware of the value of protecting the environment.

I felt, upon leaving, if this is the future of our education system and these students in the long run become the concerned green consumers of tomorrow everything this just might turn out alright.