3p Contributor: Steve Puma
Recent Articles
SABA Motors Vision: an Exotic Electric Sports Car for the Masses
Ever since I was a kid, when my father used give me Matchbox cars he bought on his way home from work, I’ve been crazy about cars. So I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to speak with Simon Saba of Saba Motors, whose EV vision is something any gearhead can get jazzed about: to deliver an exotic electric sports car with a price tag of under $40,000, that will have the looks and performance of cars costing 10 times as much and is environmentally friendly to boot!
I had the pleasure to speak with the animated Mr. Saba and his charming wife at the Fast Lane to CleanTech Incubator Mixer, held at Club Autosport in San Jose. Club Autosport is the current home of Saba Motors, and hosts it and a number of other cleantech companies at its “car-condominium” facility, as part of the Electronic Transportation Development Center (ETDC), a San Jose Redevelopment Agency initiative to incubate and support startups dedicated to clean automotive technologies, including battery infrastructure startup EVIN, the very unusual compressed air powered Magnetic Air Cars, and over 30 others.
Notes from the Cleantech Open Awards Gala
At the last minute, I decided to attend Tuesday night’s Cleantech Open Awards Gala, and was pleasantly surprised at just how many companies with game-changing technologies were participating in the event. From the finalists to the runners-up to last year’s winners, the promise of what was on display was truly astounding, and gives me quite a bit of hope that we have a strong chance of beating some of the enormous challenges that are facing our environment.
EcoFactor, the competition’s overall winner, humorously presented an amazingly simple concept: a web-enabled thermostat that automatically and continuously adjusts the temperature of your home based on local environmental conditions. According to the company, more than half of households with programmable thermostats do not program them. The company’s technology avoids that problem, providing 25 percent or more energy savings with a hands-free solution.
While EcoFactor certainly has a very innovative product, I was simply shocked that they managed to beat out fellow finalist New Sky Energy, whose carbon-negative C02-to-building materials process appears to be an almost magical solution to excess carbon emissions. New Sky’s revolutionary chemical technology takes carbon dioxide from the air, combines it with polluted water, salts and renewable energy and ends up with carbonate-based building materials, in the form of bricks, tiles, laminated wood composites and others.
Video: Al Gore Interviewed by Katie Couric
It has been three years since the release of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Yesterday, Katie Couric sat down for an exclusive interview the former Vice President in advance of the release of his new book, Our Choice.
In the interview, Mr. Gore talks about the potential impacts of climate change, the need for sustained action, the importance of reducing dependence on foreign oil, and the benefits that can be realized in the process. He also addresses questions about his most vocal climate change critics.
The following are highlights from the interview, or you can watch the full show on the CBS News website.
Clip 1: We’ve Got To Act
Al Gore speaks about the key to solving the climate crisis is having a strong grassroots consensus, and how many people are beginning to stand up.
SF Green Chamber of Commerce Celebrates Second Anniversary
Over the past several months, TriplePundit has published many stories about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s stance opposing climate change legislation, and the subsequent announcements by Nike, Apple, PG&E and others that they would be leaving the national chamber in response. The Chamber has been embroiled in even further controversy, when it was discovered that the organization was playing fast and loose with its membership numbers and suffered a false press conference attack by the Yes Men.
Yesterday, we reported about several organizations that see sustainability as a catalyst for economic opportunity, and are helping member businesses realize the potential. Today, I would like to add to this list the Green Chamber of Commerce, a San Francisco-based business network of more than 160 Bay Area businesses from various industry sectors including architecture & design, media, finance, legal, renewable energy, and health. The company is celebrating its second anniversary this Thursday, November 5th, with an event titled, “Building an Honest Economy”, featuring a keynote speech by Ahmed Rahim, CEO and co-founder of Numi Organic Tea.
Can Ford Motors Deliver on its Sustainability Promises?
Ford Motor Company may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think about large corporations that are committed to sustainability. After all, the company is one of the oldest and largest industrial corporations around, and produces many of the large SUVs and trucks that are at the center of the current climate controversy. So it may be surprising for some to learn that the company actually has a very extensive sustainability strategy in the works.
Several pieces of this strategy were unveiled in San Francisco last Thursday, at an event entitled Inside Ford’s Electrification Strategy. Ford’s newly-titled Director of Global Electrification, Nancy Gioia, explained how the company is not only planning to build battery-electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) vehicles, but is also working on strategies to build the infrastructure that will support those vehicles. Attendees at the event were also invited to test-drive two news Ford vehicles, the Escape PHEV and the Focus BEV. While my fellow 3P colleague, Mary Catherine O’Connor, will be posting an in-depth look at Ford’s electrification strategy itself, I would like to talk about the company’s overall strategy.
Open Data Isn’t Just a Good Idea, It’s Factual
Above: “U.S. Hikes”, a live data table by Factual.com: Click & Scroll to view & edit data.
“Decisions. They are made every day. Some are made on the fly such as when a low fuel alert prompts me to stop at the nearest gas station. Some are more considered, involving detailed research and analysis, perhaps on the Internet or consulting with friends or experts. And others are made for us, by our friends and family, or our government. An important question is: are we all, given the data available to us today, making good, well-informed decisions? One thing is nearly certain, if your data isn’t accurate and accessible, a good decision isn’t likely to follow.” – Factual, Inc. CEO Gil Elbaz
As anyone who has ever tried to write a business plan knows, good, reliable data is hard to come by, and can be very expensive. Los Angeles-based startup Factual.com aims to change all that by creating a free “open data platform”.. The company believes that allowing the crowd to create, edit, discuss, share, substantiate or disagree with the data data will bring true accountability and openness to data.
Are Financial Collapses Unavoidable?
I recently read the article Why Capitalism Fails by Stephen Mihm and was interested to learn about Hyman Minski, who, according to the article, was
…a hitherto obscure macroeconomist who died over a decade ago. Many economists had never heard of him when the crisis struck… But lately he has begun emerging as perhaps the most prescient big-picture thinker about what, exactly, we are going through…Minsky was one economist who saw what was coming. He predicted, decades ago, almost exactly the kind of meltdown that recently hammered the global economy.
Minsky basically believed that the conservative fiscal stance which comes in the wake of a financial collapse, such as the Great Depression, would inevitably sow the seeds for the next crisis decades down the road. The main ingredients are time and short human memories, “Instability,” he wrote, “is an inherent and inescapable flaw of capitalism.” The article compares Minsky’s view to the one held by mainstream economics, that capitalism is self-regulating and self-stabilizing, known as the Neoclassical Synthesis.
Sustainable Minds Makes Life Cycle Analysis Easy
Paper or plastic? Diesel or hybrid? Extrude or blow-mold? Some of the most difficult problems in designing sustainable products involve making the right choices in materials, processes and transportation methods. However, choosing the options that will actually have a lower environmental impact is much more complex that one would think.
Deciding what metrics to use, where to draw the boundaries and how to compare wildly different materials is a highly involved and technical art known as Life-Cycle Analysis, or LCA. Sustainable Minds, a Boston-based software company, is making LCA much more accessible to designers with its new web-based software service. I was recently able to see the software in action at a seminar entitled, “Mastering Environmental Impact Assessment in the Design Process”
As Pratt Institute professor and ecologist Christopher X J. Jensen, Ph.D., explains, while quantitative methods, such as LCA are the best ways to measure the environmental impact of a product, these methods need to be applied by scientists, and do not jibe well with the qualitative methods generally used by designers to evaluate the aesthetics of a product design.
Book Review: Living Above the Store by Martin Melaver
Martin Melaver, author of the new book, Living Above the Store, is something of a rarity for an author of a sustainable business text: someone who actually has decades of experience doing the work to create a socially-responsible business. Which is very lucky for us, because while many books claim to be able to teach us how to do it, very few can do so with the wisdom of experience on their side.
The result is an honest and forthright look at what it really takes for shape and maintain values-based business in a very traditional industry.
Melaver is CEO of Melaver, Inc.-a third-generation, family-owned company based in Savannah, Georgia. Through a series of personal anecdotes, Melaver explains, in detail, how a small corner grocery store evolved into a major regional chain, eventually transforming itself into a real estate company focused on sustainable development and management. The fact that this happened was not by accident: all along its seventy-year history, the company chose to pursue a values-based path, even when it meant making difficult choice.
Despite its limitations, Living Above the Store has some really great information. Among my favorites are:
Greening Graduation
It’s amazing how cheap. diposable products and waste have crept into even our oldest traditions. It’s insidious. I’m talking about the commencement ceremonies that are happening at every high school, college and university at this time of year. Even my own graduation, a ceremony meant to celebrate the achievement of people dedicated to sustainability and building a world that works for future generations, was rife with single-use items that were never intended to be that way.
I don’t blame the institutions, which, by necessity, are obligated to provide their students and their loved ones with a ceremony befitting of their hard work and investments in time and money. I don’t blame the students, faculty, family and staff who have these expectations either. We certainly should not be in the business of sacrificing the things that mean the most to us in the process of achieving a sustainable world.
It all comes down to a matter of perceived cost. Most of the items currently used are very cheaply made because graduation is seen as a very rare occurrence: why spend a lot of money on something that will only happen once a year for the institution, and only a handful of times for the graduate?
Not to mention the fact that the regalia is not exactly everyday wear. Even a bridesmaid’s dress might be remade into a cocktail dress that might get worn after the big day, but graduation gowns are never seen outside of a graduation ceremony.
So…how do we make graduation more sustainable?
Reducing Waste by Turning Packaging into Products
One of the more interesting themes at the Greener by Design 2009 Conference is how some companies are reducing waste by turning their product packaging into reusable products. From the manufacturer end, Hewlett-Packard is leading the charge, with unique packaging solutions for its Voodoo line of high-performance laptops and for a line of products being sold at Wal-Mart.
Voodoo, recently acquired by HP, delivers ultra-high-performance gaming machines with a slick, minimalist aesthetic reminiscent of Apple products. Hewlett-Packard Creative Director Mark Solomon explained that the company wanted to design a unique packaging solution that would reduce waste while also increasing the value of the open-box experience for their customers. They wanted a solution that was as unique as the laptops themselves.
Ford Will Convert SUV Plant to Small Cars and New Electric Vehicle
Going Green Today Whips Your Saggy Sustainability Butt into Shape
There are a lot of websites attempting to make the world more “green” by changing individual behavior. These companies use a number of different methods to accomplish this, such as carbon footprint calculators (CarbonFund.org), simulation games (ClimateCulture.com) or mapping tools (LocalHarvest.org). They all have one thing in common: they require the user to keep using them, to keep coming back.
Making your life more eco-efficient is kind of like losing weight: you have to stay motivated until you start to see results. If you are not seeing results, you are likely to get discouraged and eat the next doughnut that comes along. When that happens, you need someone to remind you to get back on track. When it comes to sustainability, Going Green Today wants to be your personal sustainability coach.
Tax Day Brings Tax Protests
Many Americans will be marking the arrival of April 15th by doing more than just dropping an envelope in the mail at their local post office: they will be protesting on a number of related topics, including tax reform, corporate bailouts, and excessive government spending. These protests have become known as tea parties, referring to the American colonists’ protest against “taxation without representation” at the Boston Tea Party.
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