https://getit.orgTransforming the Planet – Energy for all – Communicatons for all

Day 2 of the TED conference was as stimulating as Day 1. There were so many artists, musicians, neurologists, actors, and technology revolutionists, all presenting so many exciting new developments. The common theme that was my takeaway, is that often it is our apparent success that holds us back from looking for new solutions. We need to rethink old technology and business models. We need to strive for creative, bold and audacious solutions to address the urgent needs of society. The solutions are here if we can think out of the box! There were many examples shared, new ways of doing surgery, new ways of removing bone marrow, new types of architecture, observing geckos to learn how to make better robots, etc.

I will share three examples, which relates to the interest of this blog, i.e. the “Green Technology” issue.

1)   Having listened to Al Gore’s speech on Climate Change, Kevin Surase and his friends decided to see what they could do to help. They investigated and realized that “dirty” construction of building materials and buildings, and inefficient energy use in building contributes to 52% of C02 emissions! They also found that we were actually using age-old technology from the 1800s in construction. So he started with drywall (we are still making it the way we did back in the 1800s) and invented a new drywall material that takes 80% less energy to produce hence reducing carbon footprint by 80%. He has built a “Green” factory in China (Serious Materials) and is going for mass production to make his mark, and looking at windows next (we are using old technology there too).

2)   Another keen entrepreneur found that we were still making circuit breakers as we did back in 1879. There are 10 billion electrical sockets in the United States alone that still use this old technology, and thus 83% of homes are below the safety level. Electrical sockets today are the main causes of fires, child accidents and inefficient use of energy.  So he worked on putting in microchips into at the plug end and the socket receiver. These are called “EFCI” or Intelligent Electrical Outlet. These sockets and other similar developments will help reduce energy consumption and increase efficiencies dramatically (not to mention fires and child safety).

3)   Shai Agassi, the genius behind the networked electric car, pointed out that car manufacturers tends to focus inwardly to find solutions for electric cars. They try to put the solution within the car rather than on the infrastructure. They focus on making better batteries to store energy, thus making the car the mini crude oil well or storage tank. Consumers have then to pay for the whole well rather than just what they use, making electric cars too expensive for them to buy. This is a very old business model and so he decided to learn from the cellular phone model to create a new business model and infrastructure that creates new possibilities.

He separates the car ownership from the batter ownership, and created the concept of battery swap stations (which in turn use Green energy to charge the batteries at these stations). So now we can make cheaper electric cars (can even be commoditized to be free as we do with cell phones i.e. tied with a battery use plan), and the consumers pay for battery power as they use. We are talking about 8cents per mile by 2010, 4 cents per mile by 2015 and 2cts a mile by 2020 (as battery lifecycle improves).

He challenges us to move away from small steps i.e. saying that we will reduce C02 by 20% by 2020, to thinking in terms of just two numbers. 0 and infinity. 0 for zero carbon footprint and scale to infinity. If we don’t change this mindset, we will loose our economy right after we loose our morality.

Israel, Denmark, Australia, Hawaii and San Francisco Bay Area will be some places that this model will be launched over the coming years.

For those of you who may not be as familiar with TED, it is a very intellectually stimulating thought provoking conference. It throws in artists, musicians, scientists, inventors, neurologists, anthropologists, writers, digital imaging experts, etc in a series of short talks that could seem very unrelated but yet very vividly portrays how the best innovations come from a multidisciplinary approach to intellectual curiousity.  Some speakers are very dramatic (e.g. Bill Gates released mosquitos into the audience so they could experience what most poor people in the world experience – to make a point about malaria eradication as a urgent goal).

One of the key themes touched upon in the conference is the environment.

Al Gore, the key proponent of this message gave a quick update from his TED talk last year and very dramatically using visual animation showed how the poles are being depleted of size and thickness. He emphasized that there is a need to see this problem as urgent. There were also photographer Yan Arthus-Betrand who showed vivid pictures of how the world is affected. Another visual dramatic of the issue was done by a movie maker Jake Eberts who will be releasing a movie (free of copyright) in June called “Oceans”, which hopes using high tech cameras to follow motion and life of the ocean to create an emotive link between us and why we should care for life in the oceans. Meanwhile, inventor of Makinapower.com, showed how wind turbines are a limiting way of taping into wind power. Instead, we should use crosswind kite power at 1,200 feet and higher and we can easily within 2 years fly machines that can generate Megawatt of power each to help meet the power needs of the world. Amazing!

What struck me the most though was the message from Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Global, a company that makes carpets (often known as the greatest culprit of C02 emissions). He spoke about how he read the book “Ecology of Business” and felt very bad to be part of an industry that was a major plunderer of nature. For him to speak right after Al Gore and talk about being a recovering plunderer was very impactful indeed! He has experimented with and found that the old model of business of take, make and waste can be replaced with a more sustainable cyclical mode of production. He has tried it and made great success (better product, better market, better employees)- Flor Carpets. He says “It is indeed a better business model!”  Besides making more profits than before, he also found that his Green products helped him ride out the dotcom crash when global markets were down by 36% and his revenues were only down by 17%.

He discussed how the current industrial model is I=PxAxT (I= Environmental Impact, P=Population, A=Affluence and T=Technology). He explored and was able to prove that Technology can be used to reduce I or Environmental Impact. He now sees that the formula can be I=PxA/T (although he feels if we collect less as affluent people, we can reduce it by even more). To me, this formula makes a lot of sense, and clearly why we should think about how ICT can be used to reduce the carbon footprint for all other sectors. And if ICT itself is clean, then we have made that much more progress in our battle to combat greenhouse gases.

He concluded by pointing out that the bottom line is we live in a finite world, and we have to live in it sustainably. The way we are doing it today, we are robbing tomorrows child of their future. He thinks that this theft will someday be considered a crime. But for now, he emphasizes that it makes good business sense, so why not do what is right!