Green Leaf Report

Image by George Dearing via Flickr

What is a clean technology? The Clean Technology 2009 conference in Houston is one of the most all-encompassing technology events that  I’ve attended.  I concentrated primarily on the presentations and companies related to renewable energy, learning more about marine power, tidal energy, solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, energy efficiency and green roofs, and even a little about waste stream reuse.

It was a great opportunity learn about innovation in the energy world and weigh some of the pros and cons of our portfolio of energy options.  I was a little surprised by the number of references to wind power from other renewable energy producers, though.  I pointed out to a few attendees during discussions- sure, wind is getting a lot of attention, but the big technology we all need to compete with is still fossil fuel.  Maybe utility scale wind power has jumped the shark in the world of renewables, no longer struggling for attention in the same manner as some of the other technologies.  But let’s not all compete for the same 2%-6% of energy production in the US; we need to think bigger! 

I was surprised not to hear hear from anyone on the floor about nuclear, with all the recent dialog about nuclear power as a cleaner technology.  But maybe the difference is that many of the attendees are small companies and start-ups interested in funding.  Nuclear doesn’t take that route; it hasn’t been achievable for the average entrepreneur…Or for the average major corporation in America, recently.

I didn’t attend the clean coal presentation, and the booth remained unmanned during my tours of the exhibition floor.  But one attendee that promoted a technology for PCB removal summed up my thoughts of some of the technologies present: “The Cleanest form of…”  I had to ask the gentleman working that booth: “So as far as PCB removal goes, you’re the cleanest…but how clean is it?”  I’ll admit, the technology sounded pretty good, though not sure it could scale enough to clean up GE’s years of polluting the Hudson river.

It is a good goal, though, for all technologies: To be the cleanest, on a pretty dirty planet.  Let’s all keep this goal in the forefront.

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