This new method developed by MIT of splitting water molecules mimics the way photosynthesis works in plants.

“You’ve made your house into a fuel station,” Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT said. “I’ve gotten rid of all the goddamn grids.”

My guess is that we’ll figure out the scalability issues of these imaginative efforts sooner than most can possibly conceive.

Look for cooler heads to prevail as breakthroughs like this continue to cheapen today’s best alternative energy sources.

Is there really a need to rush to “large-scale investments” in current, inefficient technologies?

Now that we’re focused on the solutions and working the problem can we be safe knowing that our efforts will bear fruit sooner than expected? If we ‘re able to get to the Moon in the sixties could we have breakthroughs of this magnitude in the next five years?

Will every windmill we build need to be taken down? This problem is obvious at South Point. The old wind farm remains long after the new wind farm goes into production.

Every single battery we use to store energy will also need to be recycled. Locally, there are two times a year when battery recycling is offered. Throwing your batteries in the landfill is illegal.

“Within two years, you’ll start seeing module designs,” Nocera said. “A lot of my MIT colleagues are raring to go and work on this and they are all engineers and they’re pretty damn good.”

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Additional Reading

MIT researchers attain solar ‘nirvana’

Cheap Catalyst Could Turn Sunlight, Water Into Fuel

Photo at top by defrost.ca

Tough economic times requires a special mindset for survival. Saving money, cutting out expenses such as marketing, capital expenditures and human resources are common.

I’m sure you’re all aware of ways to save money in your business. After all, it’s your business and part of the reason it’s still your business is due to the fact that you know it better than anyone else.

Although I can’t give individual help since I don’t know your business model or needs I can offer up some simple ideas to help you Go Green and Improve Your Bottom Line.

The Top Ten list is actually second. First, I wanted to share a thought I read while researching the Top Ten list.

As you know, a tough economy doesn’t affect all business the same way. Oil companies might be getting a lot of negative press but those of you that own oil company stock probably aren’t disappointed with the stock’s performance. For others, creative thinking can help you recover or actually prosper.

For example, as your competitors downsize or reduce their marketing budgets and opportunity emerges. Gaining mind or market share in new areas becomes more of a possibility. Even if you can’t afford to act, you can afford to pay attention to what your competitors are or are not doing.

Instead of getting mired down in negative thinking about shortages, tightening the belt, eating less and sending your twelve-year-old to get a job, think positive thoughts. Why? Because your competitor may be thinking positively.

What if your competitors are thinking of acquiring your best employees? What if they’re thinking of launching a new marketing campaign with radio advertising? What if they’re thinking of smarter marketing or increasing their advertising budget? What if they’re thinking of launching a new website or calling on your customers to take action through newspaper ads and coupons? What if they’re thinking of doing all this by the end of the year?

Nothing I can show you today will keep you from losing marketing share if all you’re focused on is reductions and saving money. Focus on the negative and you may find your only strategy is hoping they’ll run out of money before the economy turns around. But hey, HOPE isn’t that bad. Afterall it’s what’s left over after you’ve tried everything else, right?

Well I hope at least one of the things on this top ten list will help you Go Green and Improve Your Bottom Line…

Ten Ways to Go Green and Improve Your Bottom Line

10) Jump on the Green Bandwagon - possibly at your peril. Jumping on the green bandwagon is a losing philosophy although you can get some immediate press coverage. Think instead of the Earth, your employees and the aina. Think of how you can improve all of these and you’re heading in the right direction. At least you’ll be well grounded.

• Ethics and transparency are important.
  
• Download and read the Six Sins of Greenwashing – http://www.terrachoice.com/files/6_sins.pdf
  
• Announce Your Strategy – “green tea” assumed.
• Press Release, web statement, call the reporters
  

9) Reduce Energy Consumption – sometimes all you have to do is raise your awareness. Do this by installing a…

• KIll-a-Watt – http://www.smarthome.com/_/ProductResults.aspx?Ntt=kill%20a%20watt
• Whole House Meter – http://www.theenergydetective.com/index.html
• The Meter Reader – http://www.energymonitor.com/
• Try an upright Freezer – I can shut mine off for three days without compromising food or lifestyle.
  
• Look at wattages on bottom of appliances, great way to raise awareness – Microwaves aren’t not too bad. Don’t run a toaster over for 20 minutes when a microwave could have heated the water in 5.
  

Hire Interns!

• Interns can be used exclusively for marketing / sales
  • Post flyers
  • Deliver PSAs to Radio Stations
  • Cold calling to
    • say mahalo
    • raise awareness
• Places to find interns
  • Huiana Mentor Internship Program
  • Green Collar Technologies Internships in Sustainability
  • 1 Stop for Youths – Big Island WorkPlace Connection
    

7) Collaborate – partnering is done by developing new relationships. Talking story doesn’t cost money, never eat alone. Personally

• Newspaper editors, journalists, bloggers
• Green event and conference planners
• Government (serve on sustainability board)
• Business Groups, Trade Organizations / Associations
• University Professors
• Grant Writers, Charities
• Co-opetition
  

6) Develop a Green Strategy

• Code of Conduct (update employee manual)
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
• Post recycle information near the recycle bins
• Greener Marketing (not greenwashing)
• No carbon offsets
• Modify Corporate Mission

5) Smarter Online Marketing – an organic approach

• Develop sustainable web presence
  • Assign internal editors to edit your own site
  • Use standards for device independence
  • Monetize your traffic
  • Use a green web server (no offsets)
• Social Media – decentralize your brand across networks
• Reciprocal linking – establish online partners
• Write Press Releases, blog posts/comments, PSAs, editorials
• Video Sharing / marketing
• Landing pages – keyword research
  
• Statistical Analysis
  

4) Reward / Acknowledge Key Employees – trade among employees

• Open up dialog on green strategies to save money
• Drawings or contests :
  • Best Green Ideas at Work
  • Best Way to Stop Waste
• Awards and gift certificates
  • Grocery Stores
  • Garden Centers
  • Bulk seeds from the Internet
  • Movies
  • Restaurants
• Scholarships
  

3) Raise Your Awareness – Learn More

• Education and Government eWaste Disposal Days 2008
  http://www.hawaii.edu/ewaste/disposal.php
• 101 Ways to Save Energy
  http://tinyurl.com/4ws9s3
  
• Going Green is Good for the Bottom Line
  http://savannahnow.com/node/484127
• Going green is good for bottom line – Companies embracing sustainability
  http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/274192_retail16.html
  
• Saving money and the planet – green can be good for bottom line
  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/01/BUSKVTE1C.DTL
  
• Marketing In Tough Economy – six marketing methods
  http://marketpromba.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/marketing-in-tough-economy/
  
• Free Range Thinking – 9th Anual Summer Reading List
  http://www.agoodmanonline.com/pdf/free_range_2008_07-08.pdf
  
• Smart Investing in Tough Economic Times
  http://tinyurl.com/5wvgeg
  
• Greentech Media’s Top Ten Startups
  http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/greentech-medias-top-ten-startups-796.html
  
• Silver lining in Cisco stock decline: Tough times help Cisco gain market share
  http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29740
• GreenTechMedia
  http://greentechmedia.com
  
• Treehugger
  http://treehugger.com
  
• Top 10 Ways to NOT Screw the Earth at Work
  http://tinyurl.com/6hgnsu
• 10 Energy Saving Tips at the Office
  http://tinyurl.com/5j9juw
  
• Going Green at the Office – Tips to Help Your Business Go Green
  http://tinyurl.com/6rdcrt
  
• Getting Setup – Green Computing
  http://tinyurl.com/5s9s93
• Top Ten Ways to Afford Going Green
  http://tinyurl.com/58qa4r
  
• Investing in a Green Work Environment
  http://tinyurl.com/6fojsm
  
• Help your bottom line by producing less carbon dioxide
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18425670/
  

2) Create an Edible Garden at Work – volunteers / intern help

• Plant edible foods (kalo, tomato, )
  
• Plant medicinal plants
  
• Harvest rainwater for the garden
• Challenge employees to bring in seeds, cuttings
• Submit recipes based on what you grow
• Create a charity benefit recipe book

1) Think Zero Waste
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3:35 – 6:20

HONOLULU – Governor Linda Lingle signed into law today three bills to increase renewable energy generation and reduce the state’s dependence on imported oil.

Two of the bills will provide renewable energy project developers with much needed assistance with Hawai‘i’s complex permitting process. The third bill authorizes the Department of Agriculture to offer a new class of loans in its agricultural and aquaculture loan programs to encourage farmers to contribute to the production of alternative sources of energy.

What does this mean for Green Collar Workers?

• First of all think slow. This isn’t going to change anything until we have a vision. This still doesn’t exist. If Green Collar workers want change, they must still as Ghandi might say, “be the change you seek in your world.”
• Streamlining governmental processes can result in the creation of new projects. These acts may help entrepreneurs obtain startup funds and angel investors which otherwise ignore Hawaii due to the unfavorable climate for small businesses. So keep your eye open for new startups but the jobs won’t be here for a while. A full-time facilitator could mean more transparency which could lead to more reporting depending the state energy coordinator position that needs to be filled first. Could Green Collar Jobs be a metric?
• The new agriculture loans will apply to food safety, product tracking, photovoltaics, hydro, wind, methane, biodeiesel and ethanol. Look for projects and jobs in these areas.
• There’s potential here for these acts to improve Hawaii’s digital economies.

Additional Resources

Read about the new Acts 207, 208 and 209 here:
http://hawaii.gov/gov/news/releases/2008/governor-lingle-signs-key-legislation-to-boost

Local Farmer Richard Ha helps farmers generate and use Renewable Energy.
http://hahaha.hamakuasprings.com/2008/02/in-support-of-f.html

A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO RENEWABLE ENERGY Conference Committee recommendation:
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2008/commReports/HB2863_CD1_CCR146-08_.htm

Malama Aina

View the renewable energy maps at the National Renewable Energy Lab.

and check out: United States Atlas of Renewable Resources

Check it out…

If you’re interested in the fun facts that make the case for aggressively pursuing a clean energy, good jobs economy, see “Green-Collar Jobs: What we know so far.” Heidi Pickman, the Apollo Alliance communications associate, did some nifty research about clean energy jobs, where they exist now, and where the sector is heading.  Her piece is the first contribution to the new Data Points section of the Web site.

More Data Points will soon follow that document one of the fastest growing industrial sectors in the United States and the world.  Did you know, for example, that the United States is now the largest market for wind power generating equipment in the world? Or that venture capitalists invested $625 million in the first quarter of 2008 on “clean tech,” which includes renewable energy. That puts the category fourth in total investment behind life sciences ($2.3 billion), biotech ($1.27 billion) and software ($1.26 billion).  My friends in the venture capital world tell me that Congress better renew those alternative energy tax credits or the surge in investment could diminish.

Also check out…

20% Wind Energy by 2030
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Report
from the U.S. Department of Energy

Please visit ApolloAlliance.org for more Green Collar Resources

An immediate example the comes to mind is domain parking. Another example might be an application that cleans hard drives of old backups. Of course both of these already exist. Sedo.com helps you monetize your unused domains by collecting the traffic that would otherwise receive an error message. The collected traffic is monetized and returned to the owner in pennies per clicks.

Lots of hard drive cleaning applications exists that function with varying degrees of effectiveness. To my knowledge this only happens on your local drive. So if you were to send your hard drive cleaning utility to your myspeace, picasa, youtube, flickr or other repository, it would be blocked at the firewall. A trusted application could be developed that made sure you were only duplicating your files rather than triple or quadruple back ups. I’m not against regulating the amount of backups you can have. I’m just wondering what the impact would be if you had more accurate information that you could trust. Gee, what if we could just “identify” all of the duplicate files on the web? I’m sure I’m late to that party already.

For example, if you knew you had your videos stored at two sites online and on two drives at home and you knew these backups were all of high integrity, would you then be willing to let software clean your files off a fifth backup location? If so, would you get a credit of sorts for the amount of drive space you’ve saved? This is important but not the effect I’m looking for.

I’m more interested in the bits and bytes that have energy. The bits and bytes that are used in a manner that is not helping anyone or anything. For example, the web pages that are indexed by bots but never seen or used by humans. Can the energy the bots use to index these pages be harnessed by a windmill kind of a contraption? Like a digital windmill? Or a digital solar panel? Let’s call it digital renewable energy production. I know, thinking about this is ridiculous. Thank goodness, these things can be archived for later examination. If anyone has any relevant research or is interested in collaborating on this, please comment below.

A nationwide survey of nearly 700 people suggests Americans would prefer more money be invested in technology to solve the nation’s energy ailments than to cure cancer or other diseases.

The U.S. FCEDA study, which had a 4 percent margin of error and 95 percent confidence level, was based on telephone interviews with 692 adults between March 7 and March 9.

Read the rest of the story

Common sense was ordinary hundreds of years ago and ahupua`a wasn’t a grassroots movement or a government mandate. It was a way of life for many more people than currently inhabit Hawai`i Island.

We may be able to sideline ahupua`a through creative technologies but just as we thought coal and oil were the way, these sustainable technologies too will have a certain shelf-life. At least until there’s moving parts that grow themselves. But that’s another discussion.

Today I wanted to champion the fact that you’ve come a long way towards being self-sustainable. You’ve done this on your farms, homes and small businesses. You’ve done things only your family or neighbors know about. Whether you’ve changed a few light bulbs or harnessed power from a stream of water, It’s called, “common sense”. It’s part of the beauty of becoming or living sustainably for yourself. It feels good and there’s a certain freedom you get from cutting your energy bill or eating food you grow. It feels free and it feels good inside. Many of you have left somewhere to be here, just for these reasons. Simplicity, common sense and aloha.

The media would have us think that tax incentives, rebates or programs will bring us into 70% energy sustainability by 2030. The fact is that these same programs have been around for ten years or more. You are the one that will become sustainable and you’ll do it when it makes sense to you. Meanwhile, back on the farm, you are growing your own food and we hear about it.

When the prices of energy go up we find cheaper power. When the price of our food goes up, we learn to farm. When the price of water goes up, we catch it from the heavens. These are the stories that need to be shared.

Common sense, logic and ahupua`a isn’t dead. But in the future it won’t be the smartest, fastest or strongest that survive, it will be the most adaptable. At least that’s what I heard.

Malama i ke aina
Malama i ke kai

Green Collar Technologies will be sharing these stories and hope to provide an online technology platform for you to stand upon and declare your adaptations, your manao and your aloha of freedom.

Let’s hear it. Comments will not be moderated for the next two hours, then you’ll have to register and login to comment.

More Resources

East Maui Watershed Partnership – a ahupua`definition

Hawai`i History.org – a ahupua`definition

Would someone please go and rewrite the definition for ahupua`a definition at Wikipedia?

Partnering with Maui Electric Co., Australian-based Oceanlinx Inc. in February unveiled a wave energy project that utilizes the principles of blowholes to produce electricity. But in Oceanlinx’s case, its two “blowholes” will be built abot a mile off Maui’s North Shore. The first utility-scale wave energy project in Hawaii, Oceanlinx will own and operate the systems and sell the energy to Maui Electric.

Read the details about the Wave Blowhole Energy on Maui here:

Well I’m sure you noticed how much cheaper the regular batteries have become. Although still expensive, the manufacturers have yet to only offer rechargeables. Maybe it’s too inventory? I don’t know. What I do know is that we don’t get “greener” by buying batteries.

At my neighbors, we’ve got sixteen 8D batteries charging and discharging constantly. One year, two year, fours years and before you know it, they’re ready for the landfill. Ugh! Gel-cells in a landfill? No not us. But I’m sure that if everyone in Puna bout two new 6volt golf cart batteries, installed and used them for ten years, a large number of those batteries will find themselves in the landfill. The Mallard 800 wind mill outside isn’t moving today.

Wind power is unpredictable and has always had the same stigma… You have to store the battery so you can use the lights at night when the wind stops blowing.Then I came across this company that stores the energy as compressed air. To be honest, I haven’t studies the technology, the benefits or the trade-offs. I did notice that General Compression is targeting larger installations so you probably won’t find this sort of thing in your of garage for a while. Although I’m 100% certain that someone could build this on a smaller scale.

That’s for you to do. We don’t build or even review all the technologies we promote here in the Green Blog. We’re waay to caught up in watching the fractals in the  sipral out of control. Harnessing that energy would surely cause us to get excited.

But this wind technology looks pretty kewl. If anyone from General Compression wants to speak at one of our events or needs a remote treehouse installation, test site, we have some friends you should meet. You may also want to talk to our friends at the Natural Energy Lab in Kona.

General Compression – wind energy on demand.

Learn more with these compressed air resources compiled by Green Collar Technologies

Wikipedia definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage

R-Squared Energy Blog (good article)

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/compressed-air-energy-storage.html

U.S. Department of Energy – Technologies

http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/compressed_air.html

American Institute of Physics

http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2001/025.html

Energy Density of Some Materials Chart

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2001/ph162/l10.html