Feb 05 2010

The Green Seen

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

 Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy and the environment caught our attentionthis week:

San Francisco startup and solar brokering firm One Block Off the Grid, or 1BOG, is applying a business model emphasizing social media such as Twitter and door-to-door pitches to match groups of homeowners seeking solar systems with local solar installers. 1BOG put in 550 solar systems in 2009, its first year, and is expanding into new markets in 2010. The solar customers get volume discounts and 1BOG gets referral fees from the installers. The company is introducing a program in New Jersey and planning moves into San Antonio and Honolulu. "We want 2010 to be the year where we bring solar to the masses," says Dave Llorens, co-founder and general manager.

Oil-dependent Hawaii aims to get 70 percent of its total energy needs from clean resources by 2030 -- 40 percent from renewable power generation and 30 percent  from energy efficiency. The islands have abundant solar, wind, geothermal and wave resources. The state is considering projects such as a 30-mile undersea cable to link proposed wind farms on Lanai and Molokai to electric grids on Oahu and Maui. Hawaii's Gas Co. is using municipal solid waste and animal fat to make synthetic gas for its customers. "We're adopting policies and technologies here that can serve as a model for the rest of the globe," Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a Hawaii clean energy advocacy group, told the Los Angeles Times.

Last March, NEXT100 reported on a novel 60-foot catamaran made of used plastic bottles under construction in a shed on the San Francisco waterfront. The boat, named Plastiki, now is going through trials on San Francisco Bay before it hoists sails early in March to cross the Pacific to Australia. Plastiki's twin hulls are made of 12,500 plastic bottles filled with dry ice. David de Rothschild, project leader and scion of the Rothschild banking family, aims to draw attention to plastic waste winding up in landfills and in the oceans. He told the San Francisco Chronicle the way to get the recycling message across is a plastic sailing adventure -- a message in a bottle.Bon Voyage!

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