Clean Edge has finished their Report Entitled “Clean Energy Trends 2008″. You can get your pdf copy here.
An excerpt:
Further proof of clean tech’s move from marginalized to mainstream is abundant. A growing number of governments announced plans to generate electricity from renewables. Corporations continued to jump on, if not lead, the race to transition to a cleaner, greener economy. Venture capitalists in the U.S. invested $2.7 billion in the clean-energy sector, representing more than 9 percent of total VC activity. Cleanenergy indices outpaced the broader markets in 2007. For example, the NASDAQ® Clean Edge® U.S. Liquid Series index (co-developed by Clean Edge and NASDAQ) was up 66.67 percent last year, compared with 3.53 percent for the S&P 500 index and 9.81 percent for the NASDAQ Composite index.
According to Clean Edge research:
Biofuels (global production and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) reached $25.4 billion in 2007 and are projected to grow to $81.1 billion by 2017. In 2007 the global biofuels market consisted of more than 13 billion gallons of ethanol and 2 billion gallons of biodiesel production worldwide.
Wind power (new installation capital costs) is projected to expand from $30.1 billion in 2007 to $83.4 billion in 2017. Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.
Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) will grow from a $20.3 billion industry in 2007 to $74 billion by 2017. Annual installations were just shy of 3 GW worldwide, up nearly 500 percent from just four years earlier.
The fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market will grow from a $1.5 billion industry (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) to $16 billion over the next decade.
Together, we project these four benchmark technologies, which equaled $55.4 billion in 2006 and expanded 40 percent to $77.3 billion in 2007, to grow to $254.5 billion within a decade.
For those of you that might be interested in the wind sector in particular or clean energy in generatl, the latest issue of Renewable Energy World has a couple of great articles worth the read:
I finally had a few minuted to breath and think today and what a timely arrival was the latest email from TEDTalks in my inbox. I have heard a great number of mentions on “cradle to cradle” design over the past couple of years. Most of this in a negative or absurd light as what some people consider a knee jerk reaction and unrealistic for a real manufacturing society. As I am almost never dissapointed by TED, I listened to the embedded talk below. (Click Here if your corporation blocks embedded video)
For those of you that may not be familiar with William McDonough here is an introduction from the TEDTalk site that might give you a little insight.
“Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world’s largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he’s designing in China.”
For those of you interested in design, lifecycle, and how to couple the two, you are in luck. Check out the TEDTalk topic of “Design Like You Give a Damn“.
I have visited slideshare quite a few times in the past, but really didn’t capture it’s full potential until today. I was originally linked into this presentation on “Death by Powepoint” by Alexi Kapterev.
I then looked at the associated links ala youtube style. It was interesting to see the wealth of presentations when you search for innovation. This is really a way you can cross-pollinate and get outside what you are used to without leaving you computer. For those of you on LinkedIN check out “leveraging Social Networks for Results below”
As a pretty prolific reader, I always wonder what other people read? I usually ask my friends what they read and this guides me to expand my horizons. Another question that always comes to me when trying to find my next read is “What do really sucessful people read?” What is it that people who’s billable hour wage is a lot higher than mine read?
The answer to this popped up when I was following a random link from one of my blogs I normally read. I can’t remember which tangent I was off on, but I sent the link to myself so I would make sure to put it up here on the blog.
One interesting item on the site I didn’t list above is the Nano Google Maps Mashup. One static image is shown below that shows the relative activity in Nano across the United States. At the link you can zoom in on your area and see the companies locally are working in Nano. Looking at my area, I know the data collection is not complete, but the concepts is a nice way to visualize the geographical relationships to data.
So is your company on the map? If it is you should at least check out the rest of the data at the site.
Scientists at NIST show DNA wrapped SWCNT of 200nm or less enter ex-vitro lung cells where longer ones don’t. Not sure if this is like saying 200nm DNA stands enter lung cells, while longer DNA stands don’t? Another confusion in the the debate on the safety of “nanomaterials”. How does your company deal with EHS and nanotubes?
I had a long drive this past weekend and was listening up on Phil McKinney’s Killer Innovations Podcasts from 2006. This one on “Listening Skills and Rules of Future Forecasting” was one that I enjoyed.
Ditto on the Podcast “Observation Skills and Contradictions” deals with a quick exercise for improving observation and the most concise and true-ringing explanation of TRIZ I have seen anywhere.
Endless Innovation has a post from Design Sojourn about 7 ways to unleash your creativity originally from IDEO. (three level link action). Those IDEO guys are great, I got to meet a few through work.
Guy Kawasaki has a good post on TrendHunter Magazine (warning, some content not suitable for work on there). Guy’s post gives some great examples. Also look at the Science category and the Art and Design Category. This is a mix of the weird and strange mixed with the insightful and coo . As with anyone that is a trendsetter they are usually on the fringe which is extremely evident from the links above. You can see the tongue-in-cheek in this publication, but take a look at the about trendhunter page and the associated list of publications at the bottom.
So how do you use Trendhunter? Where are the gems there you can develop? Are there some common threads on there that would make the basis of a trend you could ride and tailor your products to? Can you market to a fringe customer base? Should you?
On a related subject Phil McKinney has a great podcast over at Killer Innovations that deals with the “Trend Safari.” Well work the listen. The transcipt is also there for the podcast/mp3 challenged.
Hugh MacLeod from GapingVoid fame has a whole series of articles on “How to be creative.” You really should check them out if you haven’t read them before. Although the Hugh was approaching this from a artist point of view, there is some universality to some of these comments that each person can adapt as needed. One that happened to strike a cord with me today was:
“6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”……..”
This really is very qutie striking. The engineer and scientist in me likes the order and rules that we build up to explain the world, control our environment, and make the future. We didn’t start out with models, or rules, or equations, we had to be trained. All of us started out as uncontrolled little minds that didn’t know or care for the rules. We dripped of “outside the box” thinking and creativity, but over time had to learn the proper way of things.
S o what does this have to do with you or your career or innovation? Well a couple of things. One is the importance of stepping out of your training and experience to imagine what might be possible if you ignored the rules temporarily. What opportunities do you miss because you use the current paradigm that everyone accepts? Have you ever had a situation where an answer was simple and elegeant, yet it was counter-intuitive to the “right way”? What happens when you remove the lens through which you view reality and replace it with someone else’s?
Second is to leverage those fresh perspectives when you have a chance to come across them. One great example of this is the finding yourself in a situation where you have a fresh employee to your company or a fresh new team member? Take this blessing and use it. Give them enough information to see the problem and then step away. Let them identify the problem details and come up with those solutions that you would never think of due to your “training”.
After reading the article do any of you have a favorite. “guest author” spot up for grabs. Just shoot me and email.
This is pretty simple but at the same time quite stimulating. I ran across this app that looks to be a front-end for images.google.com. It is called the “Google Image Ripper“.
I am not sure of the original motivation for building it but I find it fabulous for random association generation. For example search for a word that you think you have an idea of what a search would return. Here are some simple exaples.
I don’t know about you, but you see some of what you expect, but ever 4-5 images you get something that doesn’t make sense at first glance. Why is that here? Where is article for the image? What story can I tell about the image? What does the image tell me?
Next time you need a new direction or perspective, give it a try. This also works with Flickr or some of the other photo sites, but I really like this clean interface.
