SuperStruct is basically a scenario planning exercise, which will be conducted by thousands of participants over a 6-week period. The “game” seeks to explore what type of soutions we can develop to several major “SuperThreats”, or global crises “predicted” to occur in 2019. The name SuperStruct refers to the human ability to build social structures, one top of another.
Super-threats are massively disrupting global society as we know it. There’s an entire generation of homeless people worldwide, as the number of climate refugees tops 250 million. Entrepreneurial chaos and “the axis of biofuel” wreak havoc in the alternative fuel industry. Carbon quotas plummet as food shortages mount. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. We need a new set of superstructures to rise above, to take humans to the next stage.
Players will envision themselves in this future world, and write blog posts, make videos, build websites and create all types of content which will be filtered and guided through the five scenarios by a “game master”.
I have been honored by being selected as one of the game masters for SuperStruct. I will be leading the “Generation Exile” scenario, which will explore what will happen to the millions of people who will be displaced by climate change and other threats of the near future.
I think that this will be a great opportunity for everyone to contribute to the conversation and have some fun at the same time. In a few weeks, I’ll be posting more details about how everyone can participate.
I’ve heard of a lot of unusual and interesting ways to recycle waste back into usable products, but this one has to be one of the coolest and funniest.
The Great Elephant Poo Paper Company (www.poopaper.com), as its name says, is taking elephant dung and turning it into paper. How do they do this? Well, apparently elephant poo contains quite a bit of undigested plant fibers. After washing the poo patties, what remains are the plant fibers, and these are what is converted into paper products.
What’s really neat about this company is the way they close the loop: the poo is turned into paper, the paper is sold on their website and a protion of the profits goes back into elephant welfare and conservation.
If only it were this easy with technological waste.
One of the big problems with solar power is bringing the cost down so that it is competitive with fossil fuels. This post fro Gizmodo describes a new technology which would probably make solar technology much cheaper:
“Solar poweriseverywhere at the mo, maybe because it sounds more sci-fi than wind: which is the case with this new technology that turns windows into power sources. Clever bods at MIT have worked out how to use organic dye solar-concentrator coatings to collect light over a whole sheet of glass and “concentrate” it at the edges. This lets you have a much smaller (and hence cheaper) solar-electric cell mounted in the side of a window, more easily achieved than typical mirror-based concentrators. And by tuning the dyes (originally designed for lasers and OLEDs) to different wavelengths, and stacking them up, you get an even bigger power output. Clever stuff. [Physorg]“
The potential market for energy technologies is huge.
New energy technology transitions will take decades to replace existing technologies, not the short adoption timeframes associated with typical Silicon Valley tech companies.
Because of the downturn in the credit and real estate markets, there is a lot of money out there looking for a good place to invest, and cleantech is an obvious place to put this money. The flip side to this is that in down markets, investors traditionally turn to commodities investing, which should place downward pressure on oil prices. Lower oil prices means greater competition and risk for most cleantech companies.
Due to the high competition with oil prices, some VCs are focusing on investing in cleantech which does not have a high correlation to oil prices. The example given was solar power in China, which competes with coal power plants and there for is dependent on the price of coal and not oil.
Cleantech companies compete with long-established energy technologies and therefore face severe price competition. One effect of this is that most cleantech companies are global companies, with manufacturing and distribution on different continents to take advantage of price efficiencies, such as manufacturing in China and distribution in the US.
There has been an increase in the number of quality entrepreneurs starting companies in the cleantech space. These are “2nd-stage” entrepreneus, who had previously worked at leading-edge companies and became aware of the gaps in the market. These entrepreneurs are now attempting to fill these market opportunities.
The best quote of the day came from Steve Bengston of PricewaterhouseCoopers. When asked to define what, exactly is cleantech, he paraphrased Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart quote on pornography by saying that “cleantech is hard to define, but we know it when we see it.”
About solar power:
Solar is still very dependent on subsidies to be competitive.
Most of the panelists felt that the unsubsidized cost of solar is still too high to be competitive with existing energy sources, and is still a factor of 2 or 3 away at the retail level. The consensus was that the retail price for solar needs to come down to at least 30 cents/KWh to be competitive. On a wholesale level (large power plants), solar is even farther away, where it needs to be around 5 cents/KWh to compete with fossil fuels.
The solar business model is still based on an assumed theoretical declining cost curve. While this cost curve remains to be proven out, most people believe that it is accurate.
There are some locations where solar is already competitive, due to very high energy costs or favorable conditions.
When asked about solar’s dependency on scarce raw materials (i.e., silicon) one panelist said that third-generation solar tech is focusing on becoming less resource-dependent. He also stated that a large portion of the cost of solar panels was in the aluminum and glass components.
About storage technology:
While energy storage technology is potentially a very important component in the adoption of new energy generation technologies, the cost is still much too high to justify implementation.
Even if energy storage technology becomes price-competitive, it is not clear who will pay the cost to implement it. Will is be the energy generators, the suppliers or the consumers?
About alternative fuels:
Alternative fuels are “sexy”. They are easily understood by the public, because of their day-to-day experiences fueling their vehicles, etc.
Alternative fuel investing is extremely risky, but also has extremely high rewards. The VCs who are investing in alternative fuels see it as a necessary component of their portfolios, albeit a small one for now.
The biological and chemical expertise necessary to implement alternative fuel technologies is extreme.
There is an opportunity in techologies which can convert e-waste plastics into biofuels. This is viable technology which can also greatly reduce waste.
About pollution and recycling technology:
Current efforts are focusing on mercury, sulfur and nitrogen waste reduction.
Silicon Valley is not currently investing very heavily on these types of technolgies. Sillicon Valley VCs focus more on products than services, because products are easier to scale up to profitability levels that VCs are interested in. Pollution and waste reduction technologies are viewed as mostly services, which are harder to scale up.
Most of the panelists cited the need for an appropriate regulatory framework in order for these types of services to be feasile. There is some debate on whether regulation should lead the way or wait for technologies to prove themselves before regulating them. Countries like Germany are taking the leading approach, while the US is mostly taking the lagging approach.
All in all, the news was very positive. It seems like cleantech is not being affected by the downturn in the economy. Om the contrary, it appears to be benefitting from high oil prices and a dearth of good investment opportunites.
Carectomy brings us this cool, new concept for increasing the efficiency of a train by allowing the bulk of it to stay in constant motion:
“Yu-Lun envisions a small separated car perched atop the train. When the train enters a station, this car slides along on elevated rails that smoothly and gradually remove the car from the rest of the train and bring it to a stop.” At the same time, a second car picks up new passengers.
The animation is very cool, albeit very slow in getting to the point.
I like this idea, especially if the design incorporated a maglev (magnetically-leviated) element to it. If you theoretically could combine the reduced friction of maglev wth the added efficiency of not having to speed up/slow down most of the train’s mass, this form of transportation would probably be way ahead of most rail and light-years ahead of automobiles.
A new report by The Climate Group on behalf of the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI) suggests that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced up to 15% over “business-as-usual” by applying Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the power generation and transportation sectors.
“Smart motor systems: A review of manufacturing in China has identified that without optimisation, 10% of China’s emissions (2% of global emissions) in 2020 will come from China’s motor systems alone and to improve industrial efficiency even by 10% would deliver up to 200 million tonnes (Mt) CO2e savings. Applied globally, optimised motors and industrial automation would reduce 0.97 GtCO2e in 2020, worth $107.2 billion.
Smart logistics: Through a host of efficiencies in transport and storage, smart logistics in Europe could deliver fuel, electricity and heating savings of 225 MtCO2e. The global emissions savings from smart logistics in 2020 would reach 1.52 GtCO2e, with energy savings worth $441.7 billion.
Smart buildings: A closer look at buildings in North America indicates that better building design, management and automation could save 15% of North America’s buildings emissions. Globally, smart buildings technologies would enable 1.68 GtCO2e of emissions savings, worth $340.8 billion.
Smart grids: Reducing T&D losses in India’s power sector by 30% is possible through better monitoring and management of electricity grids, first with smart meters and then by integrating more advanced ICTs into the so-called energy internet. Smart grid technologies were the largest opportunity found in the study and could globally reduce 2.03 GtCO2e , worth $124.6 billion.”
While the report acknowledges that increased virtualization of work, communication and shopping is important, it states that efficiency provides the most significant role for these technologies.
Some really depressing but vital video documenting the impacts of the Great Pacific Gyre:
“Watch a team from VBS.TV search for the alleged toxic “Garbage Island”, reported to be bigger than Texas, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What they find is more disturbing than they even imagined. Rated R for language and for the sheer sadness of what we have done to our oceans.”
This video is about as good a place as any to begin a blog on sustainability and lifehacks. One could certainly call Natural Capitalism a lifehack on a grand scale.
I’ve heard of a lot of unusual and interesting ways to recycle waste back into usable products, but this one has to be one of the coolest and funniest.
