Tom Friedman’s latest column, Dreaming the Possible Dream, touches on some companies and their promising technologies that we’ve seen here, namely Calera (cement) and Bloomenergy (fuel cells.) Everybody has seen the hype for Bloomenergy. I sincerely hope they live long and prosper.
I quoted Bill McKibben here a while ago in his review of a Tom Friedman book: “Thomas Friedman is the prime leading indicator of the conventional wisdom, always positioned just far enough ahead of the curve to give readers the sense that they’re in-the-know, but never far enough to cause deep mental unease.” Friedman seems, though, to give me deep mental unease. I think it’s because he is always showing off to his millions of readers. The problem, for me anyway, is that he’s not usually saying anything particularly revelatory and he often is saying things that are downright off the wall.
The FT’s “EnergySource” blog noted the Friedman column and expanded somewhat on Calera’s promise: to sequester carbon dioxide from power plants and industry with seawater to make solid mineral carbonates for building materials like cement. EnergySource notes some skepticism out there on these processes. (I have to say that if Calera’s potential is reflected in the quality of their video, I wouldn’t be rushing out to sell shares to buy theirs.) In any event, I also wish them well. If Vinod Khosla thinks they can sequester billions of tons of carbon, then that’d be a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But I’ve written about one low-tech, high-potential approach that doesn’t require billions of venture capital bucks: biochar. Why isn’t this being embraced by the cognoscenti? In correspondence with an established author I know who writes about new tech, I said: “So, I’d say this deserves much more support than it has gotten. I fear that the VC folks, the engineers, and the politicians like big-ticket, high-tech solutions that promise high return on capital, sexy machines and votes and this sort of approach may not provide those.” Biochar may not be sexy enough? Is that what changing our destructive industrial and agricultural practices and curbing our insatiable consumerism is about?
Whatever. Let a thousand clean-tech companies bloom. There’s plenty of space for low tech and high tech to co-exist. Biochar, algae, ground source heat pumps and solar cookers are there for us. “Teach us delight in simple things …” There are the high tech answers too: the smart grid, CSP, and green IT among them. The more, the merrier.