In the same way the Northwest has imagined and innovated its way to success with endeavors now synonymous with the region – be it coffee, software, outdoor gear, aerospace or microchips – our region can help write the operating instructions for what might be the most important opportunity for the next two generations – cleantech.   The time is now, not to walk but to fly. The land grab has started as different regions – inside the US and out – move to stake their claim as the leaders of the cleantech revolution. The companies and people of the Northwest are uniquely positioned to be among the leaders. The intellectual capital is here. The political will is here. The consumer culture and public sentiment needed to support a cleantech economy are also here.  Tech heavyweights like the San Francisco Bay Area are already way ahead, investing heavily in starting clean technology companies and churning out patents from their universities.   Yet here in the Northwest, local venture-capital money is still trickling into cleantech - Chrysalix and Yaletown in BC are the notable exceptions. Entrepreneurial enthusiasm has been relatively muted. Where is the Bill Gates, the Jeff Bezos, the Paul Allen, the Howard Schultz of cleantech? Cleantech is ripe for great, local visionaries. It is also ripe for another key component of success: a clearly identifiable brand. What does the Northwest stand for? Where does it have a competitive advantage in cleantech that is sustainable over the long haul? What can we get excited about as a community and rally around? The jury is still out, but here is an attempt to crystallize the focus of our region and my candidates for where the Northwest has a real chance to stake a claim, not as “the” world leader, but as “a” legitimate leader with the proof to back it up: The Frontrunners

• Biofuels – Imperium Renewables gets the attention, but there is much more happening. Boeing working on aviation biofuel. Weyerhaeuser exploring cellulosic ethanol. A host of start-ups looking at algae, mold and enzymes. The Northwest Biofuels Association, Pacific Regional Biomass Energy Partnership. A solid base of expertise has formed in the Northwest, including at universities and national labs. And we also excel in the ability to design and build large bio-refineries.  
• The Other Hydro – Wave and tidal could be the “next wind” and we are blessed with the right coastline and ripping tides. Just ask Oregon Iron Works, as they churn out prototypes of several different wave energy prototypes. When I recently saw the eight-story AquaBuOY (almost all of which is underwater) designed by my client Finavera Renewables, it finally struck me that this is no joke.
• Software – Whether PC power management, carbon emissions tracking, vehicle to grid, or remote electricity consumption monitoring, its already happening in the Northwest and the potential for growth here is great given that software is in our DNA. Microsoft even appears to be prepping for a big push in greening its products.
• Cleantech as a Service – The service sector has always been a strength in the Northwest, whether its building, engineering or environmental consulting. Is there an Accenture of cleantech out there waiting to happen? Not yet, but its possible.   

The Maybes

• Consumer Cleantech – We have some of the best consumer brands in the world, and there is no reason to believe that we cannot create more in cleantech, whether it’s a consumer-facing biofuels brand (SeQuential or Propel), a family-friendly home energy saving software or a venture capital firm like Maveron that takes its consumer knowledge and puts it to work in the cleantech space. But top talent is being drawn to the Bay, so we need to incubate locally and aggressively.  
• Smart Grid – The Northwest appeared to have an edge here several years ago, with relatively progressive utilities and Itron dominating the metering market, but does it anymore? Not so sure. Other regions have caught up and probably passed us.  
• Renewable Energy Gateway to China – Senator Maria Cantwell certainly would like to see that happen, and efforts are underway to organize a bilateral forum in Seattle of top business leaders to advise the US-China inter-government Strategic Economic Dialogue. The Northwest also exports a lot of engineering knowledge, environmental consulting, green building and design to
  China.
• Power Storage – Between fuel cells in British Columbia and a national lab in Idaho that knows power storage, there is some critical mass here, but can we recover from the disappointment of Ballard?

This past spring Tristan Fischer, then chief executive officer of Camco International Ltd., a global firm that helps companies identify and develop projects that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, scoured China's countryside for a new breed of opportunity. Rather than looking for cheap shoes to stock the shelves of big-box retailers, he was searching for carbon-belching smokestacks in need of clean technology to offset carbon emissions and make them available for market trading. Though China has benefited from more than 25 years of rapid economic growth, that progress has also created an environmental nightmare of global proportions, with worse to come in the next 20 years. The country, which gets nearly 70 percent of its energy from burning dirty coal, is on track to surpass the United States as the world's top GHG emitter as early as the end of this year—more than a decade earlier than previously predicted—according to  International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol. In addition to GHG emissions, China has many other environmental problems, including water shortages and poor air quality that threaten public health and industrial output. With finite supplies of carbon-based energy and growing global demand, China will have to find other—and cleaner—sources of energy.

China's large and growing appetite for clean technology will create one of the biggest market opportunities in the next few decades, providing the potential for enormous wealth creation by cleaning up the ecological mess that has come from its miraculous, but dirty growth. Many climate change experts are betting that the solution to the world's environmental problems resides in the technological innovation coming out of Silicon Valley and other high-tech clusters in the United States and Europe. But to fully benefit from such technology, China will have to change its policies and consumer attitudes quickly to speed its adoption of the technology—or face significant economic, social, and public health ramifications. "China says it will obtain 15 percent of its [primary] energy from renewables by 2020," says Mike Eckhart, president of the American Council of Renewable Energy, referring to the goal China first announced in November 2005. "But China has got it backward. If it's not at 85 percent renewable, we're in big trouble." Though China is unlikely to change its renewable energy targets so radically, the central government is highly motivated to address China's chronic energy shortage and severe environmental pollution. Across the board, Beijing is enacting policies that will require huge investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart building, clean water, and cleaner coal. These initiatives include:

Read more at the China Business Review

I spent last week in Beijing for the kick-off meeting of Cleantech China's founding members. The air pollution was so bad that my eyes were stinging for two of the days; visibility was less than 500 meters according to the local news, but it seemed more like 200 meters. Understandably, a lot of the conversation was around coal, since it accounts for 70+ percent of China's power generation and is the main source of pollution and CO2. Todd Glass, who heads the energy practice group at Heller Erhman, was particularly informative on the topic (when he wasn't being subjected to my harangues that "clean" coal was a mythic moniker, and should be replaced by "cleaner" coal.). Several interesting companies came up in our discussion. Ergo Exergy Technologies already has two projects demonstrating its in situ sequestration/gasification technology, while cash rich GreatPoint Energy and publicly traded Synthesis Energy were two other companies mentioned as leaders in gasification. Interestingly, however, when we toured Tsinghua University's energy research facilities, we heard from Dr. Cai Ningsheng that the best option for China today is not gasification, but ultra-supercritical pulverized coal (USC-PC) and also coal-fired boiler (CFB) technology. They are working on gasification, pre-combustion and sequestration options too, of course, but Dr. Cai's opinion is that USC is the near- to mid-term solution for China. USC-PC is at least half the cost of IGCC in China and has a lower technology risk as well. Nor is all coal suitable for IGCC. Technology advances, Cai said, are possible with USC-PC and CFB that allow CO2 capture, post-combustion capture and oxy-fuel combustion. In my earlier conversations with pre-burn technology companies in the US such as CoalTek and Evergreen Energy, their concerns were more around IP protection when going to China, not necessarily market demand. It will be worth watching the outcome of the strategic economic dialogue between the US and China on easing restrictions on coal technology transfer and how the different technologies on the table play out in the market.

(This is an article I wrote for Yes! magazine a couple of years ago. I am currently updating it for the China Business Review). 

After an initial rush of excitement over writing a piece about China for YES!, a slow creep of dread and unease replaced the thrill. With global oil prices spiking because of China's rapacious growth in oil consumption and the country poised to replace the United States in the dubious role of world leader in carbon dioxide emissions, could I honestly write an article portraying as positive what is happening with China and fossil fuels?

My doubts were not erased, but amplified, after some initial phone calls to environmental leaders in China were met with long pauses when I asked for suggestions on positive stories.

But I was not deterred. China is important to me. I take what is happening there to heart. In many ways it is my home, and I am protective of it. I have spent nearly half of my life there, as a foreign correspondent and businessman from 1986 to 2002. During that time, I experienced what I consider to be one of the most dramatic periods of transformation in world history from the brief ecstasy of free expression in the late 1980s and the might of totalitarianism in snuffing it out, to a shift toward capital markets and the massive spiritual, economic, and social changes that came with that shift, including the beginnings of civil society. (When the United States industrialized, it had fewer than 80 million people, and it took around 40 years to do it. China has nearly 20 times that number of people, and it is industrializing at hyper-drive speed, manufacturing not only for itself but for the rest of the world.)

I believe it is essential that all of us not only understand what is going on in China, but that we become active agents for making it better. Unless we do something urgent, my two-year-old son will enter adulthood in a world neither he nor I want to contemplate.

When I first arrived in China, Beijing was one big bicycle lane, as was the rest of China. There were no private cars no one had the money and even if they had, private car ownership was prohibited by the government. The few cabs on the road catered to the few foreigners who paid in the equivalent of U.S. dollars.

Read more at Yes! magazine