Friend Joel Makower stirred up a good discussion last week with his article, Green Marketing Is Over. Let's Move On. Green marketeers Suzanne Shelton and Michael Martin disagreed with him. And while I agree with Joel (I’ve made the case in the past that not only green should be pronounced dead, but so should the notion of sustainability), I don’t expect the use of either to disappear anytime soon.

However, I find it somewhat amusing that Joel is calling for the demise of green on his website, GreenBiz, that is built around the concept of promoting green. Why should green marketing be obsolete, but green media not be? And Joel also mentions that Michael and Suzanne are green marketing consultants, the implication being that they have vested interests in promoting the survival of green marketing. True. But doesn’t GreenBiz also have a consulting arm focused on… helping companies become more green? Hmmm.  

Mind you, as a marketer myself of “clean” – as in cleantech, clean energy and the clean economy – I’m not exempt from scrutiny (as I have pointed out in the past, there is no such thing as clean anything when you take a closer look. After all, everything we make requires the consumption of something, including EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, etc). Matt Ridley recently wrote a provocative post on this subject, which seems accurate and misguided at the same time. Accurate in that renewables are not strictly renewable if you look at their entire supply chain. Misguided in the assumption that there is an apple to apples comparison between fossil fuels and renewables (can you say “externalities”?).

So what’s the takeaway for me? We can all make the subject moot if products that have a smaller ecological impact 1) cost less, 2) are easy to use and 3) work well. Ultimately, that’s a function of innovative marketing that can help scale market demand, but more importantly innovation in financing, policy and product development. Green only becomes obsolete when there is no need to distinguish from the alternatives on price, efficacy and reliability.

EarthTechling recently interviewed me and asked for my perspective on trends in cleantech, including marketing, communications and PR. Some themes that emerged:

• Five suggestions for cleantech companies to set themselves apart in a crowded market
• Backing “boring” businesses usually works
• Technology innovation we have plenty off; we need marketing, financing and business innovation (plus the 3Cs from energy policymakers – clarity, consistency and cojones  

See the full interview

Media covering renewable energy and cleantech overwhelmingly expect the biggest news hype of 2011 to come from electric transportation, while they identified energy efficiency as the most deserving of coverage, according to my annual survey. With more than 70 respondents from newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and blogs, the survey also revealed that more than two-thirds of media expect demand for cleantech coverage to be greater this year.   

The survey strongly confirmed one trend – the migration of content online; and appeared to shoot down another – lack of adequate budget. Nearly all of the respondents – 96% – said their work will primarily appear online, while almost 70% said that they would have enough resources to do a good job of reporting on cleantech this year. At the same time, there is a willingness to use content (video, animation, graphics, etc) produced by non-media sources (73% said they frequently or sometimes used content developed by companies).

In addition, the survey revealed some social media habits with regard to obtaining information, with Twitter (82%) by far and away the top choice of social tools for tracking news.  The RSS feed is also clearly not dead, with 57% naming it as the second tool of choice.

EV received 56% of the votes to be the most hyped sector in 2011, more than double the nearest competitor – smart grid, which received 20% of the votes. The only other technology that registered double-digit percentages was carbon capture and sequestration (16%).  On the flip side, media identified energy efficiency as the area that deserved the most media attention, with 42% choosing EE. This is ironic since I’ve often heard reporters say that they want to cover energy efficiency, but editors find it too boring (this is backed up by page views). The other technologies deserving attention mentioned by  more than 10% of respondents were: carbon management (20%); solar (13%); smart grid (13%) and water (11%). One of the most important sectors from an impact perspective, agriculture and foresty, got no votes.

 As in previous years, the overwhelming majority of those surveyed (68%) said B2B coverage would take priority this year, with the remainder paying more attention to consumer technologies. Overall, the overall trend is also of continued interest in the sector – 62% expected increased demand for cleantech news among audiences   

Interest in policy coverage also remains high, with nearly 80% expressing significant or moderate interest in tracking government developments.

Based on the rash of predictions for cleantech in 2010 from investors, consultants and media (see the full list at the end of this post), I’ve pulled together a “trend of trends” list below that attempts to synthesis the broader, over-arching themes. As always, I’m amazed that water isn’t on the top of every list, every year, although there are some positive signs on that front. So here are the 12 things that filtered to the top:

• Energy efficiency will have a big year, with buildings and information and communications technology (ICT) front and center (nice to see the “wow” factor over technologies like solar being tempered by the realization that there are a lot of cheaper ways to meet immediate goals for reducing emissions)
• Private investment will revive (with one prediction for a record-breaking year), but fears persist that the pending end of stimulus dollars will cast a long shadow over the market
• Differentiation – i.e. marketing – will increase in importance as we move from a technology-heavy phase to a commercialization-focused phase (something I’ve called attention to in the past).
• Consolidation and industry shake-out will accelerate, as will increased involvement of major corporates. Many VC-backed firms need an exit (especially in smart grid, solar and biofuels), so expect a few IPOs, but mostly M&A or failure as scale becomes more important and winners and losers emerge. And as the market grows and the issues being addressed become more complex, big multinationals with vested interests will try to play a larger role
• Smarter transportation – especially electrified – continues to gain traction, while next generation liquid fuels (cellulosic in particular) takes baby steps
• It’s more than energy, stupid. Land, water, rare earth metals, etc take more mind share as understanding grows  that the issues we face go beyond energy and carbon
• Importance of carbon measurement and management will increase, but folks seems pretty skeptical that even if climate legislation/treaties get enacted that they will be aggressive enough (some expect sector specific carbon regulation – i.e. aviation and shipping – instead of economy-wide measure  
• Distributed solutions continue to erode the power of centralized systems (in energy generation, building, transportation, etc)
• Some technologies expected to garner attention: Waste to energy, waste biomass, power storage, geothermal, aquaculture, ultracapacitors, desalinization, building materials, large-scale solar
• There is a lot of expectation around advancements and interest in upgrading the electric grid; although there was a warning to expect at least one major failure of a smart grid rollout (not to mention that people have been predicting an intelligent grid for many years)
• Standards gain a higher profile – whether building codes, water or carbon labeling, unified standards for the smart grid, etc, creating a clear marked playing field grows in importance, including communicating the rules to consumers as needed
• International competition to be the cleantech leader intensifies (again this is something I’ve written about in the past, so not really news in my opinion)

If you want to read for yourself, the various predictions I’ve pulled from are here: Energy stocks to watch from Seeking Alpha; Overall industry outlook from the Cleantech Group; Clean energy predictions from Deloitte; Two different VC perspectives, one from Lightspeed Venture Partners  and the other from Rob Day at Black Coral;  5 biggest hurdles from Earth2Tech; IT and corporate green from Greenmonk’s Tom Raftery; Green building trends from Earth2Tech;  Top 10 promises from cleantech companies from Cleantech Group; Smart grid from Earth2Tech.

According to the State of Green Business 2009 released today, consumers aren’t buying it when it comes to corporate green marketing. The most damning excerpt of the report’s section on marketing cites a Brandchannel.com report that found readers could think of not one brand that was “truly green or going green”. Nice try ecomagination! I guess we’ll have to see if GE’s Super Bowl ads on its smart grid business make any difference in perception. In the meantime, the federal government is also doing its part by refreshing rules governing green marketing claims. The rules are badly needed. As is evident from the SOGB report, it’s still possible to build practically any argument for or against green marketing depending on the data/research you use. We need standards. Here’s the section on green marketing from the report:  

A rise in green marketing efforts has been matched by a nearly equal rise in claims of greenwashing by activists, bloggers, and others. Increased concerns about energy, climate, toxics, and other environmental issues have led some of the largest consumer brands to enter the green marketplace, prodded by retailers such as Wal-Mart, which has been pushing suppliers to offer affordable green products. But with the new players and products has come a new wave of claims about greenwashing, or at least public frustration that companies aren’t doing enough, aren’t telling their stories well, or both. 

Green claims have continued to grow. An Earth Day report revealed that 2007 saw the largest number of green trademark applications since 2000, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: More than 300,000 applications for green brand names, logos, and tag lines. Companies like Apple, Canon, Clorox, and Fiji Water entered the green marketplace for the first time, raising awareness — but also questions and, sometimes, controversy. Given the lack of definitions, just about anything can be claimed as “green” — or “greenwash” — further muddying the waters. 

One problem is that consumers are ambivalent at best about shopping green. They claim they want to, but they also say that they don’t trust companies. For example, surveys show that the number of people concerned about climate change continues to grow, and that consumers believe businesses should bear the heaviest load in addressing it, but they aren’t convinced that the business sector is doing as much as it should. Marketers aiming to shift their audiences toward making greener purchasing decisions are coming up short for the vast majority of the population, although a small subset is green enough to helpspread the environmental awareness on their own, according to one study. Although about half of those in another survey said they trust companies to be truthful in their environmental marketing and believe companies are accurately presenting information about their impact on the earth, nearly 60 percent would like to see more government regulation of green claims to ensure they are accurate. Given the Federal Trade Commission’s review of green marketing claims launched last year, they just might get it. 

The upshot is that despite the continued upswing in green business activity, there’s no concomitant rise in consumer awareness or trust. Case in point: With no prompting, nearly half of all respondents to one survey were essentially unable to name a single feature of a green home — not solar power, compact fluorescent light bulbs, home recycling, or Energy Star-labeled appliances. And when readers of Brandchannel.com were asked what brand they think of as truly green or going green, the top answer: none at all.            

It’s official… sort of. According to the 34^th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness just released by Lake Superior State University, “green” and “going green” topped the most villainous terms of 2008 (other green themed expressions submitted included “building green”, “greening”, “green technology” and “green solutions”). Close behind was “carbon footprint” and “carbon offsetting”. The survey certainly isn’t the most scientific, but it was based on thousands of nominations from all over the country. Makes me wonder if the organizers of the “Green Inaugural Ball” taking place on the eve of the Obama presidency have time to make a name change. Perhaps they could call it the “Gangrene Inaugural Ball”? Also makes me wonder if media that have embraced green in their branding – i.e. GreenBiz, New York Times’ Green Inc., Greentech Media, Greenbang, Always On Going Green, Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN, etc – need a rethink as well. My favorite pull-quote from the LSSU survey came from a man in Bristow, VA:

“If I see one more corporation declare itself ‘green’, I’m going to start burning tires in my backyard”. – Ed Hardiman

Fair warning. But Ed, make sure it’s a green tire.

MediaWeek reported this week that interest from media properties to put out stand-alone green issues is waning in the current economy. So far the list of titles to do away with green issues in 2009 includes Domino, Discover, Sunset and Outside, according to the article. But the sub-text of the story, for me at least, is less about the economic factors involved behind the decision, and more about the growing sense that green no longer needs its own bully pulpit. Beth Brenner, an executive at Discover, is quoted as saying that advertisers don’t need a green-themed issue to tell their story, noting: ““They’ve made it a part of their everyday messaging.”  Which takes me back to a post I made in May of this year about the Discoloration of Green. It makes the case for an end to green as a separate topic, and for the start of green as an integrated thread woven throughout the fabric of business and policy.

Ad Age recently published a special section on agencies involved in green marketing. Of course I am happy to see the Weber Shandwick Cleantech and Planet 2050 practices included, but I have to say that the list seems pretty arbitrary. There are a number of agencies out there that are not mentioned. Just to name a few that I know about: Blue Practice, Antenna Group, egg, Clean Agency and Earth Advertising. The other thing that struck me about the Ad Age list is how different the approaches are from one firm to another, from setting up different practice groups to trying to infuse values of sustainability throughout an organization. Granted, I've only worked in the world of agencies for 3 years, but given what I've seen throughout the industry so far I would have to say that infusing anything into organizations that are typically based on individual P&Ls seems quite a challenge unless is is bottom up. As they used to say in China where the central government is always at odds with regional governments, "On top is policy, below is counter-policy". A good resource for marketing and communications issues around sustainability is Greenbiz.

Last year, I said that a time would come when the term "green" would fall into disuse. I'm now wondering if that time is nearer than I originally thought. I'm already sensing some fatigue from friends in the media. At the consumer level it's also more pronounced (depending on the day, search for "green fatigue" on a leading search engine bring back 500,000 to over 1 million results). Ironically, at the recently concluded Fortune Brainstorm: Green event, Andrew Shapiro of Green Order said that it felt as if 2008 would be the "apex of green". Which of course begs the question: How steep is the downward slope in 2009? Ted Nordhaus (who coincidentally was my childhood neighbor growing up in the southeast quadrant of Washington, DC, back when we both had hair) and his cohort Michael Shellenberger, in 2004 shook up the establishment with their paper called "Death of Environmentalism". They succeeded in pounding the final nail in that coffin. Now green's utility is in question and it is even being challenged by another color – "blue". Sustainability advocate Adam Werbach is now selling blue as the next step beyond green, arguing that blue is more accessible because it, in effect, means having your cake and eating it too (I've tried that, by the way, and I keep biting my hand by mistake). But really, green or blue, aren't we just creating another arbitrary label that will also fade away with time? Aren't we just setting ourselves up for "blue fatigue", when the next Adam Werbach comes along and pronounces the blue movement dead, and argues that its time for chartreuse to have a turn? Not to mention the fact that people in the developing world (I spent 16 consecutive years in China from 1987-2003 so I have some credibility) have just started the Long March to consumerism and couldn't really give a damn about green or blue, unless its related to the color of their new car or the tile in their newly renovated, air-conditioned kitchen.  

I moved into technology because public capital markets (and human activity more generally) are driven by short-term interest and unsustainable growth. Facing a powerful system backed by powerful inertia, it was my conclusion that fundamental change to our behavior around consumption/growth is highly unlikely to happen (to the degree or within the timeframe needed) to address the ecological problems we face. That POV was largely informed by my time in China, where I watched stock markets open, bans on advertising lifted, private cars allowed back on the roads and consumerism return with a vengeance. I witnessed China's boom and how it raised a lot of people out of poverty. The problem is that we can't raise the remaining 1 billion Chinese out of poverty without totally screwing ourselves and the ecology. And China is just the start – Brazil, India and the rest of the developing world are going through the same transformation. Far be it for me to deny others the chance to live lives of comfort. But it is highly naïve to assume that individual Chinese or Indians or Brazilians will have the foresight to look beyond their drive to material comfort and make decisions on how they live based on a moral responsibility for the health of the planet. The West didn't. It just won't happen (no offense Bill McKibben, whose conclusion for our generation – that more is not better – ignores the fact that its mainly people who know wealth who have room to think about less). Only when people are so afraid of the ramifications of climate change or toxic sludge seeping out of their water taps will they be motivated to change behavior (as recent events in Juneau underscored). But of course, by then it will be too late.  

So my bet for overcoming the challenges is technology, broadly defined. The way I see it, technology is the layer buffering natural resources from consumer and corporate behavior. It allows consumers to continue to behave much as they do and it allows natural resources to get a reprieve from that behavior. The more scaleable the technology, the bigger the reprieve and the better our chances. What Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has done with appliance standards in China is a perfect example of this. "Technology buffering" is not a panacea, but at least there is an opportunity to insert new clean technologies into existing products and systems and have a significant and accelerated impact. That's what gets me moving in the morning. (Several new books, The Cleantech Revolution, The Plot to Save the Planet and Apollo's Fire address this movement). 

What interests me from the Fortune event and others that I've attended over the past two years is a shift in the conversation. Many of the people I talk to say green/blue doesn't really matter. I agree. What matters is that "industrial restructuring" takes place. Whether the CEO of Stonyfield Farm ("we don't even use green to describe our customers, but 'quality' or 'educated'"), the chairman of SC Johnson ("we need to move the conversation from going green to transforming industry"), Vinod Khosla ("people's view of green is obsolete, its about mainstream business"), or builder Steve Glenn ("within 15 years green building goes away as a category"), the focus is more and more on creating a technological buffer to reshape the way we supply and demand.  

So let's focus on the technology that is going to get rid of the only color that deserves our attention – the black of oil and coal.

Hundreds of leaders from business, policy and NGOs in the same room for two days, naturally some interesting things will emerge. Below is a quick sketch of trends and comments from the just wrapped Fortune Brainstorm Green that I thought of particular note:

• The media "needs to get off cars and on to buildings" – Autodesk executive chairman Carol Bartz on the fact that the issue of buildings sucking energy, material and water is still not getting the attention it deserves. The numbers back her up. Conversely, it was noted by others in the green building space like Hycrete and Serious Materials that after a two decade hiatus, venture funding has found its way back to building in the past 2 years.
• A new version of LEED is set for unveil at Greenbuild in Boston and will be a "quantum leap" – head of USGBC Rick Fedrizzi
• Seems to be growing unease, and even skepticism, that cap and trade is going to be as easy at many thought. 2011 was heard repeatedly as a possible timeframe for legislation. Will a nascent business consensus fray into a mess? Are the economics fully understood to push forward aggressively? Is the Hill ready? Anecdotally at least, the answer is still clearly in the balance. One interesting alternative presented was Cap and Dividend.
• Like building, energy efficiency is still struggling to get more than a lot of lip service. Is recession the catalyst for cracking that nut? It was mentioned as a possibility.
• Hybrids and small cars are the fastest growing segment of US automotive market, according to Beth Lowery of GM. "The price of fuel is driving behavior," she said.
• "Living building" that taps into biomimicry is going mainstream. HOK – the giant architecture and design firm is starting to position itself as "bio-inspired", according to Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimicry Guild. Benyus' group is also looking to launch Asknature.org – a cool idea that allows anyone to query a database with questions about how nature addresses specific issues.
• Coke's environmental guru Jeff Seabright said look for something soon about consumer-facing information about "water used" in the company's products. It may not be on-package information, but something is coming. This would be welcome, since embedded water in consumer products is still very opaque to the consumer (for example, according to Dow Chemicals' Scott Noesen, it takes 2,000 liters of water to make a McDonald's hamburger if you do the whole-cost analysis.) There is nutritional information, now carbon labeling information has appeared, and water is the logical next step. Let's hope it happens.
• Vinod Khosla was the most provocative in my opinion during a 1:1 with Fortune's Adam Lashinsky. Highlights include:
  • Next generation batteries are not on a rapidly declining cost curve and require a quantum jump with a high probability of failure
  • The "Prius is more greenwash than green"
  • Technology for clean energy will only succeed if it passes the Chindia price test. If it's affordable in China and India then it has a shot.
  • Carbon emissions from all-electric cars are 3x more than that of cars powered by cellulosic ethanol.
• The highest correlation in the movement of solar stocks is the price of oil (not the price of natural gas as would be expected) – David Edwards, analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Both Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant and Khosla cited the same statistics placing biofuel as the fourth leading cause for the spike in global grain prices. The top three – rise in oil prices, drought in Australia and change in eating habits in developing countries like China (to more meat). I found one paper on Khosla's site about Fuel vs. Food, but it didn't appear to include the above list. Anyone know where it comes from?
• When Fortune's Marc Gunther asked a panel of Xerox, GM, SC Johnson and Dupont executives what grade corporate America should get in addressing environmental challenges (10 being the best grade), all of them said "1″, with the exception of GM's Lowery, who gave a "2″ because of innovation happening around new technologies. If you want to actually score a company, you can thanks to the CEO of Stonyfield Farm Gary Hirshberg, who has created an online corporate scorecard at Climatecounts.org