April 2011

I attended a Green Forum last week hosted by my old university, RRU. It got me thinking about what will be the realistic opportunities in GREEN technology and where an entrepreneur can truly make a social, sustainable difference and make a profit at the same time. Observing challenges in society are always a good way to look for new opportunities and the dominant story in the news has been the instability in the Middle East.

Looking at what caused the latest destabilization, the tipping point was the rising costs of essential foods and other daily requirements. The rest of the hardships endured by its citizens had been tolerated up to that point but when it came to essential needs, the people snapped. As we have seen repeatedly, when a country destabilizes, it can have a global affect either through a disruption in the supply of goods or the growth of terrorism/ extremism and usually creates a domino affect. Example- the uprising in Libya resulted in the reduction in supply of oil to the Western World which meant an increase in fuel prices, creating a rise in transportation costs which in turn increased/ will increase the prices on food and other essentials.

Although global trade is becoming more of the norm, in my opinion there are certain goods and services that need to be PRIMARILY produced domestically in a renewable fashion in order to ensure domestic stability and security and ensure no country is truly at the mercy of another in order to eliminate the domino affect, explained above, on essentials.

The top three goods that I feel need to be managed/produced domestically are:
– Clean water
– Essential foods / staple foods
– Non-food crop sustainable energy

Through adversity comes opportunity and I think development of technology and techniques to economically produce these goods in range of climates and other environmental conditions could be extremely lucrative given our continuously growing population and limited global resources.

Water

There is a growing shortage of water in most countries around the World either due to a lack of the resource or because industry and government have been too short sighted and polluted their water table through industrial run-off or other toxic pollution. For coastal regions, desalination technology will be a focus but currently it is rather expensive so not truly economically feasible for most countries. Technological improvements to bring down the cost will be in high demand and a great opportunity for any entrepreneurs and scientists in that area.

As for inland countries- water purification, water/ soil remediation, as well as water from air technologies will be market opportunities. Water purification and water / soil remediation to clean up existing water tables has been around for a while as well but again, cost is an issue so there is definitely a demand for technological innovation to reduce the costs. Water to air technology has seen some breakthroughs in the last couple of years but there has always been a problem with the growth of bacteria and fungus within these systems, creating the need for continuous maintenance to avoid contaminating the water produced. A few companies locally have helped to reduce the problem but if anyone has a sustainable solution, I know a few companies will be interested to hear from you.

Essential Foods/ Staple Foods

With the growing population, meat which requires a large amount of inputs to produce will become more a luxury than a staple due to an increased scarcity of land used for growing livestock, more expensive inputs, due to reduced supply, and more mouths to feed. In order to substitute our need for meat, recipes that product foods that taste like meat or bio-technologies that produce economical artificial meat will be in demand within the next 20 years. Hydroponics has been a solution for growing tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and other vegetables and fruit with small physical footprints but given the growth in extreme weather, it will be necessary to increase our use of hydroponics for other sources of food, including grains which are staples for most 2nd and 3rd world nations. If areas like the Middle East want to stabilize the prices on their food supply to help reduce political instability, they are going to need to change their deserts into hydroponic oases. With growing population, land is becoming scarce, so vertical farms (basically high rise hydroponic farms), which historically have been cost prohibitive are now garnering serious scientific study in places like Singapore and China. It won’t be long before places like India and Indonesia will be seriously considering the technology as well. Investment in this area is essential and those that come up with economical, proprietary solutions will be highly in demand.

Non-Food Crop Sustainable Energy

Renewable sources of energy are going to become extremely important. However, I don’t believe that biofuels from food crops or food crop waste non-edible crops grown on agricultural land will be viable sources given that land to produce food will become extremely valuable and nutrients from the food waste will be necessary to go back into the system to help grow the food.

I have a history with waste to energy (WTE) to dispose of municipal solid waste but am becoming increasingly adverse to the technology as it basically incinerates resources that should be recycled back into the system.

I don’t think solar, wind, and wave power are stand alone energy solutions and instead should be used in concert where practical.

I think a very important solution to add to the mix will be sewage to energy. Anaerobic digesters have been used in Europe for a while to convert a large percentage of sewage waste into bio-gas (mostly methane) to be burned for municipal heat or as an input to produce electricity. Currently, most of North America just treats its sewage to remove most of the deadly bacteria, breaks it down into smaller pieces and dumps the output into the lakes, rivers, and oceans. There are a few pilot projects in North America, especially in the area of agricultural (chicken, cow, pig) waste but currently not accepted practice over here. I definitely believe this technology is the future but I am definitely keeping my eyes on the technology that uses bacteria and enzymes to convert sewage waste into hydrogen instead of methane. Simply, igniting methane (very bad greenhouse gas) produces carbon dioxide ( still bad but not as bad greenhouse gas) as a byproduct while igniting hydrogen produces WATER (potentially drinkable water). Given that electric transmission wires are inefficient and lose more energy over greater transmission distances, sewage provides more localized production of energy, reducing those inefficiencies. Sewage to energy also provides a 24/7 energy solution and reduces waste output that traditionally would pollute our environment.

Closed Loop Solutions

Closed loop systems or creating opportunities for waste outputs as potential inputs for other processes is going to be essential to help reduce our global footprint. I have been looking at the above areas of opportunity and brainstorming possibilities to provide cost efficiencies by combining the systems above that may not occur if these facilities were built separately.

I wonder if an economic project could be put together combining a:
– Desalination/ Water Treatment plant
– Hydroponic facility
– Sewage plant

The sewage plant could provide energy for both the desalination/ water treatment plant and the hydroponic facilities. The sewage can potentially provide nutrients to be used to grow hydroponic foods. Although at first thought this sounds gross, we currently use animal waste all the time time to grow our food- this just provides another source which will become of greater importance as the population growth reduces opportunities for the production of meat.

The desalination/ water treatment plant can provide fresh water for the hydroponic facility and grey water for the sewage plant. It could also provide nutrients for the hydroponic facility in the process of desalination.

The biomass waste from the hydroponic farms (either single layer or vertical farms) could be disposed of in the sewage facility for either the production of energy or broken down for the production of nutrients to be put back into the hydroponic facility.

In addition to sewage power, the hydroponic farms could be powered by solar and wind and potential wave/ current technology from the body of water the facilities are situated near.

Combining the resources of these facilities is nothing new as NASA has been working on this closed loop challenge in order to undertake long space missions to other planetary bodies. I think NASA would be a good source to collaborate with in order to obtain the answers for an economical system that could be used in the future.

If we fail to answer these opportunities, I think the World will slowly destabilize over the next twenty years with more and more failed governments and increase in extremism to wreak havoc and disrupt the rest of the World. Not only is it an opportunity but a necessity for our global well-being.