Clean Tech Open Gala Awards

I was fortunate enough to attend the CleanTech Open this week in San Francisco.   The  CleanTech Open is a business plan competition in the Green sector and they provide mentoring and  significant funding (and media and VC attention) to Green start-ups.   These were their Academy Awards at the beautiful Masonic.   I particularly enjoyed the variety, creativity and potential of the finalists  and imagine  there are many great ideas that didn't make it to the finals.  This gave me a lot to write about and even one product to lust about.  I want one of these 3 wheeled vehicles which will get 100 mpg and bends into a turn like a motorcycle (from Green Lite Motors).

Green Lite Motors

Other interesting finalists that caught my eye included:

• Micromidas - technology that turns sewage into plastic
• Hydrovolts  -  hydrokinetic turbine that floats in man-made water channels.  Each one can power up to 10 homes near a canal.
• New Sky Energy - sucks CO2 out of the air and turns it into to consumer  products,  a carbon negative solution.
• Tru2earth - turns plastic water bottles into shingles as an alternative to asphalt
• Alphabet Energy  - turns wasted heat into reusable energy (think of how hot your car gets - that's wasted energy!)

And the winner of the 250K award was Ecofactor, a SaaS solution  (Software as a Service), that regulates home heating and cooling systems remotely based on a variety of environmental factors.  They claim 20% energy savings with no impact on comfort.  I plan to take a much closer look at them in an upcoming post. 

CleanTech open is doing fantastic things by mentoring and providing funds to these great start-ups.  Of course many of these things won't pan out but some certainly will.  And the more wild, creative ideas that get off the ground - the more great successes we will see!