GoingGreen Silicon Valley 2010

The transformation to a clean and sustainable civilization encompasses every imaginable technology and industry. With the initial momentum of the favored green sectors slowed by economic reality and political reassessment, what cleantech sectors quietly advance, relatively immune to transient trends? In addition to energy and transportation, how is clean technology creating opportunities in water, agriculture, construction, infrastructure and waste management? How are enabling technologies in materials sciences and genomics catalyzing these opportunities?

In theory, no other renewable energy has the potential of solar - with petawatts of solar energy caressing the earth every day. But intermittencies, storage and transmission investments, along with just amortizing the installation costs, leave solar still dependent on subsidies. How can system integration, simplified installation, and advancements in storage and solar collector technology make solar energy truly competitive? Will biotechnology be the source of the next generation of cheaper and more efficient solar collectors? What is the solar solution?

Along with reuse, water abundance can be achieved through developing innovative, low-footprint storage technologies, from rainfall run-off cisterns to massive aquifer development to harvest run-off from seasonal floods. Also promising to deliver fresh water abundance is desalination technology - now responsible for over 2% of all water withdrawals worldwide. How can developing new sources of water through run-off harvesting and ocean water desalination combine with reuse and treatment technologies to solve the challenge of water scarcity. What companies are working to deliver these solutions, and where are the opportunities for investors?

How do you finance renewables in an economic environment of tight credit and lower prices for conventional energy? How can next-generation infrastructure upgrades using clean technology - not just in energy, but in water, transportation and construction - secure viable financing while still delivering solutions that create a net benefit for consumers instead of an additional economic burden? Is the expectation of some sort of climate or energy legislation holding up investment in energy technology? What emerging energy technologies are so competitive they can emerge regardless of government assistance?

The utility meter has grown up - it can monitor and record energy use, with built-in wireless communications and control. Within the structure, each electric circuit is monitored and controlled by the smart meter, as are all major appliances, which are equipped with IP addressable control and communications suites. What opportunities does this present the high-tech industry?

The electric power grid is going to be smarter, more efficient, and more secure than ever. This massive upgrade will take decades and create opportunities for myriad high-tech innovations, from monitoring and communications suites for transformers and other substation devices, to new and cleaner transformer technologies, to new conducting materials to improve efficiency, to new energy storage and management systems to accommodate distributed and intermittent new sources of energy generation. What is the landscape of this huge and diverse new demand for innovative clean technologies?

There is no shortage of fresh water, just a shortage of technologies to cycle wastewater back upstream for continuous reuse. What new advances in nanotechnology and biotechnology are yielding water treatment solutions that are cost-effective and yield treated water that is cleaner than spring rain? What companies are pioneering these breakthroughs?

Underneath and facilitating every comfort of civilization is the backbone of infrastructure. Massive civil engineering projects - pipelines, refineries, freeways, railroads, airports, canals, aqueducts, power plants, transmission lines, water treatment plants - today these all incorporate the latest clean and sustainable technologies, as the world's infrastructure is retrofit and expanded. What clean building blocks are already joining this supply chain - from cement to bioplastics - and what new technologies are they looking for?