10 Big Green Ideas

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10 Big Green Ideas

The stories of thoughtful citizens who are trying to make great green ideas a reality.

At the first Earth Day protest in 1970, Margaret Mead, the American Anthropologist and proto-environmentalist, issued a call to action: We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as somethingthats fragile, thats only one, its all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the

dangers that have come from science and technology. Back in those early dayslong before we begandriving hybrid cars and politicians started using words like sustainability and carbon footprint to winelectionsMead and her Earth Day comrades were on the fringe. Would she be surprised to see howmainstream the green movement is today? Probably not. After all, she once said, Never doubt that a smallgroup of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. All it takes is a great idea. Here wevegathered 10 of those, along with the stories of the thoughtful citizens who are trying to make them a reality.

Make a Greener Burger

Who knew hamburgers could wreck the planet? Thats what environmentalists say is happening, asranchers raze the Brazilian rainforest and their methane-emitting cows foul the atmosphere with greenhousegases. No one has been more a target of environmentalists ire than Blairo Maggi. Though known as asoybean tycoon, Maggi became Big Beefs best friend as a two-time governor of Mato Grosso, the frontierstate that boasts Brazils largest herds and has helped make that nation the worlds No. 1 beef exporter. Butthis developmentalista, who in 2005 won Greenpeaces Golden Chainsaw award for the havoc he had

wreaked on the Amazon, has become Brazils latest tree-hugger. The talk in Maggis corral is all aboutsustainable development, carbon credits, avoided deforestationand green beef. After signing on toa 2006 moratorium on selling soybeans harvested from recently deforested lands, Maggi last year extendedthe ban to Amazon beef cattle. He has urged ranchers and Brazils giant meatpackers to clean up their act,and is even using satellites to monitor illegal clear-cutting and burning of forests. Why Maggis change ofheart? Its smart business. The entire world has come to the conclusion that forests should be worth morestanding than cut down, he often says. Farmers should get paid for that.Mac Margolis

Invest In the Improbable

They say great risk brings great reward. just ask Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems cofounder whobecame Silicon Valleys most vaunted venture capitalist. These days, Khosla is betting on green-techstartups, with a $1 billion venture-capital fund called Khosla Ventures. I like technologies that have a90 percent chance of failure, he says. Because a 10 percent chance of making 100 times your money is

better than an 80 percent chance of doubling your money. He believes huge breakthroughs begin withhighly improbable ideasblack swan technologies, he calls them (a reference to Nassim NicholasTalebs theory about the randomness and unpredictability of big events). Khoslas flock includesinvestments in battery-technology startups like Recapping and Pellion, which he describes as some reallylong-shot things on electricity storage, some of which are really not even batteries. He has also invested ina company called Solum thats developing a measuring tool to enable farmers to use less fertilizer, thusreducing harmful nitrogen runoff. These are way out there, flaky ideas that could take 10 to 15 years tobear fruit. Luckily, he can afford to be patient.Daniel Lyons

Get Out Of the Gulf

Before this years massive oil spill, the U.S. was getting 8 percent of its oil from the Gulf of Mexicoanumber that translates to 1.6 million barrels each day. That statistic alone helped oil executives persuadePresident Obama last week to reopen the area. Demand, they said, is simply too high to keep the rigs dry.

But is it really? Jackie Savitz, a political-policy analyst with the ocean-advocacy group Oceana, sees afairly simple way to get out of the gulf completely. For starters, electrify 10 percent of Americas cars by2020 (were already at about 1 percent). Switch oil-based power plants to clean electric ones (there are only105 of them). Update one quarter of oil-heated homes to electric power (also doable; the number has beendecreasing). And phase in all available non-feedstock biofuels (much of which are going unused). Totalbarrels saved? Yep, 1.6 million. The Alliance for Clean Energy gave Oceana a grant this summer toimplement the agenda, which could be passed in pieces. And during a debate last month, a senior InteriorDepartment official admitted the idea wasnt so farfetched. The oil companies depend on all of this stuffsounding really difficult, says Savitz. But really, its not that hard.Daniel Stone

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Catch a Wave

More than 70 percent of the earths surface is covered by water, most of it in oceans that seethe and crasharound with pent-up energy. What if you could harness that power? As many green venturers havediscovered over the years, catching a wave is no easy feat because the oceans are so harsh on equipmentand the energy produced is expensive. Now, thanks (ironically) to Big Petroleum, the harvest of the seas isat hand. The quest for oil and gas buried deep beneath the ocean and the polar icecaps has yielded a newgeneration of materials and equipment that can withstand salt, gale-force winds, giant waves, crushingwater pressure, and thermal shock. In March, 10 energy firms got the green light to set up wave and tidalfarms off the coast of Scotland, with plans to generate enough electricity to power 750,000 homes by 2015.Pilot plants have also been set up in Portugal, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Northeastern Seaboard of theUnited States (insiders speak of the Gulf of Maine). The Marine Board of the European ScienceFoundation recently concluded that Europe could draw half its power from the seas by 2050. All thatsneeded is for enough public and private investors to take the plunge.Mac Margolis

Hug a Nuke

One of the big problems with nuclear energy is that, to generate power, you first need to enrich uranium.Enrichment is inefficientsome 92 percent of the original uranium gets cast aside as depleted uranium.Worse, once you start enriching uranium to make fuel, you can enrich it further to make material forbombs. But what if you could make nuclear power that didnt need enriched uranium? What about a reactorthat runs on depleted uranium? Thats the idea behind TerraPower. Weve shown it can work, through

theoretical calculations and detailed computer simulations, says Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of IntellectualVentures, the Bellevue, Wash., invention lab where the ideas behind TerraPower were hatched.Myhrvold was once chief technology officer at Microsoft, and his longtime friend, Microsoft cofounderBill Gates, is among the investors in TerraPower. The company consults with a network of 120 nuclear-power experts, and the plan is to get a test reactor running by 2020. Likely countries include China, India,Russia, Japan, and France. Weve had talks with all of them in the last few months, Myhrvold says.

Daniel Lyons

Turn Smoke Into Rocks

We talk a lot about reducing carbon dioxide, taxing it, eliminating it. But theres a case to be made forkeeping CO2 around. Los Gatos, Calif.based Calera has developed a process that takes CO2 from apower-plant smokestack and turns it into cement. The technology would reduce CO2 in two waysfirst byslashing power-plant emissions and then by displacing the existing cement-making industry, which is one

of the biggest generators of carbon dioxide. Thats the cool part of this, says Randy Seeker, Caleraschief technology officer. Were getting a twofer. Caleras approach was dreamed up by Brent Constantz,a Stanford science professor who studied how coral reefs are formed in nature (carbon dioxide mixes withcalcium to form calcium carbonate) and then found a way to mimic the process. Calera has a pilot plantrunning in California, and another set to start up in Wyoming next year; the goal is to have commercialplants running by 2013 or 2014. There are some big obstacles, though: if the United States doesnt imposelegislation that pushes power plants to reduce carbon emissions, those plants probably wont pay someonelike Calera to keep their smokestacks clean. Daniel Lyons

Drink Your Garbage

To some, the smell of a landfill is sweet. Thats because the stuff we throw away could help us save theplanet and turn a profit. Plastic is made of petroleum, so finding ways to reuse it could make us lessdependent on oil. And the household electronics we discard are loaded with elements like nickel, copper,

and lithium, which one day could be in short supply. Why not mine our own trash? Thats the plan inBelgium, where a British company, Advanced Plasma Power, plans to start digging up landfill, in part toget at buried metals as well as methane gas that could generate electricity. Axion International of NewProvidence, N.J., has found a way to craft pilings, beams, and other building components out of recycledplastic. How strong is it? At Fort Bragg, the U.S. Army has erected a bridge for tanks out of railroad tiesfashioned from Axions beams. Singapore last year installed a system that turns sewage into drinkingwater. But what if this process could also make money? Mark Shannon at the University of Illinois isworking on a device that can take human sewage and turn it into fresh water, methane, and minerals thatcould be sold on the open market. Michael Kanellos

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Hire a Microbe

Microbes live in fermentation vats, feed on filth, and at the end of the week you can kill them off. In short,they are the perfect employees. A raft of startups and established multinationals have woken up to thepower of metabolismthe interaction that occurs when a living organism ingests food and chemicallyconverts it into something else. Its not a new idea. For centuries, humanity has exploited yeast to producebeer and cheese. But now companies are looking to microbes to power your car. BioCee of Minneapolis isworking on microbes that can soak up sunlight and carbon dioxide and convert it into a substitute forpetroleum. Stanford University has discovered a bug that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen andoxygen (which could make the hydrogen economy touted in the 1990s a reality). Amyris of Emeryville,Calif., has devised genetically modified yeast that produces something close to gasoline. We can engineermicrobes to do our bidding, says Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist at Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, whichhas invested in superbug startups Genomatica and Synthetic Genomics. The downside? Superbugs are hardto create and hard to produce in large volume, and dont survive well. Michael Kanellos

Shout It Out Loud

Never underestimate the power of protest. ma jun, a former investigative journalist for the South ChinaMorning Post, heads the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a tiny NGO run out of a Beijingapartment that has taken on some of the worlds leading corporations. His NGO collects government dataabout local suppliers that are violating environmental standards, and examines which Westernmultinationals theyre connected with. He then works with foreign nonprofits to pressure the likes of Nike,

Levi Strauss, Apple, and GE to clean up their act. In China, speaking up about sensitive issues cansometimes be more hazardous to your health than pollution. But Ma has succeeded. His group was acatalyst behind Wal-Marts well-publicized demand that its top 1,000 Chinese suppliers improve theirgreen footprint. As he points out, the Chinese version of the EPA has just 230 full-time staff looking after acountry of 1.3 billion, which is why its important to continue engaging the West around Chineseenvironmental issues. Americans should remember that we are your backyardour polluted waterwaysare your mercury-laced toys. Its all connected. Rana Foroohar

Lighten Up

The best green ideas are ones that save you money, right away, without any kind of government subsidy orlegislation. And theres no better example of that than LED lighting. Sure, LED bulbs cost more thantraditional ones. But they also save tons of money on electricity by sipping less juice to make the sameamount of light. If you spend $100,000 to retrofit a parking garage with LED lights, I can save you

$100,000 a year on electricity, says Charles Szoradi, CEO of LED Savings Solutions, in Devon, Pa.Whats more, those LED bulbs will last up to 10 years, so that $100,000 initial investment could deliver $1million in gross savings. No wonder big companies are jumping on the LED bandwagon, among them Wal-Mart, which announced plans to put LED lights in 650 stores. That deal and others like it are fueling aboom for Durham, N.C.based Cree Inc., which makes the semiconductors used in LED lights, as well assome LED bulbs of its own. After several years of modest growth, Crees revenues have exploded. Sales inthe 2010 fiscal year, which ended in June, grew 53 percent to $867 million, and analysts expect sales to hit$1.2 billion in the current year. With numbers like that, no one can deny that environmentalism is a brightidea. Daniel Lyons