Despite holdups from the federal government, our  local county officials here in Santa Barbara, CA., are implementing a plan to allow private property owners  to get affordable loans for green building upgrades. 

This instrumental program also known as emPowerSBC, will all allow the county to loan money to property owners for sustainable upgrades including solar projects and residents will repay the loans via their property tax bill. 

This week Silicon Valley based Khosla Ventures, a group of venture capitalists welcomed the newest member to their team of green tech investors, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  

With over 1.1 billion invested in tech firms that not only include clean technology, the venture group announced the addition of Blair as a senior advisor at their summit for limited partners in Sausalito, California.  As a new advisor Blair will advises Khosla portfolios on public policy.
Khosla continued investing in clean tech companies over the last few years, while total investment capital fell to $2.3 billion in 2009 from $4.1 billion in 2008, according to the National Venture Capital Association.  

Blair brings to the table his involvement in the leadership of “Breaking the Climate Deadlock” effort, an endeavor to raise awareness and build consensus towards an international climate policy.   

Whether or not you are a climate change skeptic or believer, this group is focused on technology, not just to address emissions, but to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create new innovative technologies and jobs.  Silicon Valley is known for it’s creative, ambitions and innovative start-ups of the 90’s, and I would love to see an infusion of cash pumped into new and emerging companies that can design and create new and inspiring products for intelligent, sustainable and  smart design.  With investments in green tech, we can compete on a global scale in new manufacturing opportunities, retool existing facilities and employ a displaced workforce to create a new tech revolution.  

Khosla is one venture capitalist firm. Hopefully others will follow suit and move our economy forward with an infusion of funding that is not available from the banking industry for small businesses and start-ups.

Researchers at UC Berkeley are perfecting a technique that will allow clothing manufacturers to embed microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body movements, such as hiking, walking or stretching. While it might take up to three years for clothing containing this technology to hit the shelves of your local GAP store, this new breakthrough technology offers us a great opportunity to reduce our electricity demands on local utilities and reduce our costs for charging all of our high-tech devices.  

These nano sized generators are constituted of micro-filaments that are similar to fishing line, extremely flexible, but are so small they can barely be seen with the human eye.  These ultra flexible fibers can withstand not only the laundry cycle, but are resistant to chemicals and heat.  And when they are woven into clothing fabric according to the researchers accounts “the fibers can soak up the untapped energy produced by the human body” and with even more vigorous motion in certain joints, additional energy is generated.  

This new fiber technology utilizes piezoelectricity, that allows you to produce energy through applied stress, similar to rubbing your hands together to keep warm.  While the dream of producing energy from tiny components has been a far off dream for many scientists, the research team at Berkeley has developed an innovative way to effectively solve this problem.

While this technology is not yet available,  I love to read and learn more about innovative research and development, but only wish we had the funding through loans, grants and subsidies, to inspire and enable more creative and innovative minds the opportunity to design, create, and implement new products to compete in a new market that can create jobs in the green sector as well as revive our economy.  

I welcome your thoughts, comments and feedback on my post.  I would love to engage thought leaders in evolving technologies to offer us insight and education on new developments in alternative energy projects.