Second post...starting a trend here...

I am still struggling with getting my recording capabilities up and running. I started compiling a list of my first few interviewees and even spoke to some of them. I'm not giving up and neither should you.

So, what is cleantech? Wikipedia defines Cleantech as a term used to describe knowledge-based products or services that improve operation performance, productivity, or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste or pollution.

Though the "knowledge-based" in the definition may be redundant, it could, i believe, be pinned on nearly any COO in any company (maybe excluding the "waste or pollution" part). What I mean is that improving operational performance, productivity and efficiency on the one hand while reducing costs, inputs and energy consumption is, as I learnt in business school, what improves profitability. So what's new here? Isn't this what capitalism is all about? If so then what's so special about it. If not, then what went wrong along the way?

Well, several things went wrong along the way. First, is that many industries, processes, and supply chains are wasteful. They never really took a close look at the resources being used and then thrown out in any given process. Or, they were just taken for granted in the process of developing new machines that produce new stuff, without taking input and output, on all levels, into consideration - particularly energy.

And ENERGY is the key to our discussion and to the discussions to come. First, because energy costs money and the price of energy is highly volatile because it is a finite resource; and second, because most of the energy used in the world is based on fossil fuels that release CO2 when burned.

These two facts about energy are the keys to understanding the birth of the cleantech industry and its continuing growth.

More too come...