I got an mass email from Marc Gottschalk who is a member of the Clean Technology and Renewable Energy Practice of the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Professional Corporation.

If anyone is interested the California Clean Tech Open final awards event will be held at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco the afternoon/evening of Monday, October 29, 2007. At the current time some free organizational capacity building courses are being provided to the finalists to help them develop their business plans.

I would have liked to have participated, seeing it as an opportunity to feature the Integrated Farming & Waste Management System developed by ZERI volunteer George Chan, but I found the entrance fee of $250 too high for my budget.

The really useful news is on the solar front, a new $50M fund is being made available through California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to fund solar R&D and deployment.

For more information, please contact Peter Mostow at (415) 947-2051, Kevin Fox at (415) 947-2042, or Jason Keyes at (206) 883-2577.

More details here.

I would like to make an extra effort in the coming months to revitalize the BASAC concept that led to the formation of Bay Area Sustainable Action Coalition (BASAC) discussion group.

I do think there is a strong link between oneVillage Foundation’ s (OVF) attempt to create a global sustainable development strategy and the transformation (The idea of Silicon Valley Transformation has been a hallmark of OVF’s two pronged global sustainable development strategy) of the Bay Area towards a major effort to retool its infrastructure and production systems so that they are dramatically reducing ecological impacts from the currently grossly unsustainable levels of activity and consumption today. Its really a way of balancing the need for global change with practical actions towards sustainability that will have an impact in the way we live our lives in the Bay Area.

I see this blog as a simple step to begin to encourage people in the Bay Area to better integrate their various efforts in relation to sustainability towards a point where the majority of new buildings are designed to be sustainable and to also promote what I feel is OVF’s unique perspective on development stressing a community driven assets based approach.

Such an community approach is needed probably as much here (if not more here) as it is in Africa and the rest of the developing world. We need to begin to get us to visualize sustainability in our lives and then finally take the steps to build a sustainable world in our lives in a way that is economically viable. Of course there are signs throughout the blog that people all over the world are taking those steps and that the sustainability movement has reached the Tipping Point as expressed in Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest.

Yet the major challenge is not just to figure out to build sustainable communities but to empower the people building and living in them so that it is they that are determining their own destinies, rather that the development apparatus and the means of production being driven by large scale, top down entities who are not accountable to the needs of local people. Thus the term Localization or Relocalization (relating to the process of taking the power back from highly centralized systems) has been the new rallying cry of those in the sustainability movement committed to community oriented development models. Some examples of leadership in this particular aspect of the sustainability movement include the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and also PostCarbon.org.

Further reference on the concept of Silicon Valley Transformation please see this post.

Reuters reports that several inventors from Wales have developed what they call the “Greenbox.”

This sounds like a big breakthrough. However its not like this is the first time I have read one of these “silver bullet technology” stories.

The fact that these folks are so secretive of course makes it hard to evaluate the viability of the technology.

Developed by organic chemist Derek Palmer and engineers Ian Houston and John Jones, the technology is now being promoted as a way to successfully capture a majority of the emissions and has led to the formation of Maes Anturio Limited, which translates from Welsh as Field Adventure.

They apparently stumbled across the idea while experimenting with carbon dioxide to help boost algae growth for fish farming.

They now have the backing of their local member of parliament and are seeking capital either from government or industry

The system uses canister to replace a car exhaust that will last for a full tank of petrol. It has to be replaced at each fill up and that of course means an system to process and transport the material would have to deployed parallel to the existing petrol filling station infrastructure.

The idea is that this could be an alternative model for a biofuel economy that would be zero emissions and closed loop. The waste gases collected by the system (which would be located on each individual automobile) would then be recycled into a vast algae growing infrastructure. This would include thousands of acres of specially designed algae farms. The farms would grow special algae that would be grown to extract the oil from inside their cell walls. The next step would involve setting up biorefineries to process the oil in a way that is very similar to how conventional oil is processed (except hopefully without the pollution and ecological destruction).

The crucial aspect of the technology is that the carbon dioxide is captured and held in a secure state, said Houston. Conventional carbon capture technologies are much more cumbersome or energy-intensive, for example using miles of pipeline to transport the gas. There is no word on the cost of this technology.

Reuters | July 13, 2007 10:43 PM

The 13-part series, “Eco-Town,” will chronicle the rebuilding of the small town of Greensburg, Kan., which was devastated by a tornado May 4. The town, which has more than 1,500 residents, will be rebuilt as a “sustainable model of eco-living and one that will save it from future environmental catastrophe.”

The project was brought to Discovery by DiCaprio, a noted environmentalist, and Craig Piligiann of Pilgrim Films & Television. DiCaprio will executive produce through his company, Appian Way, along with Piligian…