Copenhagen—The employee of the decade in green tech is scum. University College Dublin (UCD) has come up with a way to recycle old plastic bottles and containers with microorganisms. The end result—the thing that comes out of the bacteria’s digestive system--is a new piece of plastic. The difference, however, is that the plastic that comes out of the process is biodegradable. It can go safely into a landfill and will disappear over time, said Kevin O’Connor, the lead researcher on the project during a presentation at Copenmind, a university tech transfer conference taking place this week. If the process can be brought up to an industrial level, it could help the world get rid of the nation-sized mass of plastic that humanity has generated. Right now, there are two general ways of dealing with old plastic. Some countries, like England and Ireland, ship it to other countries after doing the green thing and recycling. Plastic bottles have a low recycling value; hence, a lot of the plastic ends up in landfills forever. (But the Irish are big into recycling—a 15 cent tax on plastic bags dropped their use by over 99 percent, O’Connor said.) The other method to “recycle� plastic is to burn it. Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and other countries practice it. It yields useable energy, but it’s not the cleanest practice in the world either. UCD’s process works like this. Polypropylene (plastic) is cooked until it turns into a styrene oil. The oil is then fed to microorganisms, which metabolically turn it into globules of fatty acids. When 60 percent of the bacteria consists of those fatty acids, the microorganism is split open and the harvested fatty acids are converted to a biodegradable plastic. See why bacteria make such good workers? Try to do that to your new hire from Cal State Fullerton and the first thing he’ll do is file a worker’s compensation claim. It’s good plastic too. The glass transition temperature—the temperature that makes it brittle—is a low minus 43.3 degrees Celsius, so it’s freezer safe. You can heat it to 278 Celsius. “But it will degrade in a compost heat at 32 degrees because the microorganisms (in the landfill) release enzymes,� he said. Industrial microbiology is the basis of a number of other start-ups, including Cambrios (microbes making industrial chemicals) and AgraQuest (biopesticides). Melting the plastic into an oil requires energy. The overall balance, however, is better than if you made a second, separate bottle, O’Connor asserted. A kilogram of plastic yields 350 grams of new plastic. The missing oil goes to the microorganism: they feed off the oil to grow. The group has filed for a few patents. Next year, it wants to move out of the lab and do a multi-kilogram recycling center with a large waste company. Keep your eye on Ireland in cleantech and advance science, by the way. For years, the Irish tech industry primarily concentrated on serving as an outsourcing destination for multinationals. But in about 2000, the government—realizing that Ireland was no longer a low-cost center—began to invest in technology transfer center and incubators. The pitch made to scientists is straightforward. Unless researchers can’t come up with interesting commercial applications, funding may get cut during austerity times, Pat Frain, who runs NovaUCD (the school’s incubator) told me earlier this year. Plus, you might become incredibly wealthy. Other incubation centers in Ireland are working on ocean power, semiconductors and material science. (See this masterpiece of cinema for more.) Another interesting project at UCD: BiancaMed, which has a wireless device that can tell you what happens to your body while you sleep. Whether or not the incubator program ends up creating successful start-ups, however, won’t like be known for another five years.

Copenhagen—Toyota and lithium just don’t mix. Masatami Takimoto, executive vice president for the technology department at Toyota, acknowleged during a presentation at Copenmind, a technology conference taking place here this week, that the Japanese auto giant will inevitably put lithium ion batteries in some types of cars. Toyota, for instance, will probably put lithium ions into commuter cars and will also likely use a lithium ion battery in its plug-in hybrids. In fact, the company will in the near future send out lithium ion batteries to those testing the plug-in Prius. Right now, those plug-in Priuses contain two regular Prius batteries, which cuts the all-electric driving range down to around 13 kilometers. Challenges, though, persist with lithium-ion batteries, he said. They are expensive. They can’t drive cars very far and they weigh a lot, which in turn hurts mileage. Thus, enthusiasm is tempered. “Lithium ion batteries will probably be used in vehicles, but we still have problems,� Takimoto said. “We do think it’s appropriate to use lithium ion batteries in commuter cars.� And don’t expect an all-electric car with lithium ion batteries, or any kind for that matter, for a while. Batteries don’t have the energy density that can compete well with liquid fuels or even fuel cells. “We at Toyota believe that plug-in hybrids are the most practical way for an ordinary vehicle to take advantage of electricity,� Takimoto said. Take a look at the shot of his PowerPoint slides from the conference. That little bar at the left near "inferior"? That’s the energy density of lithium ion batteries. Next over is combustible hydrogen (not fuel cells) and compressed natural gas. and next beyond that are the liquid fuels. Takimoto also pointed out that all-electric cars were a tough sell in the past. In the 90s, the company put out an all-electric version of the RAV4. It didn’t sell well because customers were concerned about price and range. Despite all the skepticism surrounding hydrogen fuel cells, he said that the concept still has a future. Take a look at this second power point slide. The brick walls represent the technological and other hurdles that will need to be overcome for a particular technology to succeed. For fuel cells, the biggest challenges are figuring out ways to make hydrogen cheaply without generating carbon dioxide. (Now, most companies make it by cracking methane at high temperatures, which releases large doses of CO2.). Transporting hydrogen will also take work. But look at the size of the barrier. It’s a lot smaller than the one for electricity. A hydrogen fuel cell car being tested by Toyota gets 560 kilometers on a tank of the gas. “We should assume that electricity and fuel cells will be necessary,� he said. Cars, particularly commuter cars, will also get smaller. He showed a picture of the iQ, a Smart-car sized commuter vehicle that can fit four passengers coming soon. It’s less than three meters long. (How do they get four adults in? The seats are really, really thin, like outdoor furniture). The other interesting point about his slides is the projection for liquid fuel. In short, they are going to be around for a while. Diesel and gas will naturally have to be cut down. The automotive industry can’t survive unless we do something about dwindling supplies, air pollution and CO2 emissions. He noted that 60 percent of the NOx gases in Japan come from diesel transportation, and diesel isn’t popular in Japan. To that end, Toyota is experimenting with cellulosic ethanol, flex fuel vehicles, and even looking at things like natural gas to liquids (GTL) and coal to liquids. The hybrid, though, still rules at Toyota. As of August, the company has sold 1.6 million hybrids to date. These cars have cut fuel consumption worldwide by 2.9 billion liters and carbon dioxide emissions by 7.5 million tons. The company wants to be selling a million hybrids a year in the 2010s. So far, Toyota has come out with 12 models of hybrids and will have a hybrid option in all of its lines of cars in the 2020s, he said. These figures include Toyota’s diesel hybrid buses.

Copenhagen—If you really want to be comprehensive when it comes to searching for a college, you’d better get cracking. There are approximately 7,500 universities in the world, said the organizers of Copenmind, a conference here that is trying to link up universities with corporate labs. (Yet, somehow, there are probably only 372 different animal mascots.) There are also 10,000 research institutes, such as Germany’s Max Planck Institute, which has more branches than Quiznos. That large number in part was the inspiration for the conference. Universities employ large numbers of researchers. Yet, most of the time, the results of this research become landlocked. A person might file a paper or present it at a few conferences. When they do look for commercial partners, they often only look at regional businesses. It’s a work in progress. For one thing, there aren’t many buyers. Most of the attendees are researchers. Intellectual property is not the easiest sell in the world. Large companies typically are somewhat reluctant when it comes to licensing technology from outsiders. Also, things coming out of labs sometimes aren’t a perfect fit. The variety can also be a bit bewildering. University of Southampton from England, is showing off work it has done on tidal turbines and solar roofing tiles. A short stroll down the aisle brings you to Tokai University in Japan, which has a device that looks like an airplane wing. Put it on the underside of a boat and you can get propulsion from waves. Tech transfer can be a clunky process too. Even the companies that have successfully spun out companies get their share of criticism. The Office of Technology Licensing or the OLT, one instructor at Stanford told me recently, is referred to by some as Office of Tired Losers. And these guys helped Google and Genentech. Still, you can see the appeal. Most, if not all, of the countries in the developing world have put together programs to transfer technology out of their labs. Green tech is heavily dependent on specialized R&D. So we shall see.

It’s Labor Day week, so I’m going to quote Eugene V. Debs. Debs doesn’t get quoted much or even remembered much so I’d like to do it.

In this country – the most favored beneath the bending skies – we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child – and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

Eugene Debs, labor leader, five-time Socialist Party candidate for president, dubbed "the most dangerous man in America," said this just before being sentenced to 10 years in prison for speaking words powerful men did not like, in the midst of a wrong, stupid war that never should have been fought. Anyway speaking of wrong and stupid, and ignoring the Republican Vice Presidential selection for now, lets’ talk about Judy Estrin’s new book, “Closing the Innovation Gap.� Estrin was the CTO of Cisco, whose innovation has long been the ability to acquire and integrate other people’s technology, which is certainly a skill, but not exactly the innovator’s mojo that makes Silicon Valley tick. Estrin has credentials – she has founded successful small companies and serves in the boardrooms of successful big companies. I spent an hour at Kepler’s skimming her book and another session reading her book on Amazon. But despite the obsequious blurbage from local geek-celebs McNamee and Cerf, I didn’t really get her point, other than trying to sell mediocre management books. She provides anecdotes and case studies from P&G, Pixar and HP Labs, amongst others, but it smacks of someone who has spent too much time in the Disney and Cisco boardrooms and has forgotten her startup garage roots. Because innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley, on Route 128 in Boston, in the Pacific Northwest, in Colorado, in Austin, and in tech clusters all over this nation. It’s just not where Estrin is looking for it. Maybe she’s looking for it in networking companies. Wrong place, I guess. She speaks of Venture Capitalists not willing to take risks. But in greentech and  renewable energy markets, VCs are tearing it up. Cool Earth Solar uses balloons to focus sunlight – it’s a longshot but VCs are bankrolling it. SolFocus, A CPV startup, really was founded in a garage. VCs have not been shy about funding every algaepreneur (Thanks, Ed.) like Solazyme or Greenfuel or Livefuels with a new pond scum strain and the potential to create biofuels from the stuff. If anything, these VCs seem to be attracted to crazy ideas. Electric cars in really strange configurations are being backed all over the U.S. There have been at least 150 new solar power companies funded by VCs in the last three years.  That’s 150 new companies. Just in solar. (Contact me if you’d like that list). Estrin also talks about impatient investors and and short-term mentality. She’s wrong again. Silicon Valley investors are investing in energy firms, knowing full-well that the gestation period for a solar firm or a biofuel firm is a long time. It’s not a software company where you lock 20 coders in a room with an espresso maker, a foosball table and 10 cases of Ramen noodles. These investors know it’s going to take a lot of investment and a long time to make a real energy company. Nanosolar was founded in 2002 and received its first venture round in 2002. It just recently closed another round for $300 million. None of these investors expected a quick turnaround. What thwarts innovation are spineless politicians and the fossilized and corrupt government control of R&D spending. Recent examples are the ITC idiocy from our Congress and Senate. Nancy Floyd of Nth Power and Dave Edwards at VantagePoint could testify to the government’s shortsightedness in sabotaging the American wind industry with an on-again, off-again tax framework. Just ask them. We do need lots more government sponsored R&D. And we need it to be controlled by technologists and entrepreneurs, not policy-hacks and bureaucrats. We need a revamped educational system with an emphasis on science and perhaps a little less creation “science.� (See earlier Vice Presidential citing). Lastly, technology like solar doesn’t always advance because of innovation, it advances because of political clarity and an informed and willful public. That’s the innovation we need.