Getting The Consumer Into The Energy Market

By Elisa Wood

Fortunately for the rest of us, some people missed the message, the one that says we’re in an economic slide so slippery there is no climbing back up.

I had a chance to speak to several of these optimists recently. No, they are not members of the Pollyanna Club; they are green energy entrepreneurs, those who are innovating and growing companies as the rest of the world downsizes. (See Energy Entrepreneurs Flock to Renewables Bonanza in Renewable Energy World magazine.)

These are folks that can’t stop creating no matter how mucky our outlook. In fact, problems seem to incite their inventiveness.

Their inventions are diverse; as are they, but their activities are converging into some trends.

* Silicon Valley and the energy industry are teaming up more and more. “You can’t throw a softball around here without hitting another solar company,” said Dan Shugar, Solaria’s chief operating officer, from Silicon Valley.
* Energy is producing its own crop of rising Mark Zuckerbergs and Steve Jobs, who I suspect will be the next generation of business legends.
* Perhaps most significant, a lot of today’s innovation focuses on bringing consumers and businesses greater efficiency and control over energy in their homes and businesses, whether through cell phone apps that let you adjust your thermostat while miles away, financing mechanism that make solar affordable to the rest of us, or windows that generate electricity on two sides, using a form of artificial photosynthesis that takes advantage of both the sun outside and the electric lights indoors.

These are just a few of the new energy innovations that focus on what’s right here in my home or even in the palm of my hand. Getty Images, which studies how energy companies speak to consumers through pictures, calls this new trend “Homing in on Green.”

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