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More People have died from war in the name of god over water than anything else. I use to think wars fought over god would be the undoing of mankind, but now I believe it will be water. In doing some research on this post, I came across a fascinating Water Conflict Chronology by Dr. Peter H. Gleick with the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. The chronology documents 190 conflicts over water going back to 3000 BC. What jumped out at me from Dr. Gleick’s chronology is that half of the conflicts have occurred since 1993 and over a third of the conflicts have taken place or are still taking place in the last ten years. Is the next major war going to be fought over water?

It is estimated that 40% of the world’s populations are affected by water shortages, here in the US which has the great lakes and massive river ways we have seen drought in the West and Southeast. Population growth, farming and agriculture, the demand for water by industry and climate change are probably the biggest factors affecting water supplies. Recently the UN warned that close to 3 billion people will be severely short of water within the next 50 years.

Water rights are being reexamined everywhere – Currently the state of Florida started looking into a tax on every gallon of water drawn from its fresh water resources and shipped out of the state. Recently at the Always On GoingGreen Conference I learned that the state of Israel “licenses” water to business and individuals – essentially allowing them to use water one time, once it goes down the drain, it returns to the state which treasures it – cleaning the water and reusing it.

We need better, faster and cheaper ways to produce fresh water and reuse industrial water. Two CleanTech companies working on the problem that were at the Always On GoingGreen Conference are Epuramat, which efficiently converts wastewater into drinking water and Oasys Water, an engineered osmosis company that cheaply desalinates sea water into drinking water (Note Oasys is founded and funded by GreatPoint Ventures, one of CleanLantern’s sponsors).

It’s quite clear that the auto industry is in shambles: tens of thousands of manufacturing and operating jobs are disappearing each month. Furthermore, as sales continue to decline, we run the risk of abandoned manufacturing plants.

Take a look at the following excerpt from “Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy”:

American car sales have dropped to an annual pace of nine million, from some 17 million in 2007. Even if sales increase considerably, that is likely to leave a lot of unneeded auto factories.

“The decimation of employment in legacy American brands such as General Motors is a trend that’s likely to continue,” said Robert E. Hall, an economist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “We have to stimulate the economy to create jobs in other areas.”

In February, 168,000 more manufacturing jobs were eliminated, bringing losses over the last year to 1.2 million. In Michigan, where the troubles of the auto industry have been particularly traumatic, the unemployment rate sits at 10.6 percent, the highest of any state in the nation.

“The people who do what I do in the Detroit area are a dime a dozen,” said Kim Allgeyer, 46, a machine toolmaker in Westland, Mich., who was laid off in January from a company that makes assembly lines for the automakers. Unable to find another full-time job, he is subsisting on day labor and one-week stints for contractors. “Who’s going to put me to work?” he asked. “Where’s the work at? It’s just a great big black hole.”

Just a thought, but couldn’t the cleantech industry offer these folks a second chance? Think about it: highly specialized manufacturing jobs and large scale manufacturing plants. Commercialization of these technologies will create new jobs in construction, operations and manufacturing.

What if we simply remix existing manufacturing facilities for a new green economy? Could that work? We’ve already built out the supply chain for things like motors, generators, glass, etc. Could we hypothetically swap those for solar panels, clean coal and ethanol production?

This would require substantial capital investment for modifications, but it may be an idea worth consideration. Hopefully this is something the new administration will look into. In the least, we need to direct more public and private funding to companies with proven green technologies in order to spur long term construction, manufacturing and operating jobs.

On Tuesday, the New York Times ran a piece titled “Clean Coal Technologies Gaining Favor” that focused on Duke Energy’s push to build what it calls the first environmentally-friendly coal-fired power plant in the nation. Duke Energy is clearly pushing for a piece of the $3.4 billion in the federal stimulus bill ear-marked for carbon capture and sequestration projects. According to the New York Times, Duke estimates 18 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions could be captured within four or five years, with 40 percent a few years after that. This is definitely a step in the right direction but is it enough? I’m sure hard line environmentalists and the folks at “This is Realty” would have something to say about this. Conversely Duke can suddenly be a rallying point for the American Coalition For Clean Coal Electricity.

We should be encouraging our energy companies to be making incremental steps to lower carbon dioxide emissions and more cleanly process their energy feedstocks like coal. The best way to motivate any big Energy company to move in this direction is through financial carrots like the stimulus bill. The questions here are how big a carrot should we give a company that is proposing to capture only 18% of its carbon dioxide versus a company that proposes to capture all of it? Is an 18% percent carbon dioxide sequestration rate enough?

Founder and Editor of AlwaysOn, Tony Perkins, delivered a positive opening address to GoingGreen East audience in Boston’s Four Seasons Hotel Monday night. His forward-looking words illustrate the ethos of the event so concisely that they deserve to be reiterated here:

“While the entrepreneurial behavior exhibited by Silicon Valley companies used to be viewed as something of a novelty, it is now the new reality for almost every commercial enterprise. ‘Silicon Valley’ has morphed from merely the name of a geographic location into a global entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit bonds together a global community of entrepreneurs, venture investors, corporate mentors, and professional risk-takers. The members of the global Silicon Valley share a passion for seizing on innovative ideas and turning them into companies whose products and service change the world…”

Perkins described the passionate individuals driving the cleantech movement, the members of this “global Silicon Valley” as the “Greentech Steamroller”.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) Managing Director, Don Wood, expressed in an address to the GoingGreen East crowd, that DFJ seeks to invest in clean energy companies that are immediately scalable. An example of economic scalability given by Wood, was the ability of a clean energy company to install a pilot plant for $1m or less. Scalability in the realm of clean energy start-ups is determined by a balance between their economic viability and growing environmental impact.

Economic and environmental scalability are key factors considered by cleantech investors also because they are the leading motivators for alternative energy adoption by the public. Wood explained that adoption is critical as the estimated 2 billion people using the planet’s natural resources is expected to grow to 8 billion in our lifetimes.

DFJ’s mission is to identify, serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world.

Segetis, CEO Jim Stoppert presenting on clean alternatives to that address safety and toxicity concerns involved in producing products from petro. Highly innovative solution that he says at scale is a 1 to 1 (or less) cost basis as compared to the use of petrochemicals to make foams, plastics etc. Will definitely need to follow up with these guys. www.segetis.com