By Gerard Wynn
A global response to climate change will spur a business revolution
bigger than the internet, said co-founder of Sun Microsystems Bill
Joy.
"This is a much larger opportunity," he told Reuters, pointing to the
scale of the problem and the profits to be made from simple steps like
a more careful use of energy.
"It's profitable to be more efficient, it has a negative cost and a
competitive disadvantage if you don't do it."
"You can sensibly adopt old technology, not drive a truck, or insulate
your house," he said, speaking on the fringes of the Cleantech
investor conference in Frankfurt.
Joy made his name creating and developing computer operating systems
and microprocessors, for example helping to design the Java
programming language.
Most scientists agree that climate change is being caused by mankind's
emissions of greenhouse gases, especially the carbon dioxide produced
by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
Using the example of the car industry, Joy saw the response in three
parts: first using old technologies like smaller, more efficient cars;
second adopting emerging technologies like "hybrid," part-electric
cars; and third researching breakthroughs such as transport fuels
derived from farm waste.
Climate change would spur innovation and California's Silicon Valley,
which originally served the semiconductor industry, was well placed to
benefit, he said.
"Solar cells are semiconductors, heat to electricity is
semiconductors, software to manage systems comes out of Silicon
Valley," said Joy, who is now a partner at venture capital investors
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).
A global race is on to be first to commercialize breakthrough
technologies which could make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Research into safer, rechargeable lithium batteries is taking place
mainly in the United States and Canada, but innovation in small
electric cars is centered in Asia and Europe, he said.
"Smart people are everywhere."
Future breakthroughs will include more efficient solar cells that
convert waste heat to electricity, and manipulation of catalysts at
the ultra-tiny, or nano, scale to cut costs.
Climate change will create business losers, too: for example among
U.S. car manufacturers which have resisted fuel efficiency standards,
Joy reckoned.
"They lobbied Washington against innovation. The industry is now
really in trouble, the car companies didn't innovate. Everyone's
basically driving a truck."
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This problem of 'global warming'
(actually extremes in the weather conditions) is getting more and
more severe. The ice and snow around the North Pole are virtually
all melted. Meanwhile, here in southeastern Kansas we had one of
the most extreme winters I have ever seen last year, and the spring
is not a lot better. I know President Bush is still in denial about
the circumstances; at least, the last I heard he is still refusing to
sign onto the Kyoto thing. I fully expect to be gone in the next
few years, but for those of you who are younger and will be around in
thirty to forty years, you have my pity with the change in weather
conditions in the next couple generations. PAT]
Gerard Wynn, Reuters (