Considering that cooling IT systems is responsible for 40-60 percent of a typical data center’s yearly spending on electricity, the company is clearly betting that the energy savings alone will be enough to drum up business. Instead of supplying rack doors with chilled water to cool servers like IBM, or affixing “water blocks” to processors and other heat-generating components of a server to siphon off heat, Iceotope dunks entire server motherboards into modules that are filled with an “inert liquid” that doesn’t short out the delicate electronics.

The concept isn’t exactly new. For years, some hardcore computer enthusiasts called overclockers have been submerging their computer hardware in substances like mineral oil or 3M’s Fluorinert product to counteract the immense heat caused by their performance-enhancing tweaks. It works because liquids are much better at transferring heat than air.

Iceotope’s CEO Dan Chester told me today that despite debuting the technology at a supercomputing event, his company’s modular system is primarily aimed at bettering energy efficiency. Another of his company’s goals — and key to the product’s acceptance — “is to make it look and feel like a liquid-cooled rack.” So Iceotope is putting data center operators at ease with familiar form factors. Taking a cue from blade servers, the liquid-filled modules slot into a chassis, which in turn fits into a standard 19-inch server rack.

As you can see in the cross section (pictured above), each module has a metal heat transfer plate in its interior that makes contact with a motherboard’s heat-producing chips via heatsinks. Heat never builds up because non-chilled, low-pressure water is pumped along channels on the outer surface of the heat transfer plate and is eventually cooled by a heat exchanger somewhere on the premises. Non-chilled water and slow, high-efficiency pumps are key to achieving the company’s goal of “free cooling at much higher ambient temperatures,” says Chester. He adds that the modules are so “thermally neutral” that servers can be packed tighter and fill in the spaces that would otherwise be occupied by air.

There are trade offs, but they shouldn’t be deal-breakers according to Chester. Extra weight from the liquid is a concern, but his company is offsetting the added heft with light, but sturdy, plastics and other materials so that standard racks don’t buckle under the added weight. And depending on a data center’s construction, some additional plumbing might be required. However, reduced costs for energy, chillers and computer room air conditioners (CRACs) makes it worthwhile, says Chester. According to the company’s figures, the system can reduce the cost of cooling 1,000 servers for three years to just $52,560 from $788,400.

As for that “inert liquid,” Chester isn’t spilling the beans. But in keeping with the company’s green IT philosophy, he claims that the synthetic coolant is better for the environment than Fluorinert and that his company has taken toxicity and recyclability into account.

Hitting the new 2010 target (or any future production goal for that matter), will require Aptera to bring in fresh capital, and it’s banking on either a federal loan or private investment to come through. At this point, the company is shifting its focus away from development, which “has been outpacing the rate of fundraising.” The company has laid off an undisclosed number of employees, co-founder Steve Fambro is taking an extended vacation (he’ll return in the new year), and Chris Anthony, the other co-founder, is “stepping aside from day-to-day activities” — all in an effort, Aptera says, to slow the burn rate and free up resources for top priorities: raising cash and starting volume production of the 2e.

After all, nearly 4,000 customers are waiting. That’s how many deposits (fully refundable) Aptera says it has received for the 2e. And then there are the heavyweight investors — including Google.org, Idealab, The Beall Family Trust and others — who Aptera says it hopes to provide with “strong returns.”

This week’s sober announcement from Aptera is in some ways reminiscent of the straits startup Tesla Motors found itself in late last year, when plans to set up manufacturing for the delayed Model S sedan were put on hold pending approval of a loan guarantee or low-interest loans from the Department of Energy. Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the loan guarantee back then as a “when, not an if,” adding, “We’ll do what we need to get approval.”

Tesla ended up winning $465 million in DOE loans this summer (though according to a report this week from former Tesla marketing chief Darryl Siry, the company hasn’t “seen a dime” of the award yet). If private investors fail to come through for Aptera this time — it has already raised more than $24 million — the company hopes to secure a loan under the same program that has approved loans for not only Tesla, but also another startup, Fisker Automotive.

Aptera’s odds in the program are better now than ever before, given that federal rules were recently revised (after a significant lobbying effort by Aptera’s backers) to allow high-efficiency, three-wheeled vehicles like the 2e to at least qualify for funds. But Aptera is smart to rein in spending, because having an open door at the DOE and a team of deep pocketed investors in your corner won’t necessarily deliver you across the Valley of Death.

According to CEO Henrik Gedde Moos, who made the case for Danfoss IXA in the Idea People’s Choice contest Tuesday at the Cleantech Open in San Francisco (algae biofuel developer Replenish Energy of Puerto Rico ended up snagging the award), no device currently on the market can “continuously monitor emissions inside the chimney with a sensor as small and robust as ours.” However, others are trying, like Picarro, which we profiled this week.

Danfoss IXA plans to outsource all manufacturing and distribution, and pursue applications for its technology in indoor air quality control, medical devices and greenhouses (Moos showed a video of a device that can be hooked up to a plant leaf on one end to measure its temperature, and communication networks on the other to keep climate control systems and plant needs in sync).

Danfoss IXA already has a pilot project in the works with shipping giant Maersk. The business case? Danfoss IXA will help companies like Maersk reduce their emissions (based on the principle that what gets measured can be managed) in a time when tighter air quality standards and climate regulations could force the shipping industry to come to terms with its massive footprint. The needle’s already starting to move in Danfoss’s home country, with the group that represents the Danish shipping industry saying last month it will enter a binding agreement to reduce CO2 emissions.

Moos mentioned a startling statistic: One container ship produces emissions equivalent to 50 million cars. It was unclear if he was referring to a study from the Danish government released earlier this year, which in fact compared the annual sulfur oxide (SOx) gas emissions (nasty stuff for respiratory health) of the world’s largest diesel-engine cargo ships with that type of pollution from an average diesel or gas car.

Regardless, when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it seems the shipping industry can use all the help it can get, possibly with devices like Danfoss IXA’s. According to Green Inc., some environmental advocates say the industry has made little progress on this front in the last decade, and that “if the maritime industry were a country, it would rank among the largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries in the world.”

The 3-year-old startup, which beat out runners up MicroMidas (working on bioplastics) and Alphabet Energy (working on waste-heat recovery), has developed a service based on smart algorithms (read all about it here) that can continuously manage a home’s connected thermostat throughout the day, tweaking the settings ever so slightly to shave off energy consumption, but maintain a comfortable temperature.

Of course, the race to win this prize is over, but the rest of the climb toward a sustainable, profitable business lies ahead. When we spoke with EcoFactor earlier this month, the angel-funded company was in negotiations for its Series A round, and the company’s Senior VP of Products, Scott Hublou told us tonight that those talks are ongoing with several venture firms. He’s hopeful the grand prize will help smooth the way for that financing. “At the end of the day,” he said, the benefit of this type of competition is to “help you get to your next funding event.” As Marc Gottschalk, co-chair of the competition, said to venture capitalists and investors in the audience tonight: “These teams could always use more love.”

Finalists: Pacific Northwest

• Green Lite Motors: Three-wheeled vehicles for commuters in large cities. “Easy to maneuver and drive, fun to drive as a race car.”
• Hydrovolts: A hydrokinetic turbine that floats in man-made water channels and can power 1-10 homes along a canal. Hydrovolts claims the system pays for itself in less than five years. Additional applications might include mines and wastewater treatment plants.
• LivinGreen Materials: High efficiency photo electrode for a next-gen solar cell. Fifty to 100 percent more efficient than traditional photo-electrodes.

Rocky Mountain

• New Sky Energy: Carbon negative manufacturing company. Scrub CO2 out of the air or flue gas and incorporates it into consumer products — they contain a lot more CO2 than they produce in their manufacturing. Just landed a big customer. Growth has been extraordinary in the last 6 months.
• Rivertop Renewables: Makes chemicals, including gluceric acid, from plant sugars.
• SunTrac Solar: Hot water solar panels.

California (split into six categories because it’s the largest regional contest — more details on the category finalists here)

• MicroMidas (Air, Water & Waste Category): Biodegradable plastic for use in various consumer products, including shopping bags, utensils.
• tru2earth (Green Building Category): Shingles made from recycled PET plastic bottles meant to compete directly against asphalt shingles.
• EcoFactor (Smart Power Category): Home energy management.
• FuelSaver Technologies (Transportation Category): Attachments that streamline trucks while they’re in motion to reduce wind resistance.
• Alphabet Energy (Energy Efficiency Category): Recover waste heat at well under $1 per watt in industries such as heavy manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and power generation.
• Armageddon Energy (Renewable Energy Category): Modular, easy to install “solar clovers.”

Since its founding last year, Porifera has been focusing on applications using carbon nanotube membranes — tiny, ultra-slippery, hollow arrangements of carbon atoms that allow gases and liquids to flow through at a rapid pace, while blocking larger molecules — for desalination. And just last week, the Livermore lab announced that Porifera has secured an exclusive license for the technology, which members of Porifera’s executive team helped develop.

But now the company is also digging into carbon capture applications, since Porifera — in partnership with the Livermore lab and UC Berkeley — has snagged a federal grant for the work under the Department of Energy’s program for high-risk green energy technologies.

Chief Technology Officer Olgica Bakajin (pictured at left), who joined Porifera this summer, headed up the research team that first demonstrated at Livermore the behavior of liquids and gases flowing through a carbon nanotube membrane (suggesting the potential for a cheaper, more efficient desalination tech). She described the basic discovery in a release from the lab back in 2006 as: “This is like having  a garden hose that can deliver as much water in the same amount of time as a fire hose that is ten times larger.”

In an interview on Monday, Bakajin explained how Porifera has prioritized its work, starting first with desalination and now expanding into carbon capture: “With desalination, if you can lower the price and energy use, everybody wants it. If you can make the membrane we think we can make, the market issues are not as big a deal.”

Carbon capture, by contrast, remains unproven at commercial scale. So without funding under the DOE’s high-risk fund, ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy), Porifera would not have been venturing into that nascent market at this early stage, said Bakajin. “It’s a little more difficult on the market side.” So why not request ARPA-E funds for the desalination tech Porifera already had in the works? “From our read,” said Bakajin, “we did not think desalination fit in with the solicitation focused on energy.”

Porifera is not the only company trying to commercialize the carbon nanotube membrane research from Livermore. Porifera has the license, and several members of the original research team, but another San Francisco Bay Area startup — NanOasis — has recruited one of the principal investigators on the Livermore project, Jason Holt, and won an ARPA-E grant to help accelerate its work on a carbon nanotube membrane for desalination applications.

Desalination may present fewer hurdles than carbon capture at this point, and Porifera has already secured a $3.3 million grant from the Defense Department’s DARPA program to develop a more efficient desalinator, but both companies still have a long climb ahead on the road to commercial-scale deployment of desal tech.

As NanOasis founder and President Christopher Kennedy commented earlier this month, desalination projects are “particularly capital intensive” and can encounter political opposition (especially in California, where groups have raised concerns about damage to aquatic life, coastal wetlands and other environmental impacts) in addition to the high energy demands and high costs that the two startups hope to address with their more efficient technology.

In addition, a more efficient desalination system will require a lot more than superior membranes. “Salt removal is just one little piece,” said Bakajin. For the DARPA project, meant to produce a small, affordable water desalinator within three years, she said Porifera is working with partners and, “taking three or four new technologies,” each of which represents its own breakthrough, “and putting them together in one device.”

According to Bakajin, at least two other entities were competing for the license from Livermore, which she said came through in June, about a month before Bakajin joined Porifera. “Broad knowledge was gathered — the initial IP and subsequent filings. Somebody was going to license this,” she said.

That somebody wasn’t NanOasis. “The bottom line for us is that what was done at Livermore proved the concept,” Kennedy told me in an email, explaining why the company chose not to license. “But one cannot follow the processes developed at Livermore to make a commercial product except for possibly some very narrow, niche applications.” In other words, it lacked special sauce. That’s part of what these startups are racing to create.

Graphics courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Darryl Siry, former marketing chief for electric car startup Tesla Motors, writes that “the first sign of a rift” at the company may have been the design shift Aptera announced shortly after hiring Paul Wilbur as president and CEO in September 2008: Instead of bringing the futuristic-looking 2e (then called the Typ-1) to market by the end of that year, as previously planned, the startup said it would revise the design — and delay production as a result — in the interest of “satisfying the needs of real-world consumers,” according to a company statement at the time.

Among cleantech startups, of course, and certainly among electric car developers, delays are not unusual. And satisfying consumer needs might seem like a rational business choice. But according to Siry, sources at Aptera say the decision, to outfit the car with windows that roll down, instead of the earlier fixed-window design, “compromised the structural rigidity of the car’s composite shell,” and required a slew of other changes to maintain side-impact safety.

Siry sees these changes as an illustration of the contrast between Silicon Valley’s iterative approach to software development — launch quickly, solicit user feedback and then refine the product or service accordingly (repeat) — and Detroit’s more risk-averse approach, ensuring a car is market-ready before launching into production. “A small dose of this perspective may prove valuable for EV startups,” according to Siry, “but too much can be problematic.”

Did Aptera take too big a dose? Autopia’s sources seem to think so, drawing a connection between the design changes, and increased capital requirements, continued delays, recent layoffs — and the sidelining of Fambro and Anthony (although Siry notes insiders at a startup can often recall things differently). According to this telling of events, however, Fambro (still listed as chief technology officer on Aptera’s site) and Anthony (a multi-tasking entrepreneur who’s still listed as chief of Composite Operations for Aptera and also heads up startups Epic Boats and Flux Power) had developed a plan for “reversing the new engineering direction and delivering cars to customers ASAP.”

The board of directors ultimately rejected that road map (which also “may have included returning executive control to the founders”) in favor of the new CEO Wilbur’s strategy.

How many potential buyers of the swoopy 2e would have been scared off by fixed windows and other elements in the original design? Hard to say. At this point, we can’t know what consequences would have followed the launch of a 2e a year ago with the original design — whether the company would have proceeded on schedule and found enough customers, revenue and valuable data for a second-gen model to make it worth the risk, or found itself in a big hole to dig itself out of. A bad design move can be a lot more devastating in the auto world: Siry recalls Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard commenting, “it isn’t so easy to recover from a car crash” as from buggy software.

The competitive landscape for green cars has shifted considerably in the year or so since Aptera shifted gears, with the Department of Energy awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, low-interest loans and loan guarantees for companies including Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive to accelerate plug-in vehicle commercialization plans. Aptera marketing chief Marques McCammon tells Siry that Aptera now finds itself “at a strategic disadvantage to some of the other companies in this space that have received funds, like Tesla.” But a door to government funds has just opened for for high-efficiency three-wheeled vehicles like the 2e. (Until last month, only four-wheeled vehicles could qualify for funding under the program that has awarded loans to Tesla and Fisker.) In the long run, Aptera’s decision to pull back the reins and edge slightly closer to the mainstream may aid the startup in its quest for DOE dollars and compete in a market being shaped in part by government funds. For now, we’ll have to wait and see what happens when the 2e finally rolls out.

“It’s hard for us to believe that one of the industry giants will [get electric cars on the market quickly] –- especially considering their businesses were founded on and are still concretely rooted in the production of internal combustion, gas guzzling vehicles.”

Coda seems to be ramping up the aggression factor of its image and embracing the role of an underdog trying to shake up — and fight its way into — the auto industry. It will be interesting to see how that goes over with the EU and U.S. automakers, which Coda said in June it “may consider selling battery systems” to in the next couple years. The new site also includes images of the latest Coda Sedan designs, including small changes to the front, rear and exterior lighting (you can see the previous design here), and the first renderings of the interior. They’re small tweaks, but moving in the right direction (see images below).

According to the latest report on the company from the local Monroe News-Star, V-Vehicle is now on the hunt for machine, service and auto component suppliers. It’s giving preference to Louisiana companies, which have until Nov. 23 to submit an application. Within a week of that deadline, V-Vehicle will make the first cut and invite a group of suppliers to interview. By then the startup expects to have word from the Department of Energy on its request for $250 million in low-interest loans.

V-Vehicle has discussed few details so far regarding the vehicle technology itself, revealing only that it plans to build a high-efficiency gas-powered vehicle. Pickens, ever the natural gas promoter, told reporters in June at an event in Calgary that the company was looking at natural gas at that point and could opt for it “if it works out.”

The types of suppliers V-Vehicle is now seeking as it looks to retool a former head lamp factory don’t offer much more insight. According to the News-Star, V-Vehicle hopes to find suppliers of components including metal forming, injection molding, powder/corrosion coating, tubing and hose manufacturers. For equipment, it’s looking specifically for things like control panel builders, electrical and IT infrastructure and industrial rigging.

As we’ve noted before, V-Vehicle seems to be more than a pure technology play. The startup aims to deliver a better-designed, more efficient American-made car with an approach that represents  “a holistic change” (as Kleiner’s Ray Lane put it in V-Vehicle’s promotional video this summer) from the current U.S. auto industry. The supply base for that company may be taking shape now, but we’ll have to see what comes down from the DOE to get a better idea of how far, and how fast those companies can deliver that transformation with V-Vehicle.

According to the Delaware News Journal, Musk said, “It’s very tough to create a car company,” noting particularly high hurdles for engineering an electric car, adding, “Fisker is very far from overcoming those.”

Musk’s comments come at an interesting time for the two startups, which have each secured multimillion-dollar conditional loans from the Department of Energy to help accelerate them toward a new phase: higher volume production of more affordable vehicles.

Founded in 2003, San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla has enjoyed a lead over its Southern California rival, which wasn’t founded until 2007 (Tesla later brought, and lost in arbitration, a lawsuit against Fisker and its founders, alleging they had stolen design ideas and trade secrets).

But at this point, while Tesla has entered production and delivered more than 800 of its luxury electric Roadster, and Fisker has yet to bring its swanky plug-in hybrid Karma to market (it’s due out next year), neither one has proven long-term viability.

Fisker and Tesla have mapped out different routes to producing large numbers of lower-cost vehicles, notably in their distribution strategies. Fisker is opting for a more conventional dealership model, while Tesla handles its own distribution (its showrooms are modeled after Apple stores). Darryl Siry, Tesla’s former marketing chief explained yesterday in an article for Wired’s Autopia, “In essence, Fisker is content with building a car company and partner with retailers while Tesla aspires to build a car company and build a global retail distribution company.” According to Siry, this makes Tesla’s business model more capital intensive and risky, but with potentially higher rewards.

Tesla announced in August that in the previous month, for the first time ever, it achieved “overall corporate profitability,” with $1 million in earnings on $20 million in revenue. But the company is working for (and investing in) much bigger game. Tesla aims to supply battery tech (beyond its deal with Daimler), sell an electric sedan priced for high end for the mass market, and eventually other models as well. Those cars would be displayed in brick and mortar stores and maintained via a mobile service fleet of “Tesla Rangers.”

Whether those investments will pay off remains to be seen. According to Siry, “For Tesla, it amounts to a more highly leveraged bet on its success – if it wins in the the marketplace, it will win big. If volumes are lower than anticipated, however, Tesla may find its bottom line under significant pressure from high overhead costs.”

Fisker Automotive founder Henrik Fisker, meanwhile, has said he expects his company become profitable by 2011. As Autoblog Green reports, the company claims it will be able to break even with just 5,000 sales, and it has already brought in more than 1,500 pre-orders without a marketing campaign. The key, Fisker said, is the company’s low overhead and its decision to outsource production (to Finland’s Valmet) of the Karma.

We’re getting closer to seeing more competition for actual buyers of plug-in vehicles — rather than for venture capital investment, DOE funds or merely buzz. As Musk said, it’s tough to create a car company.  He is probably right to have reservations about the feasibility of Fisker’s approach. Like Tesla, the company and its backers, which now include U.S. tax payers, are making very big bets that are far from guaranteed. They’re trying to reinvent the car business. Let’s hope they succeed.

Photos: Tesla Model S (top) and Fisker Karma (bottom), courtesy of Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive

The vehicle, now in third-generation prototype and able to get up to 100MPG, according to Miller, is the inaugural model from Green Lite. The design remains several steps away from commercial production, and faces high hurdles to win over consumers accustomed to having either four or two wheels on their rides.

A handful of large automakers have also experimented with long, lean (and leaning) vehicles — most recently Nissan, with its Land Glider concept at the Tokyo Motor Show. Miller described that concept as “validation that people are willing to explore these different forms for efficiency.”

Comparisons to Aptera, which is also developing highly efficient 3-wheelers (the electric 2e and hybrid 2h, both said to get the equivalent of 300MPG), are tempting. But Miller emphasized Green Lite is developing a different beast, notably because of the footprint of the two vehicles. Despite its unusual body shape, the 2e has a footprint closer in size to a typical hybrid sedan, said Miller. In fact, Aptera promotes its design as being “just like a linebacker poised for the blitz,” with a wide, agile and stable three-point stance. Green Lite’s model, on the other hand, can have a smaller footprint with the tandem seating because of the lean/standup technology, which Miller said provides “a dynamic riding experience for stability.”

Designs and features aside, the difference between the two startups when it comes to crossing the Valley of Death (where many ventures die for lack of funding at a key development phase), commercializing these vehicles and building sustainable businesses around them may be funding. Aptera is well-funded by high-profile and deep-pocketed backers, including Google.org, Idealab and David Gelbaum’s Quercus Trust, which have helped convince legislators on Capitol Hill to rewrite the rules on what qualifies as an “auto” for federal funding.

Both Aptera and Green Lite could benefit from that change, which allows “a fully closed compartment vehicle designed to carry at least two adult passengers” and get at least 75MPG (or equivalent, for plug-in models) — rather than just 4-wheeled autos — to qualify for loans under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. “It’s a welcome change,” said Miller. “It applies mainly once we’re in manufacturing, but that will help our investors down the road.”

Green Lite is now trying to raise $500,000, and the startup remains at least two funding rounds away from commercialization, said Miller. It’s hoping to find angel investors to help it “further evolve” the hybrid drive system, and refine the smart standup tech and body design. That’s not easy in this economic environment. “A lot of the angels who would be looking at this have been slower,” said Miller, as a result of the downturn.

But the Clean Tech Open recognition has given the company “a new level of visibility.” If Green Light can raise money in the near term, Miller said, Green Lite will be showing off a product late next year, and delivering the models in the first half of 2011.

The game plan, said Miller, is to assemble the models in Oregon using many components from local suppliers, and some from overseas. Green Lite is in talks with startup ventures “in the controller area” and for battery systems, said Miller, but it’s more likely to integrate motors, batteries and other components from established, proven suppliers initially. “We don’t want to take a whole lot of risk on other people’s technology,” he said, “when we’re just coming off the blocks.”

Consider these market predictions:

• Renewable sources will account for 14 percent of U.S. electricity generation by 2030.
• Hybrid vehicles will number 11.3 million worldwide in 2020, 13 percent of global sales.
• Overall U.S. industrial energy consumption will drop 4 percent by 2030, while chemical companies will cut energy usage by 25 percent.

Encouraging? Yes. But this pace of progress won’t help us reach the emission reduction levels needed to avoid the serious climate change impacts forecast for 2050. The solution? Focus on the “Now.”

In order to achieve real environmental progress in the near future, investors and entrepreneurs must shift their attention to the retrofit market, developing ways to reduce the environmental impact of the cars, buildings and products that we already own. For example, rather than waiting for the 254 million cars on American roads to be replaced with the newer, more energy efficient vehicles in development today, we should focus on a mechanism that could be attached to a conventional car to reduce emissions.

By no means should venture capitalists abandon all the work our industry is doing on brand-new developments in energy efficiency and lower-impact products. I’m simply arguing for a shift in the investment mix.

It appears to me that the 80-20 rule is at work here: Approximately 80 percent of investment in green innovation is aimed at new projects, while only 20 percent is aimed at “Now” projects. I believe we could greatly advance our progress over the next decade by shifting that balance by even 20 percent or 30 percent — or better yet, realizing a 50-50 split between new and “Now” innovation.

It is impressive how quickly the global innovation machine can rev up and get moving. By aiming the same emphasis, urgency and talent on the retrofit market, investors, businesses and governments can work together to realize, in just a few short years, the same type of incremental improvements that the tech industry is known for — and gain immediate impact in the marketplace.

Look at the tremendous advances that have been achieved in the areas of renewable power generation and sustainable business practices in just the past few years. Since founding the Corporate Eco Forum two years ago, I am continually amazed and proud of the significant progress on eco-initiatives our member companies have achieved.

Maximizing the power of “Now” is a well-worn path to success in the developing world. Innovation in less-industrialized nations involves improving processes and adding enhancements to existing structures. The startup ToughStuff, for example, which is based in the Republic of Mauritius and aims to deliver solar power to the rural poor, has developed a solar panel that functions within the confines of today’s typical Mauritian dwelling.

The kind of massive retrofit that I’m calling for now has also been successful in industrialized countries. In recent decades, for example, advanced technology revolutionized the manufacturing process. Rather than throwing all the existing machines away, the old lathes, drill presses and other factory machines were retrofitted to operate with computer numeric controls. This retooling enabled manufacturers to take advantage of the latest innovation immediately rather than having to invest the money and time in purchasing new equipment. Upgrading the cars, buildings and machines of today for continued use — rather than replacing them for “green” reasons — can in many cases result in far less physical waste and unnecessary use of new commodities.

An increasing number of “Now” solutions are already on the market and in development. Many coal-fired power plants are being converted to burn natural gas, for example. And retrofits in the commercial building sector are gaining ground. In fact, a recent study says that green retrofits will account for 20-30 percent of commercial building projects by 2014, resulting in a $10 to $15 billion market. Initiatives such as Enterprise Community Partners’ $4 billion pledge to build or retrofit homes and community buildings to green standards will jumpstart progress in the public sector. But there’s room for much more innovation.

Successful “Now” solutions will meet the same success criteria as other green solutions. They will have to be simple, reasonably priced and deliver a demonstrable and immediate ROI. Think of driving your car into the eco-equivalent of a Jiffy Lube and driving out with a lower footprint, courtesy of companies that can turn your old gas guzzler into a fuel sipper or plug-in hybrid.

With the collective minds, funds and ideas available to the green innovation community today, I believe more “Now” solutions need to be in development today if we want to live more sustainably in the near future.

M.R. Rangaswami (pictured) is founder of the Corporate Eco Forum and co-founder of Sand Hill Group. Top photo courtesy of Flickr user bogenfreund. Bottom photo courtesy of Sand Hill Group.

He declined to say when the game will be available, although it will be more than six months. The game raises the possibility, according to Tuck, of kids encouraging their parents to turn off the home clothes dryer and lights in order to improve their progress in the game.

“It’s real-world things impacting what’s happening inside the game,” Tuck told us. The Boulder, Colo.-based startup’s wireless home energy management system, called TREE, would automatically feed home energy use data via the Internet to the game’s servers.

The game isn’t Tendril’s first foray into cool tech tools for energy geeks. At the DEMO conference earlier this year, Tuck showed off an application for web-enabled phones meant to let customers of select utilities see their home energy consumption in real time, view dynamic pricing changes, and control connected appliances and thermostats remotely.

This new partnership for a computer game comes as Tendril strives to become the go-to platform for home area networks. As smart grid analyst Jesse Berst has written, the firm “wants to be the Microsoft Windows of the sector, providing an open architecture and foundational technology on top of which everybody builds their own offerings.” That’s why Tendril is partnering with General Electric. Among other things, the two firms will co-develop advanced load control strategies for GE’s appliances to respond to utility-initiated signals.  The more gadgets that can seamlessly talk with Tendril’s system, the more attractive it becomes to consumers (and electric utilities who might offer the technology).

Tendril, which raised a $30 million third round of venture funding in June, so far only sells its home energy management system to utilities. As of January this year, at least five major utilities were using Tendril’s system in pilot projects and another 15 were conducting tests, according to Berst. Selling through risk-averse utilities, which can have millions of customers, has the promise of major deals, but it also means business development chugs along slowly.

Graphics courtesy of Tendril

Ausra secured a power purchasing agreement with California utility PG&E two years ago to sell 177MW of solar power from the planned Carrizo plant (it was expected to come online at partial capacity in 2010), but according to a release from Ausra, that deal is now “withdrawn.” Today’s announcement comes just over seven months after First Solar acquired the crown jewels — the whole project pipeline, including the massive 550MW Topaz Solar Farms planned for agricultural land in San Luis Obispo — of OptiSolar, another startup with a PG&E deal.

For First Solar, the Carrizo project could help smooth the way for Topaz to move forward. Kathryn Arbeit, development director for the Topaz project, said Carrizo will allow First Solar to present a revised layout to San Luis Obispo County for the Topaz development that may appease concerns about farmland conservation and wildlife in the area.

Ausra’s deal with First Solar also reinforces part of why the utility wants to take ownership of solar power plants. At the beginning of this year, more than 1.5GW of the solar power PG&E had agreed to buy ahead of a state deadline to clean up its portfolio lay in the hands of three startups, all getting hammered by the economic downturn. Now two of those startups have sold off projects to First Solar, and one power purchasing agreement has been withdrawn.

A spokesperson for Ausra told us today that while the deal is off between Ausra and PG&E, the power purchasing arrangement is not necessarily over for Carrizo. Since the project is now owned by First Solar, Ausra declined to comment on whether the contract would have to be renegotiated (see update below), or what stage of development the project has reached. We’ve contacted First Solar and will update when we have more details.

Update: Ausra tells us, “With this sale of Carrizo, the 177MW PPA Ausra had with PG&E was withdrawn. So, there’s no renegotiation to be had.”

Update: According to First Solar spokesperson Alan Bernheimer, the company plans to “go forward with the 550MW Topaz project that has its own PPA with PG&E,” using the land options acquired in the Ausra deal to offer an alternative layout to San Luis Obispo County’s permitting agency. “We can offer an alternative, for instance, that minimizes use of Williamson Act land (conserved farmland) and provides for wildlife movement corridors through the project,” Bernheimer told us in an email. “It enables us to respond to concerns we’ve heard, and allows the county to manage a unified plan for large-scale solar development in the region.”

Carrizo project photo courtesy of the California Energy Commission

As a result, the tide of water infotech is rising fast, and just as the smart grid buildout could be one of the largest creators of wealth in the decade, there are billions to be made in smarter water systems. Lux finds the market for water IT is set to grow to a $16.3 billion in 2020, up from just $530 million today.

Water distribution often relies on sprawling, complex systems, and water managers today often work with spotty knowledge about what is happening in their systems on a real-time basis. Water information technologies in the five segments identified by Lux — water mapping, infrastructure, quality monitoring, smart meters and smart irrigation — could change that. Benefits would extend not only to utilities, but also to industries, consumers and governments in several ways, says Lux: minimizing unaccounted-for water, reducing consumption, limiting pollution and cutting energy use (water and energy use are closely linked, since it takes energy to treat and deliver water, and most of the time it takes water to create energy).

A number of startups are active in this market and have attracted venture capital investment. But they face high barriers to entry as a result of entrenched companies and utilities preferring to work with known players. The startups that succeed in this space, predicts Lux, will be those providing highly innovative solutions. The research firm notes TraceDetect, which offers a web-based display of real-time arsenic concentrations in drinking water, as an example.

For startups and larger firms alike, Lux sees “the real winners” being companies that provide tech that addresses several or all of the five market segments in an integrated way. The bulk of the profit, meanwhile, will go to systems integrators such as IBM, which splashed into water management this year with a new sensor-based system that automatically collects important data (water quality, pump rates, water use at meters), analyzes the data and then packages it into easy-to-consume formats for water mangers to evaluate.

As Eliot Metzger, co-author of a report from the World Resources Institute on the relationship between water and energy use, told us earlier this year, water utilities (like electric utilities) typically plan about 5-10 years in advance, taking into account variables such as population growth, supply and demand — but it’s time to pick up the pace. “Climate change will affect those supplies,” Metzger said, “and I think a lot of the water utilities at least are going to be hit with some surprises.” Integrating water management and IT sooner, rather than later, could help lessen the challenge.

Photo courtesy of Flickr

NanOasis beat out nearly 99 percent of the applicants vying for a piece of the Department of Energy’s $400 million ARPA-E program, to snag a more than $2 million grant in the first round of awards last week. Over the next two years, the DOE grant will support development of next-gen reverse-osmosis membranes that use carbon nanotubes. Put simply, this could deliver a much more energy-efficient and lower-cost technology for harvesting freshwater from oceans and brackish water.

If NanOasis’ ARPA-E project is successful, it could potentially disrupt the water industry that, according to Christopher Gasson, editor in chief of Global Water Intelligence magazine, can be best described as a dysfunctional train wreck.

Recent advances in nanotech and growing urgency in the push for energy-efficiency improvements and solutions for water scarcity have produced fertile ground for startups. In addition to NanOasis, other companies, including NanoH2O and Oasys, are working on nano-engineered reverse osmosis membranes (update: Oasys is working on forward osmosis tech). And tens of millions of dollars in venture capital have begun flowing into efforts (largely early stage) to reinvent desalination — a technology that Lux Research forecasts will produce three times as much freshwater in 2020 as it did in 2008.

But while a growing number of companies are experimenting with carbon nanotubes (illustrated at left) for water desalination, NanOasis has as its CTO one of the scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab who first developed the technology, Jason Holt. As he explained to Technology Review back in 2006, when his team’s research was first published in the journal Science, “The challenge is to scale up so we can produce usable amounts of these membrane materials for desalination, or gas separation, the other high-impact application for these membranes.” Using the ARPA-E funds, Holt said, NanOasis will be continuing work on the membrane itself, and working out challenges with manufacturing and engineering.

One of the main problems with reverse osmosis desalination tech to date has been that the basic process of pumping water and forcing it through a membrane to separate out the salt is highly energy-intensive — which means high cost. The energy, in the form of electricity, is used mostly to pump the water around and force it, under very high pressure, through the membrane. In fact, the Pacific Institute has estimated that electricity accounts for 44 percent of the cost of reverse osmosis desalination, by far the single largest expense. Carbon nanotubes could drastically reduce that because water can flow through the tiny pores just as fast, with less pressure, than through conventional membranes with larger openings.

NanOasis has a long climb ahead as it looks beyond a pilot project (a portable system with NanOasis tech processing 10,000 to 100,000 gallons of water per day), which Kennedy said is targeted for 2012 or 2013. At commercial scale, challenges can arise from more than the tech itself. Kennedy noted that desalination projects are “particularly capital intensive” and called California “a difficult environment for desalination,” noting that many of the 20 or so desalination projects now at some stage of development in the state have encountered political opposition. (Much of that has come from groups concerned about damage to aquatic life, coastal wetlands and other environmental impacts, in addition to the energy demands and cost.)

Having raised venture capital in June 2008 (investors include X/Seed Capital Management), and also received some research grants (including a nearly $15,000 $150,000 award from the National Science Foundation), Kennedy said the company will be looking to “raise money several more times” before becoming profitable. “We’ll attempt to grow the company as if we were the next big thing,” said Kennedy, “building a great stand-alone company or a great acquisition.”

Graphics courtesy of the NanOasis, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Pacific Institute.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

New Sky Energy: The Boulder, Colo.-based startup uses chemical technology to convert carbon dioxide into baking soda and other carbonates. These feedstocks could be used in the production of common products like building materials, plastics and fabrics, thereby capturing and storing the CO2. New Sky calls itself the world’s first “carbon-negative manufacturing company.”

The idea of capturing CO2 and putting it to use in new products has gained steam in recent years, spurred at least partly by government actions to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Calera, for example, wants to use the gas to produce an alternative to cement and Carbon Sciences wants to turn CO2 into gasoline and other fuels.

Rivertop Renewables: The Missoula, Mont.-based startup has developed a way to make glucaric acid and other biodegradable chemicals from renewable plant sugars. Plastics, pharmaceuticals and polyesters use petroleum as a feedstock in their production. Rivertop wants to replace these petrochemical building blocks with renewable chemicals, and the startup says its platform technology can produce them at an economical price and on an industrial scale. A number of well-funded biofuels startups, including Rennovia, have the same idea.

SunTrac Solar/Energistic Systems: Golden, Colo.-based startup Energistic Systems has designed a single-axis tracking solar collector called SunTrac Solar for heating residential and commercial hot water. The startup says its technology delivers hot water at the lowest installed cost per BTU on the market today and takes up only about half the space compared to current designs. The system can deliver water at temperatures to 250 degrees Fahrenheit that can be used for space heating and process water. Each collector uses a simple 12-volt motor to drive its rotation during the day, and the system is designed for a 20-year life.