While the voluntary carbon trading economy is booming (it tripled in 2007 to $331 million) the power of free-market economics has yet to directly connect our own personal actions with carbon emissions. This week, the UK nixed plans to get people to reduce their emissions via an exchange of personal emissions permits. Citing issues of practicality, the ministry said implementing the system would be excessively expensive and that the idea is “ahead of its time.”

The idea was based on the system used in the EU’s emissions trading scheme whereby industrial emitters can buy permits for the right to pollute and players who reduce their emissions can sell excess permits on the open market. The system has proven itself effective in combating sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States and is growing in popularity as a way to regulate carbon emissions from industrial players around the world.

However, making the jump to a personal exchange is quite ambitious. The biggest barrier is simply measuring one’s personal emissions. This would include home energy costs, travel, food and other goods purchased. British supermarket giant Tesco had plans to list the carbon footprint of the good it sells but has discovered how hard it is to calculate the carbon cost of individual grocery items.

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We talk a lot about new energy opportunities and technology breakthroughs here on Earth2Tech, and less about the high risks involved in developing new cleantech markets and commercializing unproven technologies. But at the Berkeley-Stanford CleanTech Conference this week, there was a lot of discussion over the tensions between venture capitalists backing new technologies and the utilities, regulatory and industry groups in charge of bringing the clean power to the people.

Sue Kateley, executive director of the solar industry group California Solar Energy Industries Association, said she was concerned about venture capitalists flushing money into companies that promise to offer and install solar for free (no up-front costs) to consumers. “The free reckless solar thing can kill the industry,” Kately said, explaining that she saw similar business models that went under in the energy boom decades ago.

Utilities’ motivations can come into conflict with those of venture capitalists when it comes to the price of contracts for utility-scale renewable deals like solar thermal power plants. Roy Kuga, VP in the energy supply division of California utility PG&E, said that while the company would like to deliver the most competitive price for customers, venture-backed startups are looking for higher-priced contracts in order to deliver the kind of financial returns that venture firms want (startups Ausra, BrightSource, eSolar and Infinia are all venture-backed).

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Although the Internet was supposed to make reams of paper documents a thing of the past, the business of printing on dead trees is still going strong. And despite the Government Paperwork Elimination Act, government is still a huge user of paper. In an attempt to cut the impacts of printing on all that paper, the California State Government has teamed up with Hewlett Packard on a greener printing program that they say could save an estimated $2 million and cut some 500 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

The program couples print cartridge recycling (yawn) with a rewards program that lets participants upgrade their printers to newer, more energy-efficient models as they recycle more.

Incentivizing recycling is a recent trend we’ve seen with companies like RecycleBank, which has garnered impressive adoption rates for its pilot projects. Knowing how to motivate human behavior and make it work for the environment will be key to running a more energy-efficient society. But will HP be able to get civil servants excited enough about recycling toner cartridges to earn them new printers? And will such a small step make much of a difference?

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RockBlocks wants to take your retail business online. They don’t mean selling your goods online; they mean managing your entire supply chain through a web app. The idea is that if you can aggregate all the information about all the costs of your products “from design to delivery,” you can start to increase efficiencies, cut transportation, save energy and, by extension, money.

“We’re trying to bring a framework to our customers that lets them think about their supply chain in more socially responsible ways,” RockBlocks CEO David Diamond told us. And there’s a growing market for that — Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is aggressively trying to make its supply chains more efficient.

Officially spun out of Tourtellotte Solutions in December of 2007, Wayland, Mass.-based RockBlocks already has a large list of well-known retail clients, including JCPenney, Target, Home Depot and Macy’s. RockBlocks’ recent launch also included a cash infusion of $5 million from Brook Venture Partners, but Diamond said the company is still looking for more capital to create a sales and marketing force and further product development.

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Some of the most important cleantech innovations can be created by tweaking traditional carbon-emitting sources to make them more efficient. Startup Advanced Power Projects is doing just that with traditional power plants, and has raised a Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Redpoint and Bay Partners. Advanced Power Project CEO Pete Cartwright tells us that the round was a little over $10 million.

The company’s technology, called the “Simplified Combined Cycle,” captures wasted heat expended by gas turbines used in power plants, and injects the heat back into the process, thereby making the system more efficient. Power plant owners can use the tech to generate more power at a lower cost, while also reducing greenhouse gases. Cartwright tells us that a gas turbine power plant using its tech can deliver 30 percent to 40 percent more power.

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