What Obama means for ‘green tech’

With a landslide victory, I starting thinking about what exactly is it about our President Elect that people are so drawn to…. his economic policy? His approach to foreign affairs?

I decided that for me it is the sense that he will cut out some of the inefficiencies that seem to plague our government. Yes, we need serious economic reform but I am also very concerned about the state of our environment and what the environmental landscape will look like 30 years from now.  Tackling both of these issues at once, it exactly what Obama’s energy plan seems to aims to achieve.

According to CNET, “Obama’s energy plan, detailed fully earlier this year, is ambitious. It calls for a $150 billion investment in clean technologies over 10 years, aggressive targets for greenhouse emission reductions, and programs to promote energy efficiency, low-carbon biofuels, and renewable energies.”

Investments in clean technology, if handled appropriately, could also help a struggling economy and bring down the highest unemployment rate we’ve had in 14 years.  Instead of trying to figure out ANOTHER spin on the already mastered social network (honestly, I don’t think we have room for one more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites,) entrepreneurs should focus their efforts on clean technologies, knowing that $150 billion will be thrown that direction over the next 10 years.

There is so much room for advancement in that field and I am surprised more people have not jumped in already.

There are the obvious sectors of renewable energy and hybrid transportation, but there are more ways to take advantage of this mandatory $150 billion investment.  Monitoring is going to be hard for companies to comply with the mandates that will be forced upon them over the next 10 years.  Technology that can track how ‘green’ a company is, its carbon footprint, etc. could see a lot of growth.

Some of my personal favorites that I have come across:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/carbonflow

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/cleanloop

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/greenroad-technologies

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/3-phases-renewables

Go Vote!!!!

I am so tired of all of these people with their Vote statuses on gmail, and their “make sure you go and vote” messages on facebook etc.  Why do these people feel the need to tell me to vote?  Why should I listen to this cyberfriend who has never mentioned politics until the day before an election?  I mean, maybe if the person one day in the middle of the year had a status up telling me to check out some judges ruling on a certain case and to remember not to vote for them in november I would listen to that person.  But I have yet to come across any away message telling me about the direction of our city’s spending and policies outside a week of a voting period.  If I’m going to vote, I’ll do with my own motivations, I don’t need to be ordered so by your newfound online political activist personality.  And anyways, I’m an absentee ballot and did this all last week……