The new US administration seems to be moving quickly, allowing the use of embryonic stem cells and Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu addressed all the national labs yesterday. A couple of the heartening points reported at CosmicVariance are

• The DOE is the principal supporter of physical sciences in the US, and the physical sciences are the conernstone of prosperity for the US future.
• Restimulation (is that a word?) of the economy is #1 on the priority list. DOE will get considerable funds in the stimulus package, not just to get the economy going but to provide a long term path for the US.

The grand challenge that the DoE is setting in terms of sustainable energy is certainly laudable. Whether or not you believe in anthropogenic global warming or have any faith in the measures taken to date is irrelevant in the face of the absurdity of over reliance on a single form of energy.It certainly seems to have inspired and excited plenty of people…

I am truly awed by the vision presented by Chu here, and so hopeful that we can get our country back on a path to long term prosperity by supporting research in the physical sciences. At least half of our present economy relies on the knowledge gained in the 20th century about our physical world…one can only imagine the revolutions to come.

It’s been long known, although not in the clean tech community, that there are several major problems to be overcome before organic photovoltaics can get to market. One of the most pressing issues has been lifetime – it doesn’t matter how cheaply you can produce things if the major cost ends up being a tea crazed workman clambering up a ladder to rip out the dead solar calls and replace them with working ones every few years. 

The German government has just announced a new project aiming to address the lifetime issue.

The project, called “OPV stability” targets to significantly increase the lifespan of organic solar cells (OSC) with the goal of yielding competitive organic photovoltaics (OPV) for potential commercial use. 

Konarka felt it significant enough to pop out a press release that they are involved in the three year project, which is odd as they have been 18 months from market since 2002 or so. Perhaps they will now be 54 months away from market?

As oil prices go up, thousands of entrepreneurs are massing to sell all kinds of snake oil to people in order to increase their fuel consumption. Nanotech, being something advanced and sexy (well, to some people anyway) is seen as good hook.  One of the latest money saving “nanotechnologies” is eeFuel from H2Oil.

NanoTech eeFuel^® Additive is the only multi-functional liquid nanotechnology fuel enhancer on the market.

When added to fuel – whether it be gasoline, diesel fuel or bio-fuels, eeFuel^®immediately transforms it into high-performance nanotechnology enhanced fuel to improve fuel economy, increase engine power, reduce harmful emissions and clean combustion chamber deposits.

The company claims fuel savings of ‘up to 25%,’ presumably with the tests performed going downhill with a following wind and the gearbox in neutral, or perhaps using the allegedly dodgy methodology used by some other companies.  But the real aim of the sites  are getting small time distributors to buy the stuff and sell it to their friends. 

Poking around the site, my suspicions were aroused by the bios of the key staff, who seemed far more interested in gushing about how wonderful their families are rather than any business credentials. It puts me in mind of the type of characters John Goodman often plays in Coen Brothers films, such as Barton Fink or Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

I also enjoyed their rather pointless mission statemt 

Here at Fuel Legacy International, our daily mission is to provide the very best experience for all our loyal Independent business owners and of course customers. With integrity as our watch word, it is our mission to provide a service to the world with a rewarding business opportunity, matched only by our incredible products that deliver great value, not only to us individually, but the entire planet.

It looks like a clean-tech nanoscam to me.

Anyone considering jumping onto the clean-tech bandwagon would do well to take a look at just how woefully inefficient current renewable energy sources are. The table below is adapted from information published in the Sunday Times this weekend. 

 Assuming that in the next thirty years you will move house, or that some part of the installation may require fixing,  then using current technology you will not see any economic benefit ever. It might make you feel good, until you calculate that all that extra carbon produced by the manufacture of the system, its transport and the various bits of plumbing required have resulted in a net increase in your carbon emissions and a hole in your wallet. 

Ah-ha, you may say, but can’t nanotechnology bring down the cost of solar panels and improve their efficiency and completely change the economics? Well the answer is yes, and no. 

While there have been a number of breakthroughs in roll to roll processing of flexible photovoltaics, actually making them commercially viable seems to be a herculean task. Companies such as Konarka have been trying to produce flexible “power plastic” since life first emerged from the oceans, and given the current rate of progress we’ll have the boffins at CERN harnessing dark matter and nano black holes long before we see anything with a lifetime measured in tens of years. 

The other idea often touted is to bring down the cost of the silicon or other material used for photovoltaics. Well that may have some effect, but when you consider that all the cheap Polish plumbers have gone back to Poland, and that fuel costs have risen by 60% over the last year, then the saving on the silicon has been more than outweighed by the hugely increased costs of having a bloke pop around with a ladder to install the system.

As an illustration, the cost of buying a 1kW wind turbine is around £700, which means the production cost must be in the region of £300. Assuming cost of materials to be around half that total, a 50% reduction in materials cost would result in a grand saving of £75 from a total of £3,000 – some 2.5%. 

So, the bottom line is the bottom line, and without generous subsidies current renewable technologies work out much more expensive than simply burning fossil fuels.  The last study I commissioned indicated that there was plenty of opportunities in nanotechnology applications for sustainability, but very few in power generation.  

One of the presumed characteristics of those who are adherents to molecular nanotechnology (MNT) as proposed by Eric Drexler is their ability to keep an open mind, while simultaneously pointing out that the rest of us are “too conservative” or “close-minded,” but their open-minded qualities seem to run aground when faced with the prospect of a Saudi Arabian nanotechnology initiative.

 This hostility towards the Saudis developing an initiative to embark on nanotechnology research seemed to first surface in January of this year when the Foresight Institute in its Nanodot blog took umbrage to King Abdullah being the one who approved the funding for research rather than “a government research agency, university, or CEO”.

It seemed that the term “Federal Government” or “National Nanotechnology Initiative” being replaced by “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz” just wasn’t right as far as they were concerned.

But the real animosity towards the Saudi nanotech initiaative seemed to reveal itself when the author of the post responded in the comments section to a question of where the research scientists would be coming from to support the initiative: “From wherever research scientists would be willing to move to Saudi Arabia, I suppose. Not women scientists, presumably, who might like to — for example — drive a car, or be able to work with their male colleagues.”

Ah yes, not liking the Saudi’s interpretation of Islamic law pertaining to women translates into off-hand disparagement of their nanotechnology initiative.

But things seemed to be improving as we were notified last month that one of the principals at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) had been invited to deliver a presentation at the first International Conference on Nanotechnology (ICON) to be hosted by the Center of Nanotechnology at King Abdulaziz University.

The title of the presentation was to be “Responsible Nanotechnology”, which can leave one to easily speculate that they invited a representative from the Center of “Responsible Nanotechnology” to speak on the topic based on the title of their organization rather than content of their project of preparing the world for the social and economic disruptions caused from table-top nanofactories.

Nonetheless, CRN expressed genuine excitement at the prospect of traveling to Saudi Arabia to make their presentation.

But then yesterday we got the most appalling scapegoating we’ve seen in some time  when the CRN speaker failed to secure the proper documentation and could not enter into Saudi Arabia, he complained “It seems I’d received incomplete information on visa requirements from my contacts in Jeddah.”

A number of us here at Cientifica have traveled back and forth to Saudi Arabia several times while helping them to develop their plans for a nanotechnology initiative, and not once did we NOT get complete and detailed instructions on how to fulfill our visa requirements. The one caveat is that you have to go to the consulate and get the visa and fill out the appropriate forms. It takes an afternoon.

While this can all be chalked up to “live and learn” (yes, some countries require visas for US passports), it all descends again into Saudi bashing in the comments section, where we get this priceless gem that conjures up 9-11: “Looks like they’re getting back at us for our post 9-11 visa restrictions!”

 It’s hard to see from this type of thinking how the mainly US-led Drexlerians are going to both introduce MNT to the world and make it safe for the societies of the world when they are so hostile to ones that are different to their own.

From our experience, the Saudis are a very hospitable people and are making great strides in diversifying their economy. While social and cultural norms are somewhat different in Riyadh from Palo Alto, things that seem commonplace in Amsterdam would get you arrested in Little Rock. 

Ten years of running around the globe in the service of nanotech has taught me one thing – people are pretty much the same, wherever they live and whatever their colour or religion, and most people are friendly, helpful and hospitable. As Mark Twain remarked, “Travel is fatal to prejudice,” and I can’t help thinking that the Saudi bashers should get out a bit more. 

I’m in Pune, India this week enjoying subjee in the sun while lecturing on entrepreneurship with a team put together by the British Council. Coincidentally, Tata Motors chose today to unveil their new car, and the world’s cheapest, the Tata Nano which although not containing much nanotechnology provides a metaphor of sorts for what we are attempting to do in nanoscience.

Rather than taking a normal car and throwing bits away to get to the 1 lakh rupee price point (Rs10,000 0r $2,500), the Tata engineers had to design the car from the bottom up in order to come up with something that was fit for purpose, while being energy efficient and robust.That’s pretty much what Nature has been doing for four billion years, and what nanotechnology is attempting to replicate.

The Tata Nano also sparked an environmental outcry, with fears that it would increase pollution, which seems to be a rather dim and short sighted view. Anyone who has been to India will be aware that the dominant form of transport and major source of pollution in many areas is the three wheeler auto rickshaw, a dirty, noisy, slow and dangerous form of transport belching out black fumes from its ancient two stroke diesel engine and holding up all the traffic. The Tata Nano is not only more comfortable but also cheaper than auto rickshaws, and while India’s roads may remain clogged, it will be at least with small, clean fuel efficient vehicles.

I popped along to the UK Nanoforum conference last week and what I found wasn’t a particularly pretty sight, especially in comparison with the previous week’s Nanosolutions/ 4th Nanotech Hesse Forum the week before.

The main difference between the two events was in the number of people actually doing things, rather than talking about them or supporting them. While the German exhibition was dominated by people making nanomaterials or applying them (hardly surprising given the strength of the German chemical industry) the UK event was dominated by the usual associations and regional development authorities which is also hardly surprising given the amount of funding they have to play with. An article in this week’s Spectator serves to illustrate the growth of self serving bureaucracies in the UK, and one has to wonder whether it would have been more useful to spend the money on something else instead.

The theme of the event was partnerships, and UK Trade and Investment had done their usual superb job of bringing in delegations from around the world to see the best that the UK has to offer in nanotechnology, but the best that they could offer was that UK nanomaterials company. Given that the Government claims that Nanotechnology is one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors, one would expect to see a few different companies being shown off, rather than one that lost 90% of its value and recently seemed to be claiming that the trials of its fuel additive failed because Petrol Ofisi didn’t do them properly. Apparently Stagecoach, one of their investors, is about to do a new trial to show that the products do indeed work, although I am sure that the markets would like to see a more independent trial.

Overall there is a lingering impression that the UK Government rather missed the boat on nanotechnology. A bright start, including the Royal Society report, seems to have been frittered away through paralysis and inaction. The Royal Society, for one, were particularly incensed by the lack of any response to, or action on their recommendations. While other countries have a variety of nanotech research centres, it is hard to detect any centre of excellence in nanotechnologies that didn’t already exist several years ago, and that is really quite worrying.

In contrast the German event was packed with national and local government leaders announcing new funding measures to ensure that German industry and society could take maximum advantage of nanotechnologies. The Germans seem to have a plan, and a vision for nanotech, whereas the UK seems to be more worried about the health and safety of yet to be produced materials and products. If the UK was a clear global leader in nanotoxicology I might be able to understand this obsession with regulation and control, but it isn’t so I can’t.

However, the UK is not unique in this respect, and there will be plenty of commercial opportunities in nanotechnologies, but many of these will be in spite of, rather than because of government action.

Konarka have become the latest ‘nanotech startup’ to raise over $100 million without getting a product to market, adding $45 million in a “Series F” funding round. While the technology and ambition always looked good, I don’t suppose that in 2001 anyone imagined that the company would still be passing that hat around on an annual basis in 2007.

It’s quite a feat, although one recently managed by another solar company, Nanosolar , and does illustrate how what seemed to be a three to four year exercise in getting technology to market has turned into and eight to ten year research project, something that clearly needed a bit more time in the lab. It’s not necessarily a bad thing from  macro economic point of view, as the VC industry has already saved the public purse half a billion dollars or so in nanotechnology research funding, something that we should perhaps add to our economic model.

Konarka are lucky to be focusing on the right nanotech  applications, and have successfully exploited the huge amounts of capital chasing too few decent deals in both the nanotech and clean tech booms.

We are getting used to the idea in nanotechnology that nature already has all the best tricks. DNA, in addition to its role in data storage is especially useful as an electron trap in LEDs, prompting one US scientist to find a rather unusual source based on something called salmon garnish (Not for the squeamish)

This weeks carbon footprint was spread from London to Hong Kong and Taiwan for the Taiwan Nano 2007 conference (seen here being opened by president Chen Shui-bian) where we spent most of the day discussing the relationship between cleantech and nanotech.

Taiwan takes its nanotech very seriously, perhaps more so than any of the other “tiger” economies, and has had an impressive and sustained program for five years. Unfortunately five years is still a relatively short space of time when it comes to technology, and despite an impressive number of companies exhibiting nanotech enabled lingerie, and a good list of patents, it may be TaiwanNano 2009 before we see some real benefits.