What do you need to be a powerhouse in the CleanTech Sector?
Well Vinod Khosla, thinks you need intellectual capital, industrial capital, trained technologists and the will. All of which India has in abundance. Vinod Khosla, Venture Capitalist from KPCB and co-founder of Sun Microsystems spoke recently at the CleanTech Conference in San Francisco about the future of Clean Technology in India. Here is an excerpt from his presentation and a short brief on the startup of Cleantech India, a fund headed by Jesswinder Kaur to encourage funding of green technology enterprises in India. India is working to create an industrial revolution in the CleanTech sector. To that end It has created the world's first Ministry of Renewable Energy which will work to concentrate investment in areas where there is predicted to be strong growth. Australasia in general is using Clean Tech Policy as a driver of innovation. Singapore with its Solar and Water, China working to build a sustainable or at least low impact city for 8 million from scratch and India all seek to capitalize on innovation in this sector as an economic motive force. Khosla points out that even though while the largest current focus is on the energy sector with about 85% of investments in the CleanTech sector going into alternative fuels and recently solar. There are many other markets for innovation from cement to glass. Cutting the cost and environmental footprint of cement and other common building materials in half would make a huge difference in worldwide carbon reduction.

Our very big Friend The omission of avoided deforestation in Kyoto has been a catastrophe for the World's tropical forests.
The current state of Kyoto makes it easier to get credits by cutting down standing trees and planting something else rather preserving standing forests. In many areas this was actually done with existing forests bulldozed and replaced by oil palm plantations. This allowed the owners to sell the wood and then gain both a carbon offset credit and sell palm oil on the currently very lucrative international market.

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?

The latest figures from the United Nations building on estimates contained in the Stern Report show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total.
AfricaAccording to the latest audited figures from 2003, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation this equates to the deforestation of an area about the size of Texas annually.   The remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere. Continuing liberation of even a portion of that amount will have untold negative consequences for climate change.
IndonesiaThere are many reasons why reforestation projects have been slow to take off. First, unlike industrial projects, the rules for forestry-related carbon trading have only been clear for a little more than two years. The momentum is yet to build up. Second, the approval procedures are cumbersome. Third, forests that were degraded after 1989 are ineligible. Smoke from tropical deforestation is visible from space across the entire band of the tropics. From Brazil to the Congo to Indonesia.  To stop this mass destruction of forestry resource no new technology is needed, just the political will and a system of enforcement and incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals standing than felled.

  "Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP

Globally, more than 4.4 million trees are removed every day or 1.6 billion trees each year - almost 1 billion of which are not replaced.
BrazilThe focus on technological fixes for the emissions of rich nations while giving no incentive to poorer nations to stop burning the standing forest means we are putting the cart before the horse, much of the activity needs to focus on building technical capacity developing countries, getting relevant regulations and law enforcement in place, promoting sustainable forest management, and diversifying the economic base of forest-dependent communities. Making it easier to implement avoided deforestation carbon offset programs would certainly help this process along by making it profitable to not cut down standing trees and these must be part of the fast tracked post Kyoto agreements up for review in Bali this December.
South AmericaAfter all, creating an economic incentives for planting and not cutting down trees ought to be easier than getting the Americans, the Chinese and the Indians to agree to cut back on energy consumption.