What’s on your cleantech innovation wish list?

Dramatic cost reductions and efficiency innovations are necessary for cleantech to make any dent in the greenhouse gases adding acidity to the oceans and polluting the air.

Some of the top scientists spoke at the Cleantech Group’s Cleantech Forum XXI in San Francisco about the innovations they think are needed, as well as some of the innovations already underway.

The sector is still in need of game-changing technologies, much like the advent of nuclear power before it fell out of favor with environmentalists, said Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, also a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates.

“Something as big as the introduction of nuclear power is the introduction of nuclear power,” he said. “We need this stuff desperately and the life of the planet depends on it. The world has to get past this idea that radioactivity spreads.”

As well as changing people’s minds about acceptable clean technologies, scientists offered a wish list of ideas big enough to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions

Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, called for a disruptive technology to measure the flow of greenhouse gas emissions. Haymet said the technology exists now to hold countries, industries and individual companies accountable for the actual emissions. A couple experiments in tracking the emissions have been performed, and Haymet called for a pilot before the U.N. Copenhagen discussions in December (see Obama administration could fast track cap-and-trade, RPS in '09).

“Now we would have the ability to see if [California’s greenhouse gas legislation] AB 32 is meeting its targets,” he said. “It’s scary for some industries, but the positives outweigh the negatives.”

Also in the emissions sector, Haymet called for scientists to find a way to remove carbon soot from as diesel equipment, industrial processes, and even cookstoves in India (see Envirofit ramps clean-cooking line for India). It’s the low-hanging fruit of the emissions-reduction sector, accounting for about 10 percent of the global warming problem and could provide an “early win,” Haymet said.

Solar

Penzias said he thinks nanomaterials will play a significant role in improving the efficiency of solar cells. Reducing the amount of silicon used can reduce the cost, but solar producers are making silicon about as thin as they can--about 200 microns, he said. But many startups in stealth mode are finding ways to make solar panels with silicon or other materials just tens of microns thick without compromising efficiency, he said.

“Nanotechnology has a lot to do with it,” he said (see Challenging silicon's grip on solar).

Meanwhile, Stan Ovshinsky, CEO of Ovshinsky Innovations, said solar needs to get bigger.

“Absolutely, we’ve got to go and make solar energy not by the megawatt but by the gigawatt,” he said, suggesting machines that can produce solar panels by the mile.

Ovshinsky was given the Cleantech Pioneer Award for 2009 for his work as the father of the thin-film sector, among other accomplishments.

Off-grid power

Penzias noted that more companies need to find ways of improving off-grid energy sources, such as diesel Gensets, an $8 billion business generating 50 GW of power (see GE shows first hybrid road locomotive).

“This is a huge cleantech opportunity, and there are lots of ways of doing it,” he said.

Hydrogen

Ovshinsky said hydrogen can play a key role in getting rid of pollution, especially to power vehicles (see Norway fast-tracks hydrogen highway).

“It’s a no-pollution, no-climate-change gas, and it solves the greatest need we have, which is reindustrialization of the United States,” Ovshinsky said.

Investment

Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the world is now home to more billionaires than at any time in history, and those people have the opportunity to force major changes.

“There’s concentrated wealth in hands of individuals that can make things happen without being subject to the whims of government,” he said.

X Prize has offered a $10 million prize for automobile technology for someone producing a new generation of cars that are manufacturable, affordable, safe, and that have the equivalent gas mileage of 100 miles per gallon or more. The competition is planned for six cities in mid-2010 as a way “to show the public you don’t have to choose, you can have it all,” Diamandis said. The foundation is also considering a series of prizes for environmental and energy technologies.