The Green Frog from Silicon Valley

From educated entrepreneur to innovating in education: do you know Geoff Ralston?

The word “education” in California is usually associated with teacher unions who supported the election of Jerry Brown against the former CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman.   Innovation in education seems to be an oxymoron. Actually, the most viewed TED Talk today with 10 million hits is from Sir Ken Robinson who contends that schools kill creativity.

A number of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are trying to help schools do the contrary. And the trend is starting to hit the media with the recent inclusion of Salman Khan among Time’s 100 most influential people. Geoff Ralston (picture above) is a business angel who would like to see more education start-ups popping out of garages. After he sold his last company to Apple in 2009, he launched Imagine K12 along with two other start-up veterans who believe that technology can transform education.

Green capital confident despite public market

Fortune Magazine's Brainstorm: Green is one of the better conferences ahead of Earth Day. After attending a few times in Southen California, I decided to enjoy their virtual conference portal from the comfort of my home and avoid flying down to Los Angeles. The reticence of public markets to value cleantech companies was on everybody's mind and almost palpable through the screen.

Fred Krupp, the President of the Environment Defense Fund, cut to the chase today in a one-on-one conversation with Jeremy Grantham from GMO by saying the cleantech sector needs to accept that natural gas is going to take center stage. It should focus on making it cleaner until renewable energies can scale. The panel yesterday on "Follow the Green Money" was particularly useful to understand how the solar and wind sectors got in the situation they are today, and why they are still good bets.

Wind powers Electric Odyssey at Shiloh II plant

The best way to charge an electric vehicle is to use renewable energy to emit no pollution. That is what two e-globetrotters did today with their Citroen C-Zero near San Francisco, at the 150MW Shiloh II wind plant operated by EnXco. When Xavier Degon and Antonin Guy took the road back in February from Strasbourg, France they wanted to bring awareness on electric mobility as a viable daily mode of transportation.

Not everybody can connect today to clean energy, even less take a year off to tour around the world. Nine companies including EDF, the parent company of EnXco, are sponsoring the project called Electric Odyssey. But the two adventurers argue that "If we can do a world tour in a standard electric car, you can use it for your daily rides!”. For Xavier and Antonin, it has been an interesting journey across the US in the last month. They will head to Japan next week and be back to France in September after driving through 17 countries, just in time for the 2012 Paris Motor Show.