Cape Cod Technology Council Member Directory

Maybe it was the Paris global warming report news (grim) or maybe it was the sound of the electric meter going into warp speed as the temperatures plunged this week, but I felt especially open to the concept of alternative energy.

It would seem I’m in good company. Suddenly, green is hot, hot, hot.

The venture folks are coming out of the woodwork, looking for investment opportunities. Multiple states and regions are clamoring to be the center for this nascent industry. Reports about market size are multiplying. Even Silicon Valley is looking at energy tech as being the next wave to ride.

We’re still at a baby-step stage though, at the stage where companies are founded and led by true believers, where the market is still a leap of faith, and where half the time no one can quite understand what the technology does.

One of the great challenges of any new industry is turning its technology into understandable English so that the great-unwashed masses can make sense of it all. Here’s a great example of something that sounds pretty cool made by Massachusetts-based Climate Energy: Micro-Combined Heat and Power.

Now I’ll be honest, I couldn’t make heads or tails about the product at first. Luckily, CNET covered the story and translated the technology for me thusly:

“Combined power generation and heating systems have been in use by heavy industry for years. Now, a Massachusetts company is trying to size down the technology to fit into the average home. The systems, which heat homes more efficiently and reuse heat produced in the power generation process, can dramatically reduce electric bills and can even run the meter backward.”

Turns out this stuff is in use in Japan and Europe, and the systems basically create electricity as a byproduct of producing heat. These solutions are part of the trend toward decentralized power generation – that is, they are technologies that let individuals create their own sources of power rather than relying only on one centralized power producer.

Pretty cool, eh?

But it made my head spin a bit trying to understand it all. And the companies didn’t help. And that reminded again of the stage the industry is at, the stage of the early adopter and true believer ... and the stage where communication about the technology is almost as important to success as the technology itself.

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in recent history where only the true believers understood what it meant to be digital. Where the notion of a computer in the home was, well, rather odd. And the sales proposition came wrapped in jargon and understandable only by a few hardy souls.

Part of the transformation from technology to industry happens when we learn to talk about the technology in ordinary meaningful words. The power of the pen is enormous.

Some technologists – the ones I sometimes refer to as the priesthood – don’t embrace the pen. It doesn’t matter if we are talking computer technology, automotive technology, or energy technology, these folks take pride in understanding something that is too complex for the rest of us. Often, they are so caught up in the inner workings of the technology that they do indeed speak another language.

But for a technology to become widely used and for an industry to become long lasting and deep, it needs to make the leap from tech-talk to consumer-talk. When that happens, it is a sign that this is more than a gee-whiz science show.

So, keep watching the alternative energy industry. Look at the cool break-throughs in products and process, yes, but look also at the use of words. Because it is through words that we truly own and understand a technology. And it is through words that we buy, sell, and build an industry that both embraces the early adopters and transcends them to make it accessible to us all.