The Hot New Sector in Greentech: Adaptation | Reuters
The modest agreement that came out of the Cancun climate talks this weekend points tells me one thing: It’s time to start talking a lot more about adaptation to climate change. While most of the work of the greentech sector is focused on mitigation technologies that can reduce carbon emissions, from clean power to energy efficiency, given that this latest agreement will not prevent the rise of global temperatures within the range that scientists say is needed (though it made some progress on other key issues), perhaps it’s time for those in the greentech industry to start betting that adaption will one day be a hot market.
3. Weather forecasting technologies. Extreme weather conditions, from massive floods to hurricanes, will become more common in certain regions because of the warming of the Earth. Weather forecasting has been an area of little innovation (as Google pointed out to me recently), and will depend heavily on information technology tools (satellites, software, computing, sensors) to inject some much-needed innovation into the sector.
5. More resilient crops. High temperatures can cut annual crop productivity dramatically, can lead to droughts or more rain fall, and can lead to longer or shorter crop seasons. Farmers that grow crops on risk-prone lands will be looking for seeds that can withstand higher temperatures, more or less water, and fluctuating crop cycle times. Genetically modified crops could play a key role in this movement, which will be a controversial point, given countries in Europe, and Japan, are opposed to GMO crops.
8. Water Recycling. Beyond desalination, other water technologies include using gray water and harvesting rain water, for crops and everyday human uses. The key to this type of technology is that it has to be cheap, cheap, cheap.
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Image courtesy of John Bruckman.