The idea machine

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Selling green

In his new book The Plot to Save the Planet, Fortune Small Business editorial director Brian Dumaine chronicles how entrepreneurs are tapping into what could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century: clean, money-saving technology.

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SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune Small Business) -- The last thing Saul Griffith wants me to write about is how smart he is.

Winner of a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" award and founder of Makani Power, a startup that generates wind power from flying kites, Griffith gets up to 30 e-mails a day from qualified scientists eager to work for him. He can't afford to hire them, so he wants to inspire them to be entrepreneurs instead.

"Pithy articles about genius boys be damned," says the 35-year-old Australian, thumping the table at a San Francisco coffeehouse. "There are more important things to cover a page with. I'll give you one graphic with 600 new business models in it. Done."

Griffith is talking about WattzOn.com, a Web site that calculates your precise impact on the environment -- not just the energy it takes to heat your house or run your car, but the energy needed to manufacture all your possessions, as well as the energy the government hogs with your taxes. With all that data, WattzOn produces a detailed pie chart of your life. It's a shocking sight, and it's also where the new business models come in.

"Pick any one slice of that pie, figure out how to do that slice with 10 times less energy, and you have a billion-dollar company," says Griffith, who launched WattzOn last year as a side project. "It's that easy." So much so, he says, that he's using WattzOn to come up with ideas for his next 10 companies.

You want examples? Griffith is brimming with them -- he says he suffers from "inventoritis" -- and it's a joy to watch them spill out. (Not least because the guy uses enough unprintable Australian colloquialisms to make a kangaroo blush; a sanctimonious tree hugger he is not.)

How about effervescent pills that purify water and turn it into soda, without all that wasteful bottling? (Get the taste right and you'll drive Coca-Cola out of business.) Or smart string that attaches itself to wet items so we all start using clotheslines instead of dryers? Or a mechanical coffee grinder that's more fun to use than old-school grinders but lasts longer than today's electric models? Curtains haven't seen much innovation in the last 100 years and could be far better insulators. How about designing a house that'll stand for a millennium and produce its own air conditioning?

We're not just talking about the benefits of energy savings, lower overhead or green PR. Sooner or later, every business will be forced to think seriously about minimizing its environmental impact. The 21st century is shaping up to be what Griffith calls "the age of consequence," when consumers will obtain more and more access to WattzOn-style data. The faster climate change kicks in, the more environmental damage will be done. Inevitably fingers will point, governments will regulate, and class-action lawsuits will be launched against those of us who use more than our fair share of carbon -- directly or indirectly. Look at Big Tobacco, which is buckling under the weight of unimpeachable science, ferocious litigation and public outrage.

But enough with the doom and gloom. That, after all, is half the problem with the modern environmental movement. Far better to focus on the imaginative things we can do with less energy, as Griffith does when he talks to school-kids. Two of the most efficient forms of transport, he says, are zip lines and roller coasters. "Tell 10-year-olds they're going to take roller coasters to school instead of a stinky yellow bus and they go ape," he says.

Better get ready to compete with a whole new generation of geniuses.