Have you ever thought about “experiencing” your light bulbs?  Not many of us would admit to it, but a couple of guys from a Melbourne garage did, and they are redefining the soul of lighting applications in a way unseen since the Savoy Theatre first lit up in the late 1800s.  Their goal is to make energy-efficient light bulbs sexy.  Launched on Kickstarter on September 15th, 2012, the project, “LIFX: The Light Bulb Reinvented,” has already pulled down $1.3 million from almost 9,000 backers – and the funding period runs until November 14^th.  Since their initial goal was to raise $100,000 to back the first release of “the smartest light bulb you’ve ever experienced,” it looks like the LIFX Labs dream of reinventing the light bulb may become a reality.

Basically, Bosua has applied the Internet model of persistent connectivity to illumination.  LIFX uses both WiFi (802.11n) and IEEE 802.15.4 (which ZigBee also employs) to create a mesh network of light bulbs that are efficient (LED lights are highly energy efficient and have a long service life), multi-colored, and can be finely controlled with an iPhone or Android device.  To create the network, a master bulb connects to a standard router, which then communicates with all the other bulbs in the network using the open LIFX protocol.  The company plans to provide a software development kit and a hacker kit, so app developers will be able to create new experiences for the owners of LIFX bulbs.

Driven to reduce the wastage created by existing lighting technologies, Phil Bosua, the inventor of LIFX, tapped into the secret of creative explosion — he got out of the way.  When I talked to Bosua, I was struck by how he and his team put their biases aside to associate seemingly unrelated concepts to help create a better light bulb design:  light switches are boring, smartphones are cool, saving money is good, and mood lighting is sexy.  Bosua says, “The guiding force wasn’t cleantech, but to make a light bulb that fit into the culture.  The cleantech technology happened to be the best technology.”

Utilities and social scientists have been trying to figure out for years how to engage consumers in taking energy efficiency measures, including giving away compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs).  And, to be sure, it’s likely that (at least initially) LIFX will be out of reach for many homeowners at about $69 a bulb, or in a kit of 1 master and 3 slaves for about $49.00 for each bulb.  However, unlike with CFLs, which have strange colors, long run-up time and excitable mercury vapor, with LIFX LEDs we can anticipate energy savings of up to 75% to 80%, have access to control applications from our favorite app store, enjoy high quality light, and avoid shopping for new bulbs for 25 years.

Without expensive studies and pilots, LIFX understood the emerging home environment as the context for their market.  After all, when’s the last time you got off your couch to change the channel?  Why shouldn’t it be the same for the lights in our homes?  The Kickstarter audience overlaps precisely with the demographic adopting smartphones in increasing numbers.  By imaginatively and emotionally connecting with their potential market, LIFX turned on thousands of people willing to give their attention and money to their cause – and may turn on energy-efficient lighting in the process.

The European Commission has launched a new funding program that will help drive smart city innovation through the closer integration of energy, transportation and IT.  The Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership (SCC) extends the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative that was launched in 2011.

The initiative already has funding for 2012 of €81 million ($100 million), and the initial demonstration projects will focus on transportation and energy.  With the launch of the new partnership, the budget for 2013 has been increased to €365 million ($450 million), and IT has been added to energy and transportation.  Significantly, every demonstration project financed under the scheme will now have to combine all three sectors.

The accompanying communication from the Commission highlights the specific challenges facing European cities.  New building represents only around 1% of housing stock, and less than 10% of vehicle stock is newly registered each year.  So there’s limited opportunity for greenfield development in cities and the adoption of new technologies is slow.  It’s therefore essential that European cities find cost-effective, repeatable, and pragmatic solutions if they are to meet their environmental goals and drive economic growth.

The Commission rightly sees the integration of technologies across sectors as one area in which this can be achieved.  If the smart city concept is to be more than a veneer of hype over business-as-usual, it needs to drive new ways of connecting different aspects of city operations.  Without such a holistic view we will continue to build technology stovepipes and fail to realize the real potential of new IT platforms and new ways of using data.

It’s also encouraging to see the EU putting transportation at the heart of its smart city agenda.  In our recent Pike Research webinar, Smart Cities and the Future of Transportation, Lisa Jerram and I explored why transportation is so important to the smart city vision.  Clean, smart transportation is crucial to meeting the three core objectives of the smart city: sustainability, economic development, and citizen well-being.

We were joined on the webinar by Arturo Corbi Vallejo from Schneider Electric.  Arturo detailed Schneider Electric’s SmartMobility Integrated City Management (ICM) solution, based on the company’s new smart city platform.  SmartMobility ICM is another example of suppliers that are developing integrated, platform-based solutions for city operations.  Schneider Electric’s approach is one of the first examples of a smart city platform concept to emerge from an infrastructure provider rather than from the IT world.

An airport may not seem like the most obvious platform to deploy sweeping smart energy upgrades.  Globally, airports represent only a fraction of the building infrastructure worldwide – accounting for around 1% of commercial square footage globally, according to Pike Research’s Global Building Stock Database report.

Integrated with sustainability measures, though, airports have the potential to champion energy efficiency and smart energy efforts worldwide while also boosting their host cities economically.  With large footprints and plenty of open space around runways, there are a number of low-hanging fruit opportunities that have yet to be exploited.

Take Berlin, which is counting on its new Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt (BER) to give the city a major economic push while at the same time making it a vital transport hub.  The airport will incorporate sophisticated recycled heat and power systems to reduce operating costs, and draw on Brandenburg’s leadership in renewable energy innovation.  The new airport “is a crucial stage in Berlin’s return to becoming a global city,” Burkhard Kieker, CEO of the tourism organization visitBerlin, told CNBC.

Meanwhile New Songdo, in South Korea, provides a glimpse of the continued integration of smart cities and airports.  The project is squarely focused on streamlining economic activity between South Korea and lucrative markets in Japan, China, and further afield.  As an incentive to New Songdo’s developers, the Korean government has agreed to construct a 7-mile, 6-lane bridge from New Songdo City directly to Incheon International Airport and provide all utilities.  Incheon, for its part, aims to be carbon neutral by 2013 and plans to build a new eco-friendly passenger terminal that will source power from solar panel and wind turbine installations.

While airports may be viewed as platforms for smart energy integration, it’s the potential for highly visible demonstration projects that is particularly exciting.  Three key aspects of airports make them ideal platforms for integrating smart energy technologies:

Smart City Meets the Aerotropolis

In his book, Aerotropolis, John D. Kasarda explains, “Airports will shape business location and urban development in the 21st century as much as highways did in the 20th century, railroads in the 19th and seaports in the 18th.”  This is significant because airports have become an unavoidable exchange point along the supply chain for the global exchange of goods and services.  According to Kasarda, one-third of all products consumed are shipped by air.  He estimates that passenger and cargo service will double or triple over the next 20 years.  Airports have become hubs of economic activity unto themselves, as evidenced by the integration of high-end retail as well as artistic and recreational attractions.

The idea of an aerotropolis shares many parallels with the Smart City concept, which Pike Research has discussed in past reports and in its recent Sustainable Megacity webinar.  Multi-dimensional in form and function, smart cities aim to integrate clean technology into a cohesive ecosystem, improving the lives of residents while facilitating sustainable, economic growth.  Similarly, the aerotropolis is a complex ecosystem of technology, infrastructure, and functionality requiring 24/7 power and thermal conditioning.  Any disruption in power can lead to significant economic loss for airlines and for the businesses that reside onsite, and in the worst case frustrate international aid efforts in the event of a significant natural disaster.  These attributes make airports attractive targets for distributed generation projects.

Closed Ecosystem

One of the unique characteristics of airports is that they are closed systems.  This reduces the administrative complexity of integrating innovative solutions (less stakeholders to satisfy than a large city, for example), while also skirting many of the infrastructure challenges associated with clean technology deployments in the broader market.

As my colleague, Anissa Dehamna, explains in her recent blog on port policies, “Although vehicles (trains, trucks, ships) carry goods away from ports, the fleets and activities at a port itself remain within a fixed area.  This makes them ideal for alternative fuel fleets because infrastructure can be installed at a few key sites in a port and then entire fleets can be fueled.”  The same is true for airports.  Refueling of ground fleets, for example – baggage carts, fuel trucks, and tow tractors – is made easier by the fact that such vehicles operate around a hub where refueling can take place around the clock.

Concentration of Demand

Like ports, concentration of demand for things like fuel at airports overcomes many obstacles preventing the widespread scale-up of clean technology solutions like biofuels.  With biomass (feedstock) resources unevenly distributed, aggregation and processing can be prohibitively expensive.  For this reason, municipal solid waste (MSW) has been targeted by a number of companies as a potentially low-cost feedstock for biofuels.  Through advanced gasification pathways, these companies are aiming to produce jet fuel for commercial aviation partners in a growing number of projects worldwide, such as at London’s Heathrow and other sites internationally.

By 2015, fast-growing China is aiming to build 70 new airports and expand 100 of its current ones.  Growth in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent, Europe, will allow for sustainability and clean technology to be increasingly integrated into these facilities.  Whether greenfield builds, retrofits, or expansions of existing airports, smart airports have the potential to be showcase projects that can raise the profile of their host cities and accelerate the deployment of clean technologies.

It’s easy to become discouraged about cleantech when headlines focus on one company after another that fails to make it work.  Frequently the issue is not technology, but rather management, the supply chain, or the business model.  Cleantech companies often have the added burden of creating value where there was none before.  Being visionary is riskier than being mundane.  Frankly, it’s surprising that more cleantech companies don’t fail.

Thankfully, there are still investors that are willing to bet on visionary and innovative solutions, particularly in energy.  Two well-known venture capital funds have been active in this space recently.  Braemar Energy Ventures announced that it closed its third fund, Braemar Energy Ventures III, LP, at the maximum amount of $300 million on June 19, 2012.  Blue-chip Silicon Valley VC firm Khosla Ventures, meanwhile, said it’s raising a fund called Khosla Ventures Seed B.  The firm’s first seed fund raised $300 million and closed in 2010.

These are on top of Goldman Sachs’ May announcement that it will create a $40 billion fund for cleantech investments.

What’s promising about these announcements is that, while the Braemar fund is focused on relatively mature, venture and expansion-stage energy technology companies, the Khosla Seed B fund will be focused on what the company terms “a crazy idea that may have a significantly non-zero chance of working.”  Not exactly a vote of confidence, but the purpose of the Seed B fund is to target very speculative technologies, aiming to hit it big.

Why are venture capitalists still funding cleantech?  Because the big picture, global challenges and opportunities have not changed.  There are too many people and too few resources.  It’s time we shared our prosperity with the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty. (Current data is difficult to come by; this figure refers to 2008 World Bank data for people living on less than $1.25 per day.)  Energy is the engine of growth.  For most of the developed world, cyber security has surpassed physical security as a primary concern.  Venture capitalists understand these challenges.  The purpose of Braemar Energy Ventures III is to “help deliver cleaner, cheaper, more efficient and reliable energy solutions.” Khosla Ventures is focused on several cleantech sectors, including alternative energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, and advanced materials.

Are there solutions that could address these big picture challenges in other ways? Certainly.  They just won’t be getting funding from Braemar III or KV Seed B or Goldman Sachs.  Being visionary still pays.