(Ukeleles strumming in the background) "...I want to go back to my little grass shack in Honolulu, Hawaii..." (well - maybe not the grass shack).
It's always nice to be back on the islands, the weather is perfect and the pace is a lot slower than the mainland. This first stop breaks up what is usually a long trip to Asia. I want to see family and friends before picking up the pace in Hong Kong.
A favorite uncle of mine just retired here and while there are lots of family members around the islands, he is one I needed to catch up with the most. So I used his new home near Pearl Harbor as a base for my few days on island, and headed into downtown Waikiki to visit with a friend and former investor in one of my previous companies.
Karl is part Portugese & Japanese and a full on Hawaii boy. His immediate and extended family have been on the island since ever since and he's been off the grid for a few years now, following the market meltdown of 2001-2002. I've known Karl since 1999 when he was with JPMorgan and then ABN-AMRO. He's been very busy building a home in downtown Honolulu as well as a really neat retirement home up toward the North Shore.
During our visit, we explored the ideas around the next "new thing" and very much resonated around the need for clean technology and how to bring them to market. I firmly believe that the growing demand for energy, especially in the large developing markets creates huge opportunities for renewable alternatives.
We shared a number of ideas around clean fuels (hydrogen, ethanol), biodegradable packaging (ala Earthshell products ), and clean generation technologies such as ocean thermal energy conversion. Karl's been doing a lot of thinking in this area during his hiatus from the finance world and we have a lot more ground to cover, but it was a great way to start my trip.
I forget how much I take for granted the infrastructure on the mainland, and it is certainly more noticable when you leave the continental US. Hawaii is more advanced than most island environments, but there is a higher occurance of rolling brown-outs and water outages. Some folks are already playing with in-home solar power generation systems, and having a substantial rain water cistern is pretty standard fare on the Big Island. I think Hawaii will be a regular stop on my future itinerary as I further explore the alternative renewalble energy sector.
Serendipitously, the National Renewable Energy Labs are located in Golden, Colorado. I've got a lot of homework to do when I get back in town.
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