Croston’s commitment to a more sustainable planet starts at home, in San Diego, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Their lifestyle includes a hybrid car, solar panels, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and composting.

Croston is a member of Union of Concerned Scientists, NRDC, Sustainable Conservation and Environment California. He is also the founder of Starting Up Green.

Before 75 Green Businesses , Croston wrote and published several books in the biochemistry field.

The news is full of financial chaos. Every day we enter frightening new territory we thought impossible a few days earlier. Last Thursday WAMU failed. Now a $700 billion bailout is needed we’re told. What will tomorrow bring?

And yet there is more going on the world than just this, and the news is not all bad.

I was at the 2008 West Coast Green conference in San Jose, California last week. Inside the show there was a whole different story happening than what was happening outside in the news. The Convention Center was full of thousands of people focused on every aspect of green building and broader issues of the green business movement. Outside, the news is scary, dominated by fear of this crisis and where it might lead. Inside the convention hall the mood was hopeful, forward-looking, with people busy building businesses and working on solutions for the environment and the economy. The difference is striking, extraordinary really – what’s going on here?

Are the green folks delusional? Wide-eyed dreamers? Don’t they see what’s happening?

I think they do. We all know the story. There is fear in the air and serious problems to be dealt with, but beyond the financial crisis of today there are pressing long-term issues to be addressed in the environment and economy, and massive opportunities for entrepreneurs who can solve them. Greening our buildings is a great place to start. Some will say that green buildings are an expensive luxury we cannot afford right now, but now more than ever we cannot afford to waste energy. Energy is expensive and money is tight – we need to be smart with money and energy, getting greener than ever. Greening our buildings is a smart business move and provides huge opportunities for businesses in many fields.

One problem with our buildings is that they waste energy and waste money. We have over 110 million homes in the US, and we throw away billions of dollars on wasted energy every year in our homes. The rising price of energy is driving more homeowners to do something about it, and entrepreneurs to help them. The majority of these homes could be better insulated, and our leaky air ducts can be easily sealed. We don’t see our air ducts or think about them hidden away in the crawl space, but the average air duct leaks 30-40% of the air it carries, and wastes 30-40% of your heating bill in the process. By putting solar panels on top of our buildings we can fight climate change, reduce pollution, build the economy, and keep energy costs stable. Even while we worry about the economy, we are blowing money out the door by not taking simple steps like these.

Another impact of greening our buildings is on productivity. Acclaimed co-author of Natural Capitalism and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, Hunter Lovins described at West Coast Green the business case for greening our buildings, including a potential $258 billion increase in productivity due to reduced sick time and other factors.

Sustainable Spaces in San Francisco has grown steadily by helping people waste less power while having healthier more comfortable places to live. Sustainable Spaces home performance retrofitters audit the performance of homes for their efficiency, looking at their insulation, windows, appliances, air ducts, lighting, weatherstripping, and all of the other factors that affect how well homes perform. They work closely with the homeowner to fashion the plan that makes the most sense for them, finding the most energy efficient and cost effective solution while maintaining comfort. Pratap Mukherjee, the CEO at Sustainable Spaces, reports that “business is better than ever.” Developing a set of best practices, they are working to take this solution nationwide.

Our energy goes down the shower drain in the hot water that briefly hits our body before heading for the sewer. Ecodrain of Montreal, Canada has developed plumbing hardware to change this, capturing the heat from water as it goes down the drain. The Ecodrain heat exchanger is installed beneath the shower, taking the hot water and using it to heat cold water headed for the shower head. Looking to scale up production and partner with builders, they may soon be bringing their product to the US as another way to make our homes more efficient.

Agilewaves has developed the Resource Monitor to measure how much gas, water, and electricity our buildings use, how much this costs us and what kind of impact it’s having on the environment. Founded by three NASA scientists, they place sensors on each of these systems in a building and feed constant data from these sensors to a centralized real-time display of how the building is doing. The display can be on a computer screen at home, a smart phone, or other device. The information in a monthly bill does not do much to help consumers use energy or water more efficiently, but AgileWave already has feedback from customers that real-time information can change the decisions they make throughout the day, helping them use resources more wisely and save money in the process.

The energy efficiency solution is as simple as turning off the lights when nobody is in a room, but bad habits like leaving lights on can be hard to change. An easy answer is to install sensors connected to light switches, making the lights turn off automatically. Wattstopper makes a variety of occupancy sensors that turn off lights when nobody is in a room, working with sensors detecting heat or motion that are selected for each unique circumstance in a home or business. They have been building their business for years with these products, supported in part by expanding green building standards encourage the installation of efficiency measures.

Green Key Real Estate in San Francisco is working with home owners, green or not, to help more of our buildings to go green. Their business is not just about buying and selling green homes, but about working with homeowners to let them know about the opportunity that greening their homes offers.

There’s a connection between the financial crisis and the environmental crisis - the ceaseless focus on the short term, and a denial of the long term consequences. At West Coast Green Al Gore described how ignoring the risks in the subprime mortgage market was similar to how we continue ignoring the risk created by pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day.

But we are not just faced with problems, but with opportunities to take action now and change the world. A growing number of consumers and entrepreneurs are doing just that. They see what lies ahead, and the opportunity that lies before us to take a different track. They question the assumption that nothing can be done or that taking action will be too costly, a drag on the economy. Building businesses that green our buildings is a great way to do well even in a down economy, making money, growing our economy, and helping the environment at the same time. “Those who make it first to the future,” by leading the way in green economy, “Will be the billionaires of tomorrow,” said Hunter Lovins at the meeting. Not a bad deal. Greening our buildings requires thinking of the long term, investing in our homes, our futures and the planet. But when the current financial crisis fades, and our lives continue the planet will still be here and we’ll still be living on it, hopefully in a green and prosperous world. 

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