The Rice University Business Plan Competition bills itself as the “largest and richest” contest of its kind. But despite the more than $1 million in cash and prizes doled out in this year’s competition, the stakes are much higher in the next phase: turning a cool idea into a viable business.
Top honors in the competition went this weekend to a team out of the University of Arkansas working on a treatment for osteoporosis. But more than a few teams in the rest of the pack set their bright young minds to work on green technologies. Given the contest’s track record, they’ll be worth watching in coming years.
Brad Burke, managing director of Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, told Entrepreneur that more than 70 percent of the competitors from last year have “gone on to successfully launch their companies, raise funding and build their businesses.” Here’s seven green ideas pitched in this year’s contest:
Ambiq Micro (University of Michigan Ross School of Business)
Idea: The Ambiq Micro team says it has developed a more energy-efficient microcontroller (MCU) that “requires 25-130 times less energy in sleep mode and 4-10 times less energy in active mode” than comparable MCUs that are sold today. That step up in efficiency would mean, “manufacturers of compact wireless devices can extend battery life to years or decades and can even replace batteries entirely with energy harvesting devices to address the rising costs of battery replacement.”
Ancora Energy (MIT Sloan Management)
Idea: The duo behind Ancora Energy aims to convert municipal solid waste into electricity using a patented process. They aim to partner with energy companies and municipalities to “engage in construction, ownership and operation of highly efficient waste to energy plants.”
Biogas & Electric (UCLA Anderson School of Management)
Idea: This team has developed a tech for reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, or NOx. The system is designed to be used in conjunction with anaerobic digesters, generate electricity (and significant NOx emissions) from methane gas captured at “dairy, hog and poultry farms as well as municipal sewage treatment plants.”
C3Nano (Stanford University Chemical Engineering)
Idea: Spun out of Stanford Professor Zhenan Bao’s chemical engineering lab, C3Nano says it has developed a carbon nanotube-based transparent electrode will increase the efficiency of thin film solar panels by more than 1 percent “while becoming the dominant transparent electrode in the electronic display industry.”
Power2Switch (The University of Chicago Booth School of Business)
Idea: Enable small and medium-sized businesses to compare and switch between electricity suppliers through a web site “for the purpose of saving money on their electricity costs or accessing renewable energy.” The Power2Switch team says it currently has relationships with electricity suppliers using both fossil and renewable fuels, and plans to expand beyond its commercial customers in Illinois to 13 electricity deregulated states across the country.
Sanergy (MIT-Sloan and Babson College)
Idea: Build low-cost “sanitation centers” and franchise them to entrepreneurs in “previously unreachable urban slum communities.” Then transport the waste to a central processing facility and convert it into electricity and organic fertilizer for sale to energy suppliers and commercial farms. The team believes the system has a “market potential of $25 million in Kenya alone.”
Solavicta (University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business)
Idea: The Solavicta team says it’s working on a solar technology that can be manufactured for less than $0.50 per watt, with the goal of enabling “fully-installed, grid-ready power systems” at costs 25 percent less than utility-scale solar tech used today.
Check out the Launchpad portion of our Green:Net conference on April 29 in San Francisco, where 10 companies that are using information technology to fight climate change will launch themselves out of stealth mode or unveil interesting new products.
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