Professor Plastic Power

You may have heard that Discovery Channel is launching a network on environmental issues, Planet Green, next spring. But there are already intimations of what shows will be on the new network, like "Eco-Tech", which ran a segment last night that featured Alan Heeger, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Heeger is already quite well known as one of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2000. But his research into conducting polymers has led him to develop technology that stands to revolutionize the way we will all go solar. Without abandoning his work at UCSB, Heeger co-founded a company called Konarka Technologies, which makes its headquarters in Lowell, Mass., a town more known as a leader of earlier industrial revolutions than current eco-technology. No matter: Konarka is rolling out Power Plastic®, a photovoltaic material that basically puts solar power cells on flexible plastic, not glass. According to the Discovery Channel report, the technology stands to cut the cost of solar panels in half--if not more--while producing more power.

Universities have gotten very smart about helping professors commercialize their research. Look for a lot more breakthroughs like Heeger's in environmental technology for the mass market.