The Ever Inventive Saul Griffith

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These days Griffith, who is married to an American woman and lives near San Francisco, has turned much of his attention to global warming and the need for radical changes in the way we consume and generate energy. Last year, he co-developed WattzOn, a personal Web-based energy audit that people can use to calculate their energy consumption. And in 2006 he founded Makani Power, an innovative wind-power startup, also in Alameda. It's a promising direction: In the U.S., energy generated from wind increased 40% in 2007 and another 50% in 2008, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

High-Altitude Energy

But Griffith and his staff of 30 engineers believe that wind can play a much bigger role in the energy revolution if they can harness the more powerful winds 1,000 to 3,000 feet up, which contain more energy per square foot than any other renewable source. They are developing wing-shaped kites to do just that. "Conventional turbines only work up to 200 feet, but capturing a small fraction of the global wind energy at higher altitudes could be sufficient to supply the current energy needs of the globe," says Griffith.

Capturing energy from high-altitude wind is far from easy. The biggest challenge is efficiently transmitting that electricity back to Earth. But Griffith, who has raised $15 million from Google.org and others for the venture, is confident, both about Makani's ability to develop a cost-effective new wind power technology and about the broader potential for meeting the challenge of climate change.

"Saul combines a scientist's notion of what's possible, with a low tolerance for conventional wisdom," says Andrew Zolli, a futurist and curator of the Pop!Tech conference, an annual conference about technology and ideas and one of several high-profile events where Griffith has spoken. "Give that man a lever long enough and he'll change the world—or the lever."

Jessie Scanlon is the senior writer for Innovation & Design at BusinessWeek, where she covers the intersection of design and business.

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