The Biomimicry Institute is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to naturalize biomimicry in the culture by promoting the transfer of ideas, designs, and strategies from biology to sustainable human systems design. The Institute's office is located at 114 W. Pine Street in Missoula, Montana.
Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis,meaning to imitate) is a new science that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example of this "innovation inspired by nature"
The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. They have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.
EIG on wiser earth
We have just attended the world's largest conference about Photovoltaic technology in Valencia (Spain) this week. There were some companies positioning themselves as biomimics because they were developing solar cells inspired by nature. However, it seems that we're still far with conventional techs (i.e. silica based cells) from reaching the effectiveness of green plants harvesting solar power into biological/energy components. Nanostructures capturing infrared solar energy seem to be the most promissing venue, with r&d teams working hard in the US and Europe mainly. Since investments are pretty high to speed up things (i.e 3-4 mUSD per research project), how can we make the return for an eventual breakthrough technology available to everyone in the planet? Unfortunatelly we couldn't attend the Congress Educational Sessions to pulse the state of the art about that, does anyone have some input from which we can learn more?
In principle the cost of the new technology should be much cheaper than the current stuff, but to make it trully global can the market forces in an uneven world be the only ones to make it possible?
EIG on wiser earth
http://www.wiserearth.org/organization/view/717dc4a15496b5833b97053fed0221e5