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NY Times – Turbine-Free Wind Power from Antfood on Vimeo.

I was doing research with twitter, scrolling through organizations and individuals tweeting about environmental and economic issues and events, looking for a focus for my next report. Stopping on one, clicking the link and watching the advertised video was the precursor to 3 months of research on the VibroWind project – and arguably the most fun report I’ve researched, analyzed and written yet.

The project, still in development and testing by Professor Francis Moon and his team at Cornell University, gave me the opportunity to study potential markets for an unreleased product and to predict the kinds of market conditions the product would need to either thrive successfully or avoid failure in its market entry. Ultimately, I focused on the relative cost and level of energy conversion efficiency that the VibroWind product must have in order for the rational consumer or company to invest in it as opposed to other products or not at all. This kind of market analysis is fundamental to creating a good product, and demonstrates where business, economics and environmental science will eventually converge onto one road. But until markets and the business world are ready to fully tap into and take advantage of the profit potential of environmental science (which may not be until oil is no longer a viable energy solution), the future of VibroWind unfortunately remains up in the air (pun intended).