Over the past 16 years, I have been involved in 5 successful startup companies ranging from an energy company, to several .com companies. Now I am focusing all of my attention on creating the tipping point in the sustainability movement by pushing initiatives in government, business and the broader social landscape. 
Many people are curious, what I am doing since I left Powerset. Well, the short story is that I have decided to dedicate myself to what I call the new Green Economy and I am working on several initiatives with other leaders in government and businesses that all fall under the responsibility of non-profit that I am founding called SF Green. 
You won't find much about this company anywhere on the Internet, but it's comming. Aptility enables your HVAC system to be "climate smart" by understanding the behaviors of your house. Aptility is in stealth mode, but the scoop on them is that they are building a HVAC control solution than enables a house to understand the behavior occuring in every room in a house. The basic solution they are solving is that most of the existing HVAC controllers cannot account for room usage, room temperature fluctuations or temperature swings due to openning the door.
I don't know about anyone else out there, but I would certainly benefit from this type of controller. In my house (built in 1906) we have one room that is always 5-10 degrees colder and we have one bathroom that get up to about 85 degrees and we can't really do anything about it - (and yes I tried turning off the vent to that bathroom.) In addition, my house has pretty significant temperature fluctuations between the upstairs and downstairs.
That being said, the real question is how much could a smart HVAC system really save on utility bills and thus on carbon emissions? Well, imagine if your controller in your house could do what Aptility claimed. If that were true then, it would know when I'm home, what rooms I hang out it, how often and when I hang out in them and so forth. In addition, I would love it if the system could notify me that I have a window open. In SF, its quite common that during the day we open windows but close them at night. On those nights we forget, I'm sure that we are affecting our heating bill. A gentle reminder would be great. Overall, I can't say in any way whether or not I like Aptility as a winning company, but I do like the idea of the product. I gotta believe that know this would somehow help with the efficiency of the use of my HVAC system.
What Aptility represents however, may be more important. At almost every Gren event someone always asks if we have enough technology now to make a difference or should we wait. Invariably the experts spend about 30 minutes trying to explain that the question is moot. Why? because the real number one thing we can do to reduce carbon emissions is simply change our habits and that requires no technology. Second behind that is using existing technology is smart ways to help us use existing systems more efficiently.
OK. So what are a few examples of using existing technology? Well of coarse there is Aptility, but let's go through a couple of other market spaces where big difference can be made without inventing whole new technology. I believe the whole space of energy monitoring is going to get a complete overhaul - that is there are existing energy monitoring software systems for everything from data centers, to office parks to homes. I believe all of these systems are going to be upgraded to have new features that enable them to control the climate in a more efficient manner. A second area is appliances - that is not the system but the end use devices. What I mean here is that TVs, laptops, battery chargers will get overhauls to change the way standbye mode works and appliances like refridgerators, washing machines, dryers, dishwashing machines (basically any energy hog machine in the house) will get hooked up to the utility company and those devices will become much smarter about when then are turned on in relation to peak capacity.
That's all for now, but every time I find a company that falls into this existing technology making something more efficient, I will call it out.