At the Clean-Tech Investor Summit last week, Bob Hemphill, executive vice president of AES, one of the world's largest power companies, gave a list of "not so interesting" technologies. They included fuel cells ("not in my lifetime"), hydrogen ("not in my car"), and nuclear ("not in my neighborhood").

He also said wind technologies have modest room for improvement, and made fun of "beyond the meter" technologies that communicate with appliances and monitor energy use. ("The secret life of a toaster?" his PowerPoint slide asked.) "This allows people to talk to your refrigerator," he said. "OK, what are you going to say to your refrigerator? I believe with a very few exceptions, there's not much interest in beyond the meter." 

Finally, he dismissed energy technologies using the Earth's magnetic flux. "I don't ever want to see any more technologies where we use the Earth's magnetic flux," he said. "I don't believe we can use it. I'm not going to read any more proposals involving the magnetic flux or any that start out 'You may think our technology violates the laws of physics.' I'm not going to read any more of those proposals, and I'm certainly not going to fund them."