Crowd Funding
Crowd Funding Campaign for POD Pioneers
I am very passionate about getting out the message (below) about a breakthrough collaboration, at many locations and with several countries where the first "POD Pioneers" will be financially supported to co-create and build the POD solution, thereby planting far and wide the seed of POD Fresh Food - and out of this collective effort we are confident that the Sola Roof Coop will take root and will proliferate, propagating organically with viral growth strategy.
To ACCELERATE our work we invite Crowd Funding and the first initiatives in this direction, our POD Net Plan launching on Earth Day 2015, will need your participation!
We are launching the Sola Roof Coop, now called the POD Preneur Network, or "PODnet", which will be organizing a Crowd Funding campaign within weeks. We will replicate a startup pattern by several POD Pioneers as the way forward through a demonstration stage, that will document the case for POD investment and lead to rapid replication around the world. Several countries will participate in this stage of collaboration to build a Creative Commons with information, plans and specifications that will answer all the questions and provide the confidence for our POD solution for local, regenerative food/water/energy to go viral and bring food security, safety and nutrition to families/communities everywhere.
Be the change; be a POD Pioneer!
Dear friends,
I am a Richard Nelson, a Canadian inventor, and my life long project is called Sola Roof, which is a new kind of home, dwelling - as "living structures" with transparent skin and integrated ecosystem providing all essential live support, including food/water/energy. The POD Pioneers are teaming up for a Crowd Funding campaign, where at several sites around the world POD Projects will be co-created as a new kind of Solar Greenhouse and Vertical Farming, DIY Food solution. This development is underway now, with partners in Iceland, the USA, Canada, Belgium, Scotland and several other countries after many projects completed successfully since 1983 - but there remains great resistance by all "powers that be" in the mainstream "system".
Today, in America, the call is "No to Climate Change; Yes to System Change" (at recent Climate Change march on the Whitehouse). Most common people (the 99%) are not fooled, they expect the system to crash. And the suffering everywhere will be great - some see this ultimate failure of civilization as the only way to save the planet from the most extreme of the doomsday scenarios that now seem probable - that predict life as we know it will be extinguished by runaway global heating combined with oxygen depletion.
I believe people and planet can be saved and the most extreme of human suffering can be averted, but only by awakening people everywhere so that we can act for the protection of our own families/communities with a family scale solution for ecological life support that is accessible and free for everyone and can be adapted to climate and culture everywhere. This technology is the Creative Commons we are building (literally) in the global Sola Roof Community - we call this solution: the POD. The POD integrates in a small structure a complete ecological process with application of all 5 kingdoms of life: algae, bacteria, fungi, plants and animals. We have a preference for aquatic and plant crops for food/feed and so the design is called Blue Green. The POD structure is vertical (imagine a tree) to reach for more light in the winter season or to diffuse light gently downward in a tropical day. We have algae and plants for food and feed; sun loving and shade plants, below which we grow mushrooms, and beneath the floor is aquatic space for fish, shrimp and krill.
With the Sola Roof technology we have simple, Open Source "water working" methods for "Liquid Solar and Liquid Bubble Insulation/Shading" that provide very low-energy control of temperature and humidity within the POD (or any Sola Roof building). Sola Roof technology is also fun and uplifting and whole purpose is to strengthen the food security of families and resilience of communities in the circumstance of system and ecological collapse. Together, WE can do this - it is a whole new paradigm and our way forward needs pioneering spirits who love LIFE.
A couple years ago we have had this great discussion: "Crowd Funding for POD Pioneers", which was a #SolaRoof #hangoutsonair that you can view, along with many other video at our Sola Roof channel at YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l_isI7OufU&feature=plcp
I am seeking collaboration/cooperation everywhere and I offer to work anywhere with the POD Pioneers who will get to work on the solution. The POD will rapidly become a meme for Eco Living lifestyle that will be a "convergence" and will end the poverty gap and eliminate hunger and extreme poverty. When the POD goes viral around the world we will then have a new world view and scarcity and fear will not dominate - our human capacities for living in peace with happiness accessible to everyone will allow people to shift the focus to the healing of the planet, restoring the forests and allowing the waters and lands to recover natural biodiversity.
I am also aware that we need investors and I seek financial backers from anywhere in the world who respect the independence of the Sola Roof Creative Commons - their money will be applied to POD Projects and to the startup of the global Sola Roof Coop (the COOP). This money will be respected and valued and also returned (with a profit share) by the COOP. I have recently sent this proposal out to people impact investors and ethical funds:
Please invite investor(s) to connect with me, a Canadian inventor, to discuss investment in a mature and market ready innovation for local, regenerative food/water/energy called Sola Roof.
Sola Roof is a Creative Commons collaborative community now establishing a global COOP, with our POD Net Plan. This is a social enterprise network enabling families and communities everywhere to build and operate the POD - supplying components, materials and subsystems to the COOP members together with online training/information sharing. The COOP will provide members with a web portal and mutual support/development network that includes POD Works hubs locally established to support the viral growth of this "open" organization. POD Growers supply local fresh food in all seasons and climates and are not greatly affected by climate change, thus assuring the security and safety of the food, which is a diverse polyculture with vertical Blue Green (aquatic/plant) cultures and integrates closed ecological systems for regenerative (low to no cost inputs) operations. Plants and algae convert about 90% of Solar Energy to food, feed, fibre and fuel crops while exporting pure water and significant surplus of clean energy (electricity generated from micro-turbine running on Bio Methane) and there is no GHG emission from the POD operation, nor release of any liquid effluent. The CO 2 generated when combusting Bio Methane is retained within the closed atmosphere POD, while the Bio Digester effluents are taken up by the plant and algae culture. Fibrous organic solids are utilized as worm/mushroom culture medium and are finally exported as a soil improvement product.
Sola Roof is simple, practical, well tested and proven over more than three decades, with several Pilot Project successes and current operational POD Projects and more planned POD Pioneer projects in locations all around the world. Sola Roof is widely accepted and supported in the EU and Sola Roof, with several partners have won a 1.6M euro contract (50% grant support) from the Eco Innovation program of the EU in 2012. (See F 2 W 2 F?) In the USA our principal site for development is at Greenfire Farm in Athens OH, where recent investment of $50K has a POD Prototype near completion.
A typical POD (family enterprise scale) will require a hardware investment (POD Kit) of $20K and additional construction/startup costs $10K for a total investment of $30K and will produce $60K to $100K of income per year with inputs/operating costs of 10% income or less. Thus the profitability to the owner/operator are significant for a family scale enterprise. For these results the typical POD footprint is 600 square feet. The POD requires no conventional energy and the food+energy output has a negative CO 2 footprint. One POD Grower will serve about 20 families. The potential for replication through the open organization of the COOP (the Sola Roof Coop) is in 10s of millions of units. The ultimate market penetration would reach over a $T in value of annual produce in the USA alone.
There is no reason why the POD will not go viral and establish a vast "social enterprise network". Growth will be self-propagating due to the value of the local, safe, nutritious food, which all families desire and the high reliability/profitability of the POD operations. At the same time industrial food and conventional agribusiness food chain is in failure scenario and disasters are just around the corner due to overwhelming affects of the Global Challenges that will result in a food crisis (see: this video by Professor Julian Cribb: The Coming Famine) that will touch everyone's live.
The POD is also the job creation bonanza that the USA needs to be the global leader in the green/clean sector, and is the catalyst for an ongoing revolution in technologies connecting with Ecomimicry Architecture and Biotechnology opportunities with vast scale. With these incredible and surprising solutions there will be radical and disruptive outcomes - but also a promise that we CAN turn the tide on Global Challenges, including Climate Change.
The best thing about the Sola Roof technology, is that it is free (near enough to free for commercial use), affordable (simple and low cost Liquid Bubble Insulation and Liquid Solar inventions), accessible (as a Creative Commons), adaptable to every climate and culture (supported by our global COOP) and it is a fun and feel good innovation. The POD has the power to heal both people and planet. But WE need to act with all speed, we need to accelerate innovations and engage with families and communities with viral strategies for food security.
I hope I have made a good start. Please call on 1 514-692-9107; Skype: solaroof; @solaroof; or consider a Google Hangout Thanks, Richard