Going green is a phrase gaining more and more prominence in the public consciousness and has increasingly pervaded the business realm at all levels — from companies seeking to reduce their environmental impact through better recycling and energy saving practices to green technology startups delving into what is looking like an very promising market. A number of Indian-Americans have been involved on the innovative edge of green technology and they report exciting development and a promise of more to come.

Chemical and environmental engineer Vikram Pattarkine, who has served as chief technology officer, chief scientific officer and now advisor of OriginOil Inc. since joining the company in late 2008, is excited to see the populist attitude catching up to the green-minded philosophy that has driven his professional life for decades.

OriginOil is a Los Angeles-based company that is developing a technology to transform algae, considered the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor for petroleum. The company's aim is to produce "new oil" from algae through a growth-and-extraction process. The oil produced can be used for products such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents.

Pattarkine, a specialist in wastewater treatment, joined the company in its push to develop its technology toward a pilot program, which is just getting up off the ground. The same drive to reduce mankind's environmental impact that drove his work with wastewater treatment drove his interest in becoming involved in a company looking for an option to the ecologically destructive petroleum industry.

Considering oil alone, Pattarkine is definitely encouraged by the changing general consensus toward a need for other options. He compares the two main oil crises — the first occurring in the 1970s and the second recently — and says that the most recent crisis elicited an entirely different response out of people. The first crisis that hit caused concern that there would not enough oil to go around. However, with the recent oil crisis — though lack of oil was certainly part of it — the main concern that arose is the worry about the impact of continually increasing carbon emission on the globe's ecology.

"The recent oil crisis opened eyes about carbon emissions and the impact on climate change," Pattarkine said. "Even if we did not have an oil crisis, we would still have to do something to not take and burn carbon out of the ground."

Though OriginOil has only a small amount of venture capital backing, with most of its money coming from private investors, Pattarkine believes the changing attitude toward green technology and related fields will lead to more innovation in the realm.

"It has a positive impact. You see people are desperate to put money in things they feel good about and which they feel will be helpful to all of us overall," he said. "Right now we have only collected money from true believers — believers in the sense that this is a solution for the future."

However, as a recent report from the Cleantech Group and Deloitte LLP attests, the investment industry is increasingly taking note, funneling $5.6 billion into clean technology businesses in North America, Europe, China and India in 2009. The amount invested, though down slightly overall from 2008, continued a trend of increased investment in this sector over the first half of the decade.

Pattarkine is encouraged by the increased interest, but he admits to not being entirely surprised. "Necessity is the mother of innovation. I know it is a cliché, but it is true in this case," he said. "Whenever you are put in a dire need is when you do something about it."

OriginOil's algae is changed into oil.

Still, the emphasis on green is great for someone who has been interested in such things since he was an engineering student at Nagpur University and later went on to received a doctoral degree in environmental engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Prior to joining OriginOil, Pattarkine was a senior vice president at Brinjac Engineering Inc., an engineering design and consulting firm based in Harrisburg, Pa. Before that he was director of process engineering at Columbia, Mo.-based Environmental Dynamics Inc., a developer and manufacturer of aeration systems for wastewater treatment. During the 1990s, he led the Environment and Natural Resources Management consulting practice of Tata Consultancy Services.

With his wife Mrunalini, Pattarkine also runs an environmental consulting company, Pattarkine Environmental and Consulting Engineering, out of Harrisburg, Pa., where they live.

Pattarkine estimates that he flew well over 100,000 miles last year for his OriginOil efforts and his passion for his field is obvious. "I feel fortunate to have got training in this area, so I can do things for the good of all of us," he said.

Rick Pal's migration to the green technology business is a lot more recent than Pattarkine, but his passion for what he is doing is every bit as strong.

Pal is president of Houston-based AirGenerate Inc., which has developed several efficiency products for the hot water heater industry. The company's main product is AirTap, which dramatically improves the efficiency of standard hot water heaters. AirTap is a metal, square-shaped device that can be attached to the top of any 30-80 gallon water tank and then used to heat water, not with gas or electricity, but through the air surrounding it.

AirTap does this by acting as a conventional heat pump, using a compressor (powered by a low-wattage electric current) to extract heat from the surrounding air, and then sending this heat through long copper tubes into an adaptor where it is dispersed into the water tank. This heats the water to the same degree as would a gas burner or electric heating component.

According to the company, AirTap results in over 200 percent improved efficiency and up to 80 percent energy savings and it has been certified by GAMA under Department of Energy guidelines as the most energy efficient water heater in the United States. AirTap uses about one-fourth of the standard amount of energy to heat water, by drawing three-fourths of the energy from the surrounding air. It can reduce energy consumption by approximately two-and-a-half times that of a standard water heater or tankless water heater unit.

To put it in perspective, the company offers the example that AirTap uses less power than an 8-cup coffee machine to run the compressor, and its energy consumption level is equivalent to keeping two coffee machines on for a day.

AirGenerate was launched in January 2008 by Pal and Sunil Sinha, who invented AirTap.

The company sells its products to plumbing wholesalers and dealers, such as major industry names Ferguson and HD Supply. Its products are available through 1,200 dealers in 50 states and 18 wholesalers with almost 300 branches. In its first year of operation AirGenerate sold 1,500 units. In 2009, the company sold 4,000 units. The target for 2010 is 10,000 units. AirGenerate has 21 rep agencies and 80 sales personnel in 38 states pushing its products.

Pal professes his confidence that there is no better time than now to be in a business likes his.

"It is a coming of age for our company in general," he said. "In 2009, we had 300 percent growth over 2008 and we want to keep that this year • We are growing and there is a demand for products like ours.

"I think green awareness is definitely growing, we see it on a daily basis," he added. "People who were not even talking green three years ago are talking green now • I think, honestly, the green revolution is here."

Helping AirTap is the fact that product qualifies for a $300 federal tax rebate for using energy efficient products, which cuts heavily into its $699 price tag.

Pal admits that interest in AirTap is not always about "saving the earth," but translates into a money saving measure for consumers. "When you look at the whole category of water heating, interest is up," he said. "People know there is opportunity to save money on water heating."

Prior to AirGenerate, Pal was the president of marketingO, a promotional products company. He also owned master franchisee rights for Liberty Tax Service in the Greater Houston Area which he expanded to over 44 offices and 22,000 customers. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a business degree, Pal also held several product management positions at Commerce One, Webify Solutions, Navis and Iconixx. He was also a co-founder of iBlitz.com that was incubated by Garage Ventures and IBM in 2000.

Pal first met Sinha while working at Commerce One in the Bay Area.

Singh is the industry vet. He has over 25 years of engineering and management in the renewable energy, energy conservation and software development. He has paired academic degrees in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and the University of Hawaii with extensive research in refrigeration technology, solar thermal electricity generation, biomass chemical conversion to useful fuels, methanol fuel cells and integrated renewable energy systems.

He has worked with organizations such as the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, the Gujarat Energy Development Agency and the Indian Institute of Management on energy projects looking for alternative energy products. He also previously developed a self-sustaining model of energy consumption for a village in India using local energy resources.

In the fall of 2007, Sinha revealed his AirTap concept to Pal looking for possible investment, and Pal liked the technology so much, he convinced Sinha to move to Houston — where Pal had moved since first meeting Singha — to start AirGenerate.

Gambit Communications Inc. is a company, like AirGenerate, that scores with its customers on its cost-savings, but the green awareness quotient does continue to rise.

Headquartered in Nashua, N.H., Gambit Communications is a provider of network simulation tools. The 25-employee company, which also has an office in Mumbai, boasts clients such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems Inc., Nortel Networks Corp., Alcatel-Lucent, Intel Corp. and Motorola.

When chief executive officer Pankaj Shah founded the company in 1995 the sales emphasis was on increasing efficiency and reducing capital expenditure costs on hardware and infrastructure. However, that as changed as the energy-saving aspect of his company's product has come more into the limelight.

"We didn't sell the energy saving at first," said Shah. "Before people didn't care so much about electricity and energy saving • so before if you had told them there was savings in this area they would not have cared."

Now, however, Shah said that all IT managers and chief information officers always consider energy saving and "have green on their minds."

And Gambit Communications has just the qualification to be on their radar — the company has won the International Green Apple Award for Environmental best practice two years running. The award was in recognition of Gambit's environmentally friendly product. The Green Apple Awards are presented annually in recognition of companies, councils and communities carrying out projects that are environmentally friendly; there were 500 nominations for 2009. Other winners include Genzyme Ltd. and Fiat Group Automobiles UK Ltd.

Shah said that Gambit's green recognition without a doubt pumps up business. "It definitely helps. That is another factor that people consider when they look at our product," he said. "As more and more companies try to go green this becomes a big factor to them.

"They buy [our product] because they need the features, but the energy savings is a big addition to that," he added.