Partnerships in creating agile sustainable development communities

The key to clean, renewable and healthy futures for society(s) can be seen in the need to consider how all infrastructure areas such as water, waste and transportation, energy are treated. And to focus attention on the emerging commercial technologies (such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) that will be available regionally and then globally within the next five to ten years. Planning and investing now for that future will prove to be prudent and cost effective. Public-private partnerships, known as “civic markets“ can create and provide “funds” such as public bonds along with private sector innovation and markets on the regional, state and national levels. Similar bond funds have been passed by the electorate in California, most recently for stem cell research (USA$3 billion). Public support to promote funding for sustainable communities has also been demonstrated with bond funds for water, forests and land preservation. “Agile energy systems” are flexible and adapt to change effectively and efficiently for economic, environmental and social benefits, the triple bottom line. However, there needs to be collaboration between the pubic and private sectors in creating them. Such civic markets can from new associations of communities, cities and nation-states that might be useful to plan public policies and create the “government market“ in terms of procurement and coordination of public resources for renewable energy on-site and central grid power generation. One suggestion is to form an “Association of Agile Energy Cities or communities.”