Think of clean tech as investment with ROI

IN 2009, Bertrand Piccard, who finished the first non-stop balloon flight around the world back in 1999, gave a Ted Talk where he compared life to a ride in a balloon. In a balloon, he said, you often want to go in a direction, "but the winds push us in another direction, like in life. And as long as we fight horizontally, against life, against the winds, against what's happening to us, life is a nightmare."

At the time, he was referring to people, or companies, being so used to traditional - and energy-consuming - ways of doing things that switching things up and going for more sustainable alternatives felt like, well, a nightmare.

That's where the "pioneering spirit" comes in - a person, like Mr Piccard, who inn…