On Tuesday, I had the distinct honor and pleasure of hosting the VERGE event in Shanghai, which kicked off 12 hours of livecast programs produced by GreenBiz Group.

The event was held at the Shanghai Environment Energy Exchange and was co-organized by the UN sponsored program: South-South Global Assets and Technology Exchange. The venue was perfect because SEEE is located in a LEED-Platinum certified, former automobile parts factory that now houses the building energy efficiency and environment departments of the Shanghai municipal government, as well as green technology and knowledge firms, including my own EcoTech International.

Fifty professionals from a dozen countries joined me to talk about the convergence of energy, information, buildings and vehicles and transportation technology. The main takeaway I got from the energy segment led by Jonathan Woetzel of McKinsey is that global urbanization is going to be one of the prime driving forces for a converged energy solution, principally because of the powerful problem-solving synergy that happens when lots of people get together.

Mark Evans from JUCCCE echoed this notion in the information session talking about the power of open platform collaborative problem-solving, the Shanghai-based GIGA organization (see below) being a prime example.

The buildings component of the program was led by Michael O'Mara from IBM, who talked about the importance of breaking down silos in building information to identify what's most important to optimize building performance.

Rounding out the sessions by conversation "firestarters"  was Tom Gilligan from Butler Manufacturing, who spoke of trends in supply chain and logistics, which is a very model of the VERGE concept in action.

The second part of the Shanghai program focused on how convergence is playing out in the developing world and the short answer is: very rapidly, but not fast enough. Han Bo of SS-GATE spoke of the rapidly growing transfer of technology between developing countries and Edwin Huang of Suntech, China's largest solar manufacturer, showed how in the last decade photovoltaic costs have declined by 80 percent, while cell efficiency has increased by 50 percent. Xiaoping Zheng from the Chinese planning firm BAZO compared the exciting statistic of 200 percent growth in LEED projects last year in China with the fact that this represents only 4 percent of the large buildings going up in Shanghai.

The highlight for me came at the end, when four young (one was 17!) participants from China, the U.S. and India, voiced their optimism and good fortune to have been born during a time when sustainability and regeneration are mainstream, rather than fringe concepts. Radical Confidence, indeed!

Two new reports illustrate the availability of green building opportunities and the momentum of the green building movement.

The first is the 2011 Green Building Opportunity Index, a joint effort of Better Bricks and Cushman & Wakefield, which once again shows San Francisco leading the vanguard. Initiated in 2010, the GBOI examines 10 real estate markets and weighs them according to six variables ranging from office market conditions to "green culture." In addition to reviewing twice as many markets as last year, compilers of the index further refined their analysis methodology and inputs.