An Icelandic startup, IceWind, has an ingenuous approach to industrial materials and design that allows a vertical axis wind turbine to provide distributed energy in extreme climates, such as the Arctic. Newly launched for residential and commercial customers in the state of Texas, the company is also finding an interested client base in foreign governments and military customers--specifically, the U.S. Air Force. We talked to Robert Gerber, who spent over a decade with the U.S. State Department, serving at U.S. Embassies in Kabul, Paris, and Washington D.C., finally serving as Political and Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland. Today, Gerber works for IceWind to develop new client relationships worldwide. We talked to him about IceWind's design, its emerging applications, and what's at stake in the Arctic.