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SD Forum’s Green and Clean Dinner Meeting

August 22, 2008 in business benefits, investing by nils | 1 comment

The Image via Wikipedia

I attended the SDForum Green and Clean Dinner tonight. The topic was “Where’s the Money?” Five panelists, representing a VC firm, a bank, an angel funding group, a bridge-financing firm, and an entrepreneur who has raised his money independently, discussed the various sources of funding for clean tech companies. i took extensive notes, and will provide more details later, but for now some of the highlights were:

  • Liquidity may be different for clean tech companies than we got used to for high tech companies during the Internet boom
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Getting (A Lot) More Done Per CO2 Molecule

August 19, 2008 in carbon mitigation, consumption, energy efficiency by nils | Add your comment

CIA World Factbook 2007 figures of total nomin...Image via Wikipedia

According to a McKinsey Global Institute report released at the end of July, the world economy will have to improve its “carbon productivity” – the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) created per unit of CO2 – by a factor of ten by 2050 to stop global climate change in its tracks while continuing to enable a healthy level of growth. The report predicts that the cost of this transformation will amount to 0.6% – 1.3% of global GDP by 2030. They note that this compares favorably to the cost of insurance born by economies, which amounts to more than 3% of GDP.

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Leading VC talks about investing in energy efficiency

August 13, 2008 in investing, profits by nils | Add your comment

Public Domain. Credit information: Hinode JAXA/NASA

Public Domain. Credit information: Hinode JAXA/NASA

Every day I get emails about “clean tech financing this” and “clean tech financing that” – last year there was over $7 billion in investments in clean technologies in the U.S. In this interview in the San Jose Merc, Paul Holland of Foundation Capital describes some of his philosophy on clean tech investment, including a strong focus on technologies that will reduce energy demand:

“The first lesson is there’s nothing wrong with a capital-efficient investment, even in clean tech. The second lesson is, look what happens when you don’t pay attention to the first lesson.”

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