Google is spending some money investing in an effort they call RE < C, which is geek talk for renewable energy less than coal. The goal of the effort is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity cheaper than coal - within the next few years. This is a really interesting effort that focuses on three key energy technologies:
Here also is a cool video from a talk recently at Davos by Larry Brilliant, of Google.org, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, where they discuss these efforts.
Today’s New York Times has a very interesting article about how the green energy industry is taking root in California. Driven by strong demand in California, as well as by encouraging local governments and their innovative subsidies, the industry is booming. For instance, “eight of more than a dozen of the nation’s companies developing photovoltaic cells are based in California, and seven of those are in Silicon Valley.”
It strikes me that California is proving the idea that by embracing reality (and accepting the need to radically alter how we get our energy) we can transform the economy and and revitalize parts of the country that are falling on hard times. The reality is that these solar panel manufacturing plants could be in Michigan, or Indiana, instead of California. But they’re not, and I think it’s too bad.
According to Wikipedia, cleantech is “knowledge-based products or services that improve operational performance, productivity, or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste, or pollution.” Some technologies that are included are:
Power Generation
Transportation
Energy Storage
Green Materials
Recycling and Waste
Water
Efficiency Infrastructure
Green Services
They say that a technology trend is gaining traction when you start to see investment dollars flowing. Happily it is.
From my vantage point here in Silicon Valley, things are hopping - from conferences, such as the Cleantech conferences coming up in San Francisco, Brussels and Washington D.C., to the fact that people like Al Gore are joining venture capital firms.
According to Daniel Englander at a great site called Greentech Media, in 2006, “green-technology companies received $3.9 billion in venture-capital investment and generated $55 billion in revenue.”
Based on our quick survey, here are some more resources to learn what it is and how to get involved:
Great taxonomy of the technologies encompassed by cleantech.
If you’ve seen my posts the past couple of days, you’ll see that the fact that I’m breathing in so much smog in Hong Kong has reminded me of the huge challenges China faces in cleaning up the mess that their 30 year economic party has created.
One of the books I’m reading right now is “A Bull in China” - a book about investing in China, written by Jim Rodgers, who notes in his book that this makes for some good investment opportunities.
He notes for instance, that the effects of pollution are costing the country up to 10% of GDP per year. That’s no chump change - it’s $200 billion per year. He also notes that China will soon be facing a major water crisis soon. It is already has the 13th lowest water per capita, and its resources will fall by 20% by 2030.
For these reasons, he expects major expenditures in China over the coming years to resolve some of these issues, and gives a few suggestions of companies to look into. These include:
Bi0-Treat Technology Ltd. - Singapore company which builds wastewater treatment plants.
Fujian Longking Co. Ltd. - Shanghai traded company which builds desulphurization and dust cleaning machinery.
I haven’t listed all the companies, so if you’ve been thinking of investing in Asia, and want to help (or at least profit from) clean up China, then I would check the book out, but take a look before you buy. In addition to a pretty short and detail light list of ‘green’ companies in a chapter about ‘Risk - The Perils of Succes’ (chapter 2) , there is some great info in the beginning about how one buys Chinese stocks. That information, about the types of shares available, and which exchanges have them is worth the price of the book all by itself.
It occured to me today that we at TTMYGG haven’t done much posting or thinking about green investing. There are lots of companies going green, and many more which are working on various green technologies. Investing in these companies (as we have listed in the Influence section of our Personal Global Warming Action Plan / Checklist) is a great way to leverage your enthusiasm, and make a larger impact than you could make with most individual actions. And hey, if you can make some money at it at the same time, more power to you! It’s why legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalists like John Doerr and Vinod Khosla are spending their time in the space.
So look for more posts on the topic in the days ahead, as we get our heads around what it means to be a green investor, and what you need to know to not lose your shirt! But in the meantime, if you’re new to the space like us, take a look at these resources, which look quite good:
