Pennsylvania’s Green Economy
When asked why he was so good, hockey icon Wayne Gretzky replied: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”* As Leo Gerard, President of the Steel Worker's Union, and Michael Peck of Gamesa, said in a recent editorial, "The world is skating toward multiple clean sources of energy in a carbon-free future. The question is whether the U.S. has the political will to become a leader in the largest industry of this century, or whether it is willing to accept the economic and climatic consequences of failing to act." Pennsylvania has the will. The ...
The Sixth Revolution: Leaping the Valley of Death
PART I We’re at risk of missing out on some of the most profound opportunities offered by the technology revolution that has just begun. Yet many are oblivious to the signs and are in danger of watching this become a period of noisy turmoil rather than the full-blown insurrection needed to launch us into a green economy. What we require is not a new spinning wheel, but fabrics woven with nanofibers that generate solar power. To make that happen, we need a radically reformulated way of understanding markets, technology, financing, and the role of government in accelerating change. But will we understand ...
CEDA: The Clean Energy Deployment Administration
PART II Looking to help bridge the gap in new cleantech and biotech projects, is a proposed government based solution called the Clean Energy Deployment Admin. (CEDA). There is a house and senate version, as well as a house Green Bank bill to provide gap financing. Recently, over 42 companies, representing many industries and organizations, signed a letter to President Obama, supporting the Senate version, the “21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act”. [caption id="attachment_6149" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Read the magazine with comments from finance and industry, interviews with Kliener Perkins and Mohr Davidow, and a chart of the 6th revolution. "][/caption] Both the house and ...
John Denniston: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
John Denniston talks with THE GREEN ECONOMY about the future of clean technologies, how the US may be loosing our future to China, and what we should do about it. Is cleantech catching on? It’s doing much more than catching on. World-class entrepreneurs are sprinting into the greentech sector from all walks of life: large companies, small companies, academia and public service. What’s the green tech opportunity? Taken together, the energy and transportation industries are the world’s largest, roughly $6 trillion annually. Beyond energy and transportation, entrepreneurs are seizing opportunities to improve an enormous range of industrial processes. Simply put, the greentech opportunity is ...
Will Coleman: Mohr Davidow Ventures
Will Coleman talks with THE GREEN ECONOMY about the evolution of technology, and how to drive innovation so that we cross the barriers that are stalling the new industries the US needs. How do you see the cleantech revolution? We’ve been reliant on the same industrial platforms for almost a century in some cases and it leaves a lot of room for innovation. We’ve seen many investors investing as an extension of what they know and are good at: solar investing by semiconductor folks; biomass by biotech; energy management from software investors. But it’s complicated. We’re competing with hundreds of years of ...
Funding Innovation for 21st Century
42 companies just signed a letter urging President Obama to push for the passage of a Senate bill, The 21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act.
We follow this story in our on-line magazine, Finance: Unlocking innovation in the green economy. We include interviews with venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures, follow what anlaysts at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research call the 6th technology revolution, and look at the Senate bill designed to address the “Valley of Death”, a looming gap for new technologies between product development and commercialization. Join us and give us your opinion.
