How to Save a Planet - On a Budget: New ebook featuring The Green Skeptic

My insights on cleantech investing are featured in a new ebook from The Energy Collective. How to Save a Planet - On a Budget. 

Built from the webinar we did last November, the book offers insights from over a dozen experts in the field and includes pertinent information for companies, investors, and clean energy advocates. 

The book asks the critical question, How can we drive progress to a clean energy economy when governments are broke and investment is scarce?

My thoughts can be found in Chapter 3, "The Changing Shape of Clean Tech Investment."  

Download it free here: How to Save a Planet - On a Budget

For those concerned about the planet’s well-being, it’s one of the crucial questions of our time, one that may have implications for our environment for generations. In a time of financial scarcity, our goal at TheEnergyCollective.com is to figure out how companies and governments can shift to greener, cleaner consumption of energy, and, most importantly, how they will pay for the infrastructure projects that are essential to limiting our output of climate change-causing greenhouse gases.

To that end, we conversed with a diverse group of experts and examined case studies that describe viable solutions to our climate crisis in the midst of an economic crisis. We hope this content will be of interest to energy professionals looking to learn about where the industry is going, those in cleantech interested in financing solutions, those in government hoping to improve local infrastructure, and advocates, journalists, policymakers and policy wonks looking for the latest insight on market solutions to climate problems. 

We cover:

• Paying the true cost of energy through carbon pricing
• Can carbon markets drive green innovation and infrastructure?
• Public-private cooperation for a greener economy
• The economic case for green infrastructure
• Cleantech startups and the venture capital funding climate
• Federal policy and cleantech

Featuring Input from:

• Gernot Wagner, Environmental Defense Fund
• Marc Gunther, FORTUNE
• Jesse Jenkins, Breakthrough Institute
• Will Coleman, Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Thiemo Gropp, co-founder, DESERTEC Foundation
• Andrew Carman, Head of Americas for Project & Structured Finance - Infrastructure, Cities & Industry, Siemens Financial Services, Inc.
• Jo Danko, Global Director for Sustainable Solutions, CH2M HILL
• Lucas Merrill Brown, Rhodes Scholar, Oxford
• Kirk Edelman, President and CEO, Siemens Financial Services U.S
• Lane Burt, Technical Policy Director, USGBC
• Lee Thiessen, Executive Director for Climate Change Policy and British Columbia’s Climate Action Secretariat
• Janet Peace, VP of Business and Markets Strategies, C2ES
• Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria
• Scott Edward Anderson, founder, VerdeStrategy

Download it free here: How to Save a Planet - On a Budget

The Energy Collective Podcast: Cleantech, the Venture Capital Climate, and Policy

We had a lively and informative discussion about Cleantech Investing on The Energy Collective a couple of weeks ago, with Will Coleman of Mohr Davidow, Dan Shugar of SunPower and Solaria, and yours truly, moderated by Jess Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute.

Here's how Amelia Timbers described it on The Energy Collective blog:

Will began with "cleantech investing 101", and explained how the macro economic situation and IPO backlog is affecting the venture capital world. He points to the patterns in cleantech venture capital as it matures as an industry of its own. He also points to the importance of large organizations getting involved in cleantech startups. Coleman discussed the complexity of technology risk and financing when startups are scaling from demonstration scale to commercialization.

Scott gave an example of corporate partnerships as a means of acheiving scale, and details the sophisticated 'balancing act' required by management teams in these situations. Scott also offers his insight on operating in China. 

Dan Shugar explains his experience in solar, from Sunpower to Solaria, and who remains a strong advocate of renewables. Dan emphasizes the need for growing companies to operate leanly and to operate on as much a cash basis as possible. 

And here are the slides and audio recording (about 1 1/2 hours long). You can also download the Podcast here: "How to Save the Planet on a Budget, Part 3"

How to Save a Planet - On a Budget: Cleantech, the Venture Capital Climate, and Policy

View more presentations from Social Media Today

And here is a video of the slides with audio recording:

Let me know what you think about our conversation.

How a Cleantech Failure Can Be More Valuable Than Success | The Energy Collective

How a Cleantech Failure Can Be More Valuable Than Success

Failure is tough. Many businesses fail, including some very viable ones. They fail all the time. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 50 percent of all new businesses fail during the first year and 95 percent during the first five years. Some fail fast, some die a slow, painful death.

The question is not whether failure is good or bad, it's what you learn from it that counts...

Read More

My latest post for The Energy Collective.

Lighting, Sensors and Lumens, Oh My | The Energy Collective

Let there be Light: Digital Lumens ILE-MB-3

From poor lighting in the Hilton's Trianon Room to the endless parade of LED products on display in the Exhibit Hall lighting was the word at Con Ed's Energy Efficiency Summit in New York on Wednesday.
 
I wrote about the changing nature of lighting and sensor technologies from this week's Con Ed Energy Efficiency Summit in New York.  Read my post on The Energy Collective blog.

Read more.

Related articles

• Digital Lumens rides Moore's Law to efficient LEDs (news.cnet.com)
• 231 Lumen per watt LED shatters LED efficacy records (electronics-lab.com)
• Digital Lumens Lights Up With $10M to Get Smart LED Technology to More Customers (xconomy.com)
• Digital Lumens Closes $10 Million To Bring Smart, LED-Lighting To The Industrial Market (techcrunch.com)
• Albeo Introduces LED High Bay Replacement for 1000 Watt HID Lighting (prweb.com)

Energy Efficiency Needs to Be the "New Normal" | The Energy Collective

Energy Efficiency has long been touted as the "low hanging fruit," both in terms of energy savings and potential impact on mitigating climate change.  So why aren't energy efficiency measures being more rapidly adopted?

I explore this question and more from the floor of Con Ed's Energy Efficiency Summit on The Energy Collective blog.

Read more

 

Related articles

• A Green Home Is an Energy-Efficient Home (everydayhealth.com)
• Up the Energy Efficiency of Your Fridge (everydayhealth.com)
• How to Make Your Home More Energy Efficient (livoniabuilders.wordpress.com)

Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 10/22/10

Sign of Good Things to Come in Philly

My apologies for neglecting the LinkFest last week.  Will try to make up for it here.

First up, Jeff St. John of GigaOm with a story on GridPoint, "the smart grid company with a lot of funding, and a lot to prove," replacing its CEO: GridPoint.

Andrew Winston in Harvard Business Review wrote about Google Doing What the Government Can't: Google Cleantech.

And more on Google's shift from trying to find cleantech breakthroughs to financing mega projects.

In Philly, Viridity Energy got some props in the Inquirer for its efforts to reshape how firms buy and use electricity.

I was at the Cleantech Group's Cleantech Forum New York, where it announced the 2010 Global Cleantech 100.

Tom Friedman of The New York Times wrote about the case for energy technology investment,while Teryn Norris asked "Can Conservatives Support Clean Energy Innovation Policy?" in The Energy Collective.

CleanTechies blog featured an interview with Jigar Shah, CEO of the Carbon War Room on Why Entrepreneurs Are Flocking to Energy.

On the Sustainability front, Tilde Herrera in GreenBiz.com listed 10 Things to Know About Engaging Suppliers for Green Programs.

And finally, one of the things that's been keeping me busy this week, is the US launch of one my clients here in Philadelphia: Mark Group home-energy firm to locate in Philadelphia Navy Yard.