GoodCompany "Un-Panel" at GreenSpaces NY

Last week's GoodCompany Ventures event at the TriBeCa, NY, offices of Green Spaces brought together some of the top minds in early stage and patient capital investing, including Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jacob Gray from Murex Investments, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Venture Strategies, and Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, along with yours truly as the "un-moderator."

A great dialogue on our "un-panel" ranged from balancing long-term impact with maximizing returns to the need for solid metrics for social return.

[Hoping to have a link to video of the panel here next week.]


Four GoodCompanys  from the inaugural class of 2009 presented, including Black Gold Biofuels, Couchange, CalendarFly, and PublicStuff.

Roger Ehrenberg wrote a thoughtful post on his Information Arbitrage blog about the need for a new model for investing in "social" impacts and Jason Keramidas wrote a recap on the GoodCompany blog.

Applications for the 2010 Incubator are being accepted here.

(Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board of GoodCompany Ventures.)

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Federal Subsidies Visualized

Timothy B. Hurst posted on this earlier this week on The Energy Collective, and it is worth checking out his post and the comments: Think Renewables Need Huge Subsidies?

The 16 People You Must Follow on Twitter for Green Business

Image by respres via Flickr

Last week, I was named one of "The 16 People You Must Follow on Twitter for Green Business" by Earth and Industry

It's a pretty impressive list and I am honored to be on it. (Although, I'm not sure what "shooting hops" is...have to ask my local brewer.)

From sharing news or quality content, to communicating with friends and communities of interest, the micro-blogging platform Twitter has something for everybody. And there are few communities of interest that have swarmed around Twitter with more fury than the business community. Granted, maybe 'business community' is too large a group to even classify as a community, but 'green business community' isn’t. On that note, we bring you the Earth & Industry 16 must-follows on Twitter.

Read the full article: Earth & Industry

And you can follow me: @greenskeptic

While We Consider, China Constructs

When Duke Energy and ENN Group announced their partnership to accelerate development of low-carbon and clean energy technologies at the Clinton Global Initiative last September, Duke CEO Jim Rogers explained that "We must move at 'China speed' to combat global warming."

"China," Rogers explained, "is leading the world in investing in clean energy and we can make greater progress by joining forces and working together."

This was no less evident today at the MIT Energy Conference, where a distinguished panel shed light on what "China Speed" really means.

It means, according to Dr. Ning Li, Dean of the School of Energy Research at Xiamen University, that China's 2020 target of 30GW of wind capacity will be met by midyear -- that's this year. (They set that target in 2007.)

It means that China's new target for 100GW of nuclear power by 2025 will probably be met in record time as well.

The country currently has 26 new nuclear facilities under construction, compared to around the same number "under consideration" in this country, according to Dr. Andrew Kadak, Professor of the Practice of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.

"Nuclear is now 'Made in China,'" said Dr. Kadak.

While we consider, China constructs.

It means that while we debate about technologies and subsidies and "buy American," the Chinese are "learning and innovating by doing," as Dr. Ning Li titled his remarks on the panel.

It means that a company like Gold Wind can, in just a few short years, go from licensing a German technology to buying the manufacturer to becoming a Top 10 company in its own country.

And it means that when Applied Materials is looking for the best place to site one of its largest R&D facilities, they look to China because of the "synergistic benefits of the largest market for its solar products," as Dr. Hongmei Zhang of ENN Group put it.

Fears of a cleantech race with China are surfacing throughout the US, and some are saying those fears are unfounded.

But, the reality is while we consider, China constructs. They are building the infrastructure of the energy future while we can't seem to get our heads out of the oil sands.

"You should think of China as a stimulating threat rather than a competitive threat," said Dr. Hongmei Zhang, with genuine hope that we might heed her advice.

But, as she also said in her remarks, Americans tend not to listen as well as Chinese.

Indeed, Hongmei noted, "In China, when president Hu says we will do this, we answer, 'yes sir.' In the US, the answer is "says who?"

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Industry Reps at MIT Energy Conference: Give Us a Price on Carbon

The message from industry leaders attending the MIT Energy Conference this weekend is clear: "Give us a clear price on carbon."

John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, has long been a proponent of cap-and-trade.

He reiterated this support this morning in his opening keynote, saying he felt "a bit like Elizabeth Taylor's eighth husband: I know the drill, but I'm not sure how to make it interesting."

Rowe is not so enthusiastic about our ability to reduce emissions through increasing deployment of renewables, at least not at current prices and efficiencies.

"Our work shows you can do some things with renewable energy standards," Rowe told the audience. "But you don't want to bet the farm on your picks."

Rowe secretly prefers a carbon tax, telling the audience, "Every six months I call Rohm Emmanuel and ask him if it's time yet to try a carbon tax." But he knows that it just won't happen.

Still, Rowe asserts, "We need lower carbon energy. We need more secure energy. And we need to harness the market to get it, but a market that is constrained and directed."

These sentiments were echoed by just about every industry representative I've seen at the conference.

"We need a level playing field," Helene Regnell of Maersk Line, the largest container shipper in the world, told the audience gathered for a panel on "Supply Chain Energy Use. "We need standardized, strong international regulation on carbon in order to get where we need to go and how we get there."

Speaking on the same panel, PepsiCo International's David Walker concurred, adding that 80 percent of his company's carbon footprint comes from outside the company itself.

It is hard to operate internationally with cumbersome, often conflicting regulations that differ from country to country.

The answer, at least from industry's perspective, is a clear price on carbon.

"We have to use the market to get to a $20-30 per ton price on carbon," Exelon's Rowe said. "And that means cap-and-trade or a tax. We can do a lot with carbon at $20-30 a ton."

Busy Weeks: Good for Business, Bad for Blogging

This is just to say that this has been a busy couple of weeks.

We launched the Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic website last week, we've been planning our 2nd Annual Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Forum, which will be held at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia on March 25th.

And I attended CleanLinks New York, our sister organization in the City and its environs, hosted by SJF Ventures, where one of the companies I've been working with, BlackGold Biofuels had a presence. (BGB's CEO Emily Landsburg is part of the first cohort of SJF Cleantech Mentorship Fellows.)

Next up: I'm leading a panel for GoodCompany Ventures on "Entrepreneruship and Social Change" this coming Thursday at GreenSpaces NY (see my previous post or Fred Wilson's here) and then heading to Boston for the MIT Energy Conference on Friday and Saturday.

Meanwhile, my new consulting and advisory venture, VerdeStrategy, is kicking into gear. I'm lining up some very interesting clients. You can read more about what we're offering at VerdeStrategy.com

A busy couple of weeks, leaving precious little time for blogging. But I'll have so much more to blog about after this week is over.