Where would green-sector executives put their own money?
Date: 09/09/2009
Company: RockPort Capital
Source: Mass High Tech
Wind, solar and tidal power, batteries and hybrid cars have all attracted entrepreneurs who become advocates for a core technology. But those entrepreneurs often watch what else is happening in cleantech as a whole. So we asked a star chamber of cleantech providers, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in which industry (not their own) would they invest their own hard-earned dollars — and which technologies would they steer clear from.
Steve Kaufman, CEO of Alteris Renewables Inc., summarized the criteria as “solutions that provide strong financial return, can be implemented quickly and provide real environmental benefits.
Cleantech draws comparison to the dot-com bubble, but clean technology simmers rather than boils. “Four guys in a garage can create a software startup, but (an energy startup) takes tens of millions of dollars in the world’s slowest-moving business: electricity,” said F. William Capp, president and CEO of flywheel energy-storage company Beacon Power Corp. in Tyngsboro. “If you want to create an idea and see it go viral, you don’t do that connected with the energy grid.”
Ultimately, the economics must make sense.
“Solar (is successful) in Germany because they have a feed-in tariff of 40 cents per kilowatt, which spawned the solar industry because people could sell power into the grid,” observes William “Wilber” James, a managing general partner of Boston-based Rockport Capital Partners.
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