How are we going to get from the status quo to status green?
Here are the bare-bones five truths as perceived by Kirk Washington, a founder of Vancouver-based Yaletown Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in seed and early-stage technology companies. His article is here: Five dirty truths about clean technology.
#1 — There is no magic energy elixir; clean tech is a puzzle that is not easily solved. There are a number of complex pieces that have to fit together, including cost, efficiency, emissions and, ultimately, sustainability.
#2 — Clean technology isn’t going to reverse rampant globalization. Indeed, as the cost of transporting certain forms of energy across vast distances becomes prohibitive, energy use will undoubtedly become more local and make better use of indigenous sources.
# 3 — There won’t be another generation of Edisons and Hewletts working in garages around America to fix our unprecedented environmental problems. In the end, this clean-technology revolution, unlike that for IT, may not be driven by venture capital-backed start-up companies, it will continued to be controlled by large incumbents.
# 4 — Collaboration, rather than competition, is going to win the day here. The large incumbent organizations in the old energy economy aren’t innovating fast or well enough. Their R&D budgets are shrinking, and the best and brightest engineers are no longer flocking to them. Venture capital-backed start-ups, on the other hand, are constantly and rapidly innovating, and they are beginning to flood the market with clean-technology options.
# 5 — The only way that clean technology can fulfill its promise and potential is if venture start-ups and large established companies handle the upside and downside together. Venture capitalists routinely deal with risk, so that’s not a problem. The real issue is whether shareholders of publicly held enterprises will stomach the risk — and appreciate the reward — that comes with pioneering new clean technologies.
If large corporations partner with venture capitalists and allow them to vet innumerable clean technologies before assimilating the “derisked” winners, and if venture capitalists then permit big enterprises to incubate the new businesses and operate them crisply, we would have an ideal combination — one that would propel this clean-energy revolution forward and give us a better chance of reversing decades of environmental damage.
This is not an either-or proposition. A true meeting of the minds is essential here, if we are to save the planet, serve communities and reward stakeholders.
