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Venture capital activity... and Al Gore's speech

The BAIA team in Italy in the last 12 months organized events like this one focused on promoting a culture of risk capital investments (venture capital, angel financing, etc.). How's venture capital activity doing in the US these days? Fresh data just became available. You can find a good article on this here.

It looks like the level of investment is still quite healthy, although mostly focused away from start-ups (only 22% is early stage stuff). There are still plenty of people investing lots of risk capital in the United States. This is good news, considering the great amount of bad press that the US economy is picking up these days.

The data shows flat growth in clean tech financing. That's better than a decline, but I'd hope to see an increase there in the next quarters. Many believe Silicon Valley (and the American economy as a whole) needs to push harder on clean tech, turning today's energy-related issues into a huge opportunity for growth for the decades to come.

On this topic, I encourage everyone to watch Al Gore's recent speech on producing 100% of electricity from.... Whether you like Mr. Gore or not, watch the speech with some friends and discuss what he says. It'll trigger some great debates among your family and friends. Debating an issue is the first step to change the status quo.

I'm personally convinced that Al Gore is right. Pushing in that direction makes sense on all three counts mentioned in the speech: economically, environmentally, and in terms of world stability and national security. Too idealistic? I don't think so. Any alternative looks a lot uglier in the long term.

Is this (high growth in clean technologies for the decades to come) a bandwagon that Italy can jump on as well? Well... it could be the topic of a BAIA meeting to organize in Italy in the fall :-)

massimo

Tags: environment, italy, venture capital

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Comment by Domenico Tanzarella on August 12, 2008 at 2:15pm: Yes, it would be great to mandate that all products sold in US and EU are produced with green or low impact technologies: however we will be surprised to see that eventually US and European companies that own factories in China or big Distributors that imports goods from there [i.e. WalMart] will complain about it, and we all know how strong lobbying is in US :-( .
Still i believe that this is a right attempt to fight the global warming, together with a change in our behavior when it comes to natural resources usage: trying to save energy and natural resources is simple and powerful step to fight the global warming and assure that the next generations will have access to the same level of quality of life we enjoy.

New green technologies will help to fight the global warming and create new business opportunities for years: time to get in ? :)

Ciao,
dom

Comment by Franco Folini on August 7, 2008 at 7:34am: I didn't explain myself well enough. I'm not suggesting to to impose rules to Chinese on their own land.
My suggestion is to gradually introduce new requirements for all products sold in US and Europe to be produced with green or low impact technologies, regardless of where those products are manufactured. On a totally different scale, it's like asking that Nike shoes are produced without exploiting the labor of kids.
I'm not proposing any imposition on other countries, I'm proposing to define new rules on our domestic market, on the products we buy and we consume.

Domenico: "they have the same right to grow that we enjoyed in the '60s": it's not about who has the right to pollute (yes, theoretically they have the right to pollute for the next 50 years), it's about how we stop the global warming before it's to late.

Comment by Domenico Tanzarella on August 6, 2008 at 7:36pm: Hmm...i do not feel comfortable imposing energy policies to other countries but we could start imposing "green-constraints" on domestic companies that have factories in these emerging country, if this is possible.
China is extremely polluted [last time i came back from Canton i was so sick...] and the local government is starting to take some action to improve the air quality. On the other hand we cannot stop the economic grow of this countries: they have the same right to grow that we [italians] enjoyed in the '60s .
Talking about green technology...soon or later China and India will catch up with U.S. in project and ideas on how to make our planet..."more green", because "green" means "money" and this is the best incentive for emerging countries to make themselves a better place where to live !

Meanwhile...US residents are still the ones that create more pollution, but nobody forces us to drive less or in a smarter way [car pooling, public transportation]: we live in a free country... and we all enjoy it ;-)

I heard a joke time ago. US residents live in their house with 73 degrees in winter and 68 in summer: if it was the opposite we would have fixed the global warming ;-)

For example... how many people that have a backyard use it to dry the clothes after washing them ? I and my wife decided to avoid the drier as much as possible this summer and use an old "stendino" that my mother bough for me in Italy before i moved here : basta poco, che ce vo ! :-)

Comment by Matteo Daste on August 6, 2008 at 6:32pm: But their argument goes: why shouldn't China and India be able to pollute as did for 100 years to reach our current level of wealth? I think the key is not so much to try to make them adopt new technologies or to try impose rules outside our border - how do you force them to accept? The key is to make it more expensive for them to use non-green technologies, perhaps by adding to the cost of non-green products that we export to them the cost of the pollution "externality" or by making it more economically attractive for them to make green products that we can buy at a premium.

Comment by Franco Folini on August 6, 2008 at 5:22pm: While I'm extremely glad for the shift of the public opinion on the global warming issue, I'm deeply concern about the future decisions and policies of the emerging economies, such as China and India. IMHO, US and Europe should impose "green-constraints" not only on the domestic industries, but also on the production of all the goods we import.
Asking China and India to adopt similar rules on all the products for our market will force them to compete at the quality and technology level removing the free-polluter advantage.
On the other hand, if we fail to impose those rules outside our borders, the emerging economies will keep produce for us using old polluting technologies with global consequences affecting the entire planet.

Comment by Domenico Tanzarella on August 6, 2008 at 5:00pm: I'm sure US will be able to be more independent from foreign countries when it comes to energy, but what about Italy ? the fact that neither left nor right are able to start and pursue a renewable energy policy scares me and let me believe, once more, that in times of crisis the riches [in this case countries] will survive and even get wealthier [see new green tech initiatives] and the poor and weak countries will be beaten more and more by high energy cost and pollution: if only two italians could agree on the same idea...we [italians] could make our country a better place to live: it's too late ? .

Comment by Michele Ursino on August 6, 2008 at 4:36pm: The other day Obama had a speech on energy policy where he re-launched the commitment to loose the dependency from foreign oil in 10 years.
Regardless of the risk factor from an investment point of view I believe these are the policies we need in order to solve energy and political problems.

Comment by Nazzareno Gorni on July 27, 2008 at 3:20am: I think that risks are quite balanced with opportunities. See for example the Nonosolar success story, except of their poor newsletter delivery system, they should use our MailUp :-)

Comment by Matteo Daste on July 25, 2008 at 3:39pm: Massimo - some commentators have argued that clean energy is about as risky of a sector as it can be for VCs. The argument goes like this: even if the upside could be huge, how many revolutionary technologies will really get large market traction? That may be one explanation for the relative slowdown in VC money pouring in cleantech. See for example this article (from last year but still valid in my opinion) Dirty side to clean energy investing

Comment by Nazzareno Gorni on July 25, 2008 at 8:57am: GreenIT, clean technologies... The attention on these topics is getting higher every day (fortunatly). For example I'm working with IAB Italy on a "green" project. The aim is to comunicate a simple concept: "Online advertising has lower carbon footprint than others"