Cleantech: Good or bad investment for VCs
Red Herring has a pair of stories, each exploring different conclusions about the opportunities in cleantech. One piece points to the stunning growth in the sector — if you can call it that — and backs it up by recapping some of the recent reports out of Clean Edge and the Cleantech Capital Group. The other probes some venture capitalists who tend to shy away from cleantech investments, largely because of the large upfront project capital needed to convince slow-moving and cautious utilities or municipalities to stray from that comfort blanket called “normal.” In other words, why put your job on the line and risk testing out something new if what you’ve got, while not the best, works and keeps you employed? Matt Horton, a principal at VC firm @Ventures, is quoted as saying that the capital-intensive nature of some cleantech plays and the lengthy wait until final industry adoption is part of what’s keeping $100 billion of VC money on the sidelines.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca