Cleantech the New, New, New Thing
Interesting weekend read in the Washington Post looking at how alternative energy has turned former dot-com players into cleantech boosters — venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, even so-called “high-tech” mags like Business 2.0 and Wired. The author of the piece, Slate writer Daniel Gross, says the alternative energy boom could be following in the footsteps of the dot-com boom. That, he says, would be a good thing. “Many of these venture-backed alternative-energy firms will fail, and some of the publicly held ethanol stocks will turn out to be turkeys. But fierce competition will lead to price reductions of energy-saving equipment. The vast sums being plowed into research may lead to incremental improvements or revolutionary breakthroughs. And as more giant companies such as Wal-Mart go green, the industry will gain scale — a development that usually leads to price reductions for all consumers.”
For the dozens of failures that do happen, there will be a Google or Amazon or eBay that will succeed. If the cleantech space follows this path, I agree, this would be a good thing.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business 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 clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
