Cleantech VCs selectively request government help
Red Herring has a great story about venture capitalists in the cleantech community who, on the one hand, have traditionally resisted government involvement when it comes to the markets, but on the other hand are backing proposed legislation in California that would require oil companies to pay extra taxes that would ultimately go toward funding research in clean technologies.
It’s an interesting debate, and it may be a double standard for the VCs, but from my perspective I think the proposed legislation in California makes a whole lot of sense and should be applied in Canada where the oil sands are spewing record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. I see nothing wrong with increasing taxes for the hugely profitable oil and natural gas companies and giving tax breaks to those companies, including old-school energy companies, who embrace clean technologies and spend money on their research. In fact, it shouldn’t be targeted just at oil companies — the behaviour of the industrial, commercial and residential sectors should all be influenced by creative policy that shifts tax revenues from polluting activities to “cleaner” activities.
BTW: Red Herring also reports the five winners of the California Cleantech Open conference. The technologies include wind power for ships; water purification using nanotechnology; low-cost rooftop solar; energy-management software that reduces natural gas use for hotels and apartment buildings; and wireless sensors for reducing power used for lighting and other appliances in buildings. The article provides names and links to each company’s Web site.
Finally, I didn’t get the chance to attend the latest Cleantech Venture Forum in New York last week but Cleantech Investing does a great job of summarizing what happened at the event, which has become enormously popular. Click here and here for commentary.
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.
