This week’s article roundup
* Vinod Khosla talks to Wired magazine about his passion for ethanol, and does a Q&A with BusinessWeek. Can we say overexposure?
* Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop a semiconductor material that can convert more sunlight into electricity, making it possible to have solar cells with conversion efficiencies as high as 45 per cent.
* Cadbury signs up with Bullfrog for clean electricity purchase. In the United States, Wells Fargo makes a three-year purchase of green power representing an estimated 40 per cent of its electricity consumption during that period.
* Looking for a job in cleantech? Know something about wind energy? Apparently China is hungry for specialized talent, with only one university there having a program on wind technology. Could be time to brush up on that Mandarin…
* Fourteen Cellex fuel-cell forklifts are being tested at two Wal-Mart distribution centres as part of a four-month trial, which is three-quarters complete.
* Vancouver-based Azure Dynamics has signed an agreement with Ford Motor Co. that would let it develop a hybrid power train for Ford’s E350/450 commercial vehicles. (more detail).
* John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins seems to be trying hard these days to replace the “cleantech” term with “greentech,” but he crosses the line in this Red Herring article with the following rewriting of history: “‘Clean tech,’ as many past efforts at environmentally friendly industry have been called, hasn’t panned out from an investment standpoint.”
What garbage! I’m sorry, but “green” has more of a treehugger, enviro connotation than “clean.” Clearly this man is on a mission to coin a new term and claim it as his own.
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.
October 6th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Arghhh! Cleantech, Greentech who frigging cares? This perception problem is so old and so stupid. It’s soooo 1995. And counterproductive: it’s set the cause back years. How many times do we have to hear cleantech engineers and entrepreneurs apologize for being an environmentalist and swear they don’t wear hairshirts or birkenstocks? It’s a ridiculous image, one that never existed, and it’s well time to put it to rest. I mean, it’s an ineffecient market indeed, in which people make decisions based on image.
I’ll admit that cleantech does still have a (small) image problem, and that public perception is important. But this Mr. Doerr, by acting embarassed about being “clean” (and therewith acting embarrassed about providing his 16-year-old with a viable future), is feeding the problem, not helping it. He’s just reinforcing the notion that “green” (cash) is more important, or more serious than “clean”. This is false, and no investor worth their salt should forget that. Without the clean, there will be no more green. It’s precisely this cold, hard, apolitical, non-hippy-trippy fact that makes cleantech such a good opportunity.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Simple hypothesis – Who could do more damage long-term to my kids and their kids kids, the treehugger or the profiteer? Forget the terminology, be concerned of those whose PR is only superficial.