Breakthrough: Putting the Green in Green

There are a number of items in today's Wall Street Journal that underscore the role of stable financing for clean energy technology. Is Clean Tech the Next Bubble underscores an inconvenient truth regarding clean technology products - consumers are not willing to pay. According to this report "a whopping 47% of U.S. adults say they just don't care" about clean technology products.

Seeking the Green in Clean underscores the financing challenges faced by clean energy entrepreneurs. The article points out that unlike many internet and software technology companies, energy innovation takes more time and personnel - a challenging formula in today's investment capital markets.

Given a steep learning cure and fickle consumer and investor support for clean technology, one must consider the role of public financing. Such financing has historically supported research in technology and medicine and leading scientists have advocated the same approach to clean energy.

The good news in today's press is the fact that financing a clean energy future is a topic of interest in our leading business publications, and many entrepreneurs are committed to moving the field forward.

After a harrowing 2 hours of reading, deliberating, and writing, I submitted my occupational blogs and decided to walk to my mailbox for some fresh air and check my mail. It didn?t clear my head at all. The subject of China and their contributions to the climate problems, along with their refusal to cooperate with the West, peaked my interests and I continued to research China and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.

In one article, published in the January 2008 issue of Discover magazine, Evan Ratliff submits gloomy statistics (as environmental articles usually do) that by 2020 China will produce more CO2 emissions than the United States (as stated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). As China holds 20% of the world?s population, and it is quickly becoming a strong industrialized nation, there are major concerns as to the climate problems caused specifically by China.

Interestingly enough, though, Ratliff writes, ?Although it?s easy to view China as some sort of ecological evil empire, its fate is entwined with the U.S. appetite for consumption and growth. The United States still holds the title as the world?s biggest consumer of world resources and largest emitter of greenhouse gases.?

While looking at statistics and percentages on how the U.S. still produces considerably more CO2 than any other nation, I began to think about the possible opportunities China has over the U.S.

The United States? own lack of cooperation with the ?West? is based on an established format of updated technology that is just as dependent upon petroleum as it was 30 years ago. China is also just as dependent upon the same resources, but the majority of their industry relies on outdated, ?energy-guzzling? equipment from the 1970s.

As Break Through routinely stresses, there is plenty of opportunity to promote cleaner energy technology as long as there is financial backing from investors to change the infrastructure that creates the modes of production. China, as outdated yet burgeoning as they are, is a good place to actually show how innovation can take root and succeed. They are inevitably going to have to update. Does the United States want to then fall behind in cleaner technology?

Making all Western nations re-evaluate their own economic viability is a good way to force their hand to invest in cleaner energy resources.

China has always been a bit wary of Western ideology and technology (the Boxer Rebellion, for example), so their use of antiquated Western ideas and technology would seem to be culturally hypocritical. For once, couldn?t interested investors exploit such xenophobic tendencies for a greater good? When consumption and pollution reach a critical peak, would not a China that utilizes alternative, cleaner energy that is affordable and efficient (in opposition to current Western technology) set forth a spirited, international ?keeping up with the Joneses? dialogue?

Posted by: Kerry Hillis at December 8, 2007 2:15 AM

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