A good overview of the view that working to reduce climate change will create terrific business opportunities.
OPINION
Climate Change Opportunity
By FRED KRUPP
April 8, 2008
In the Frank Capra movie classic, "It's a Wonderful Life," the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan is facing a Depression-era bank run. George Bailey leaps over the counter, blocks the door, and says to the panicky investors that they're "thinking of this place all wrong."
Today's investors need to hear the same message: If you're worried that stopping global warming will wreck the economy, you're looking at this all wrong. Solving global warming will be an added cost, yes – but a bargain compared with the economic cost of unchecked climate change. And fixing this problem will create an historic economic opportunity.
Energy is the biggest business in the world, "the mother of all markets," says venture capitalist John Doerr, Google's first funder. The winners of the race to reinvent energy will not only save the planet, but will also make megafortunes. Venture capitalists and companies like Google are already jockeying to fund clean energy start-ups. In 2007, clean tech was the fastest growing category of venture investing in the U.S., growing four times as much as Internet investing, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Action on global warming is coming soon. Governors, mayors and CEOs are already making bold and binding commitments; the presumptive presidential candidates from both parties are strong supporters of new federal policy initiatives. Meanwhile, under the radar, smart entrepreneurs are inventing new technologies to cash in on the high-tech bonanza to come, offering clean, affordable energy without carbon emissions.
A Silicon Valley firm, Innovalight, has figured out a way to harvest solar energy much more cheaply than present technology allows by dissolving silicon nanocrystals in ink, which will ultimately be printed onto roof panels like we print ink onto paper. Using a platform they developed as postdoctoral students at Berkeley, the founding scientists of a company called Amyris have re-engineered yeast to ferment sugar into pure hydrocarbon fuels. Unlike ethanol, the fuel has the energy density of gasoline (or jet fuel, if that's what they program the yeast to produce) and can be shipped through existing pipelines and pumped into any car now on the road.
