What do some of America's sharpest venture capitalists know that the federal government does not? Something about the future, perhaps, and particularly the future of energy production. While Congress wrestles with another business-as-usual energy bill, whose billions in subsidies are targeted disproportionately at the same old industries or slightly updated versions of them, considerable private money is going in a more interesting direction. A recent report in the New York Times detailed the strong interest among Silicon Valley venture capitalists in renewable energy, alternative fuels, clean-water technologies and the like. They look at stubbornly high world oil prices, the coming surge in power consumption by the booming economies of China and India, and they see opportunities. Never mind that these lie outside their core businesses and expertise. They recognize that the world is moving toward systems that value clean production and resource conservation -- and that this movement, of necessity, is picking up speed. Which means there is money to be made. Ira Ehrenpreis of Palo Alto, who advises an investment group called the Cleantech Venture Network, likes the concepts of earth-friendly industry, but it's a secondary draw: "The reason we're allocating dollars to this sector is we think we can deliver attractive returns," he said. "When you're talking about energy, when you're talking about water, you're talking about the largest markets in the world." For the moment, all but a sliver of the energy market belongs to fossil fuels and the companies that process them. The Silicon Valley investors anticipate that dwindling oil production and inevitably stricter emissions standards will favor solar energy and other alternatives that, for now, are the domain of smaller companies focused on expanding proven technologies into vigorous competitors. This vision goes beyond the groovy notion of doing well in business by doing good for the planet. Under such rubrics as Natural Capitalism or the Restoration Economy, American thinkers have been arguing for some years that the same industrial systems and market forces that have caused so much waste and pollution can be redirected to reverse that trend. But making that shift on a large scale will require either a precipitating crisis or farsighted social change, necessarily led by government. Our national government was briefly attentive to this need after the energy crises of the 1970s, but since then official interest -- and public investment -- in energy conservation and self-sufficiency have dwindled. The Bush administration in particular has tilted away from backing new technologies in favor of rewarding established industries. These policies are harmful not only to the environment but also to America's potential to lead in building the energy and industrial infrastructures of the future, and exporting them around the world -- just as it led the manufacturing and electronics revolutions of the past. But at this point, western Europe is ahead of the United States in fostering green industrialization. The wealth attracting the Silicon Valley speculators is available on a national scale, but only to those countries wise enough to make the investment. |
