Green Tech

From the right, clean-tech investor Steve Westly, Google.org exec Dan Reicher, climate change advisor Aimee Christensen, U.C. Berkeley Professor Daniel Kammen, and Clean Tech for Obama co-chair Jeff Anderson speak at San Francisco's Hastings Law School.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

SAN FRANCISCO--Executives in the clean-tech sector plan to get a whole lot louder in their support for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The drumbeat started Wednesday night here at the University of California's Hastings College of Law. An estimated 400 people from the technology and clean tech industries came out to support Obama's energy policies under the new banner of a constituency group called "Clean Tech and Green Business for Obama."

Among the executives at the event were Dan Reicher, director of energy initiatives at Google.org; clean-tech investor Sunil Paul, who co-founded Brightmail; Steve Westly, CEO of the venture firm The Westley Group and former senior vice president at eBay; and Aimee Christensen, an adviser on climate change issues who has previously worked with Google.org.

Their goal? Get Obama elected. Following that, the charge is to elevate issues of climate change and buoy the clean-tech industry.

"We want to use the opportunity of this serendipitous moment where energy, the environment, and the economy are featured in this race...to create a political brand and voice," said Jeff Anderson, founding co-chair of Clean Tech and Green Business for Obama.

Steve Westly, CEO of clean tech venture firm The Westly Group and a former exec at eBay, recalled working for President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s when the president put solar panels on the White House. His successor, President Ronald Reagan, took them down immediately.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

The group was founded six weeks ago by Paul, Anderson and others, and so far it has raised about $600,000 from individuals in the clean-tech sector. In the coming months, the group plans to raise $1 million total through events like a fund-raising dinner with former Vice President Al Gore at the end of September. Clean Tech for Obama also aims to build a database of the companies and people employed by the green-tech business, especially in battleground states, so that voters are aware of the industry's ability to create jobs.

The group will also promote the idea that clean-tech businesses can ultimately help reduce gas prices by developing new energy alternatives and efficient cars. Already operating in 18 states, with plans for a national presence, the group also intends to throw "house parties" to promote the new energy economy, according to Anderson.

In his talk, Wesley promoted the energy policies of Obama over those of his Republican rival John McCain. But instead of spending much time on those policies, he called on people to create a movement that goes beyond an election. He said the group will open offices around the state of California; and it has already established outposts in San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley.

Sunil Paul, founding partner of clean tech venture firm Spring Ventures, helped start Clean Tech for Obama this summer.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

Google.org's Richter, a former assistant secretary of energy under the Clinton administration, said issues of climate change, security, and deep economic woes are prompting policy changes in the U.S.

He said the amount of money allocated to research and development in renewable energies is lower today than that of the Carter administration in the 1970s. The U.S. government has long given subsidies to energy markets like coal and nuclear, and the green-tech industry should now ask that it level the playing field. "We've gotten crumbs when it comes to energy and energy efficiency," he said.

"We have an opportunity to really engage on these issues," said Richter, who was there as an individual and not on behalf of Google. (Google.org has invested in several renewable energy projects, including two geothermal start-ups and a wind-power company.)

"We obviously need to get Obama and Biden elected. We also need to get a Congress elected that can pass the laws," he said.

For example, Richter touted Obama's plans to weatherize 1 million homes a year to offset energy costs for lower-income households.

Paul, founding partner of Spring Ventures, for his part, agreed that now is the time for the clean tech market to raise its voice.

"We're in the right place at the right time," Paul said. "Energy and energy-related topics are a top voting issue and that's so unusual for us--biotech, the Internet, semiconductors--have never been top voting issues."

Clean tech executives, policy advocates and college students schmooze after the cocktail mixer and panel session.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

The Huffington Post, the news aggregation and commentary site founded by political pundit Arianna Huffington and former AOL exec Ken Lerer, is finally jumping on the post-Al-Gore bandwagon.

The company announced Wednesday that it will be launching HuffPost Green, a site division specific to "green" content through a content partnership with Discovery Communications' Planet Green channel as well as TreeHugger, the popular eco-news blog that Discovery acquired last year.

If you're like me, your reaction to this news might've been, "What? You mean there isn't a 'green' section already?" The New York-based Huffington Post got its start as a liberal answer to the wildly popular Drudge Report news site, and while it's since branched beyond its political roots, it remains targeted toward a well-educated, left-leaning audience.

But although it runs sections pertaining to politics, media, entertainment, business, and "living," as well as a comedy site called 23/6 in conjunction with IAC, there still hadn't been a section devoted to the unavoidably trendy niche of environmental media. Until now.

"HuffPost Green will focus on eco news and trends--from style and eco-conscious celebrities to green lifestyle tips and the latest scientific findings and expert analysis," a release from the company explained, hinting that we will likely see photos of Leonardo DiCaprio with his shirt off in addition to the latest grim findings on climate change. "The section will also feature advice on sustainable investing and highlight eco-friendly businesses and sustainable business sectors such as renewable energy, green building, recycling and organics."

The new section of the site is set to launch June 4. Huffington Post representatives said the effort was spearheaded by current Editor-at-large Willow Bay, a TV journalist who currently hosts programs on the Lifetime women's cable network.

Green is the new black--from Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley.

But the lovefest with clean technology still has plenty of detractors who say that it's all just posturing, wishful thinking, or, worse, misguided.

Let's pull together a few threads from Friday morning's river of green tech news and see whether it adds up to anything.

For those of you in a hurry, here's my bottom line: No, America will not "get off oil" anytime soon as President Bush urged us this week, but yes, green tech matters a lot for the economy and the environment.

First, a quick sampling of clean tech news from this week:

At the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) on Wednesday, Bush said America needs to kick its oil habit and touted his administration's commitments to renewable energy.

The speech was applauded by conference promoters but skewered by some environmentalists, including Joseph Romm and his colleagues, who wrote at the Web site Gri that the Bush administration's actions don't match his words.

Several businesspeople from the renewable energy industry who lobbied (again) this week for an extension to an existing tax credit would likely agree that the administration has not done enough to encourage clean tech development.

Then on Friday, The New York Times published a book review of Gusher of Lies, a book by Robert Bryce who argues that people are deluding themselves if they think that the United States can become energy independent:

Energy independence is hogwash. From nearly any standpoint--economic, military, political, or environmental--energy independence makes no sense. Worse yet, the inane obsession with the idea of energy independence is preventing the U.S. from having an honest and effective discussion about the energy challenges it now faces...

Once you move past the hype and the overblown rhetoric, there's little or no justification for the push to make America energy-independent. And that's the purpose of this book: to debunk the concept of energy independence and show that none of the alternative or renewable energy sources now being hyped--corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, wind power, solar power, coal-to-liquids, and so on--will free America from imported fuels. America's appetite is simply too large and the global market is too sophisticated and too integrated for the U.S. to simply secede.

We saw glimpses of this sort of thinking earlier this week at WIREC.

The CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, on Tuesday told international delegates at WIREC that it's time to face reality on all this clean tech noise.

"But even though 'clean tech' is growing very fast, let's be honest: the scale at which the industry is conducting projects today is not going to have much impact on the energy market of the future," he said. "For that, we need sustained investment, on a massive scale. A step change of that nature will require sound energy and environmental policies from governments worldwide.

Hayward said that policies should subsidize development of low-carbon technologies--though only during a time of "transition"--and that governments should regulate carbon emissions now.

The naysayers have a point. Eliminating fossil fuels from the energy picture is not going to happen just because of the sharp uptick in corporate green marketing.

Renewable sources, such as wind and solar, accounted for 2.4 percent of electricity generation in the U.S. in 2006, not counting hydro power. Dirty coal is about half of all power generation.

In transportation, ethanol production is rising, spurred by government mandates, but it's mainly used as a gasoline additive, not a replacement. There are about 1,400 E85 filling stations in the U.S., a tiny fraction out of a total 170,000.

So renewable power and fuels are barely used in the U.S. today.

Oh, and by the way, there's now a backlash against biofuels because of ecological concerns such as total greenhouse gas emissions, water, and land use. Will the environmental trade-offs of manufacturing solar cells make more headlines this year? I'd say so.

And then there's this niggling worry that all this investment in clean tech will pop like the Internet bubble someday.

Well, here are a few comments to put those concerns in perspective from people far more versed in these matters than me.

Joseph Stanislaw, the founder of energy advisory firm the JAStanislaw Group and a co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, spoke at WIREC on Tuesday to tell the business attendees that renewable energy has reached the "big leagues," even compared with the giant fossil fuel industry.

How come? It's not just growing economic impact. It's because of changing values, he argued.

Climate change and energy security are two causes that bind a lot of people together, from economists to stay-at-home moms, Stanislaw said. Those priorities are creating a demand for "sustainable technologies" among consumers and businesses.

Then there is the supply side. Oil has topped $100 a barrel, natural gas prices are volatile, and there's growing resistance to build more coal-fired power plants. This creates an economic incentive for alternative energies, a hedge against high fossil fuel prices.

"This is different from the 1970s," he said. "The transformation that started then has only started to be realized in the last five to ten years."

I think Stanislaw makes a good point: a significant portion of society is changing to favor clean energies and sustainability, in general. The policies and investments to speed technology development are catching up. Maybe not as fast as the Web took off, but we're talking about energy--a capital-intensive industry--and a complex environmental and economic picture.

So green tech may be the cause du jour among many politicians and venture capitalists. But it sure looks like a movement with legs beneath it.

For the last word, I'll quote famed venture capital investor Vinod Khosla who followed Hayward at WIREC with his own talk.

His message was simple: technology disruption always happens faster than you think. Just look at cell phones, semiconductors, or projects to map the human genome.

"We are repeating the same mistakes in energy," Khosla said. "It's hard for people to imagine what energy will look like in 10 or 15 years."