The CleanTech Crossroads had its premier conference on the new UCSF Mission Bay Campus. A perfect location as UCSF has been one of the strongest adopters of green building, adopting LEED standards and exceeding State’s mandated energy code requirements, so when my friend Rachel Sheinbein of the Keiretsu CleanTech Committee asked me to come along it sounded like the perfect environment to look at the ground covered in the CleanTech space since my last experience with renewable energy in 2003/4.

Advancement in developing scalable alternatives to fossil fuel, reducing our carbon footprint and dependence on foreign oil seem to be on the right track. The Bay Area is definitely the place to be with its extended network or first-class research and development centers, VCs, incubators, entrepreneurs and visionary politicians. But for those who are looking at manufacturing their finished products here or elsewhere in California, it will only be a temporary solution, time to master the scalability of producing and assembling components and Arizona, Connecticut or China are (much) more attractive locations due to lower costs/ square footage and higher incentives.

When I say it seems, I refer to three of the most important critical success factors for new technology: investments, technology readiness-to-market and market interest/ acceptance. I will not elaborate on regulations, but will just remind us of two facts that highlight the place of clean energy in our country’s energy policy: a) The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued guidelines and requires a percentage of sales or installed capacity to come from renewable resources. b) States led initiatives are strongly supporting the growth for renewable energy.

CleanTech: fostering tomorrow’s much needed environmentally-friendly technologies
CleanTech has been defined as an investment category and represents today one of the most significant business opportunities. CleanTech venture capital investments totaled $3.6 billion in 2006 against $8.8 from 1999 until 2005. It encompasses energy generation from solar to geothermal, energy storage, infrastructure, efficiency, materials and many other vertical industries. So looking at an absolute number of $3.6 billion (compared to Exxon’s $5.4 billion in capital and exploration expenditures in Q3 2007 and $320 billion in weather related claims insurance over the period 1980/2005), and covering such large areas, each of them being so crucial for our future does not seem much after all. Don’t get me wrong, it is encouraging, and a growth rate of 78% over a one-year period is very significant. But do we have the luxury to wait? Is it enough to bring to market the technologies we need to reduce our carbon emissions?

Going to this conference I was hoping to hear about success stories, someone having successfully developed a car battery that did not violate GM’s patents, a reliable portable fuel , or a PV technology that can generate enough power for my district – all of the above technologies having to be cost-efficient needless to say. Success stories – beyond the solar panel heating your water – would greatly help in terms of investments and market interest/ acceptance. Nothing of such, but John Melo (whose power point presentation had been lost but it was for the better) and Amyris Biotechnologies might very well be the next big success story of the cleantech space. The Emeryville biotech company is on something that could considerably reduce carbon emission from fossil fuel powered engines. The company’s premier focus has been to use synthetic biology to develop a cost effective malaria treatment, much needed in the developing world. The company has applied its technology in reproducing rapid enzymatic pathway construction techniques using engineered microbes – replicating a large fermentation process – to create a gasoline substitute that contains more energy than ethanol. WOW!

GreenTech or CleanTech: A useless debate
The money is there, the structures are there, CleanTech even seems to have found itself an icon – who probably would care less if he was not one although very aware of his role and responsibility in bringing the spotlight on a burgeoning new environment. But I left with the impression that the CleanTech world is still in the process of defining itself. Is clean more than green? Is greentech or envirotech “end of pipe” technology of the past?

Vinod Khosla is passed this stage. His vision is not fueled by ideology but by pragmatism. Fuel ethanol is not THE solution? Sure, but until there is a new clean technology that meets all the criteria for success, he’ll keep pushing. And not to worry, through Khosla Ventures, he is pursuing other clean technologies that can reduce oil consumption, stop coal powered energy, increase devices and equipment efficiency and create new materials that are not oil, carbon and water intensive. He was actually the only speaker on the floor to have included clean water in his presentation. But what impressed me the most is his willingness to share knowledge and experience – for free, hoping to attract more risk takers like he.

Where I differ from CleanTech professionals who have opted to set themselves apart from the green revolution is in the useless appropriation effort of the clean technology concept that can lead to at least confusion and at most “attentisme” from outside players willing to become active actors in investing, developing and marketing products that are environmentally-friendly and represent a good business opportunity, not mentioning early adopters and influencers in the green community. A friend investing in health-care asked me once: “How do we assess the market value of these technologies?” People are only starting to realize the burden we have put on our environment and to recognize the extraordinary opportunity lying in front of us.

What does this mean for the CleanTech field? Assessing every opportunity in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits, of course, also known as the triple bottom line.

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