Green Tech Taking A Back Seat To The Financial Dilemma

• When things were running fairly smooth in the financial markets for the last few years, clean energy technology was on everyone’s radar from world leaders all the way down to the average consumer. That widely spread optimism is now taking a back seat due to the financial crisis, which is not good in the face of a potential global catastrophe, not to mention billions of dollars in venture capital money pouring into clean tech companies. Venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India across 158 companies reached $2.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008, a record quarter for clean tech investments.
• The recent global summit on climate change in Poznan, Poland outlined the fears of green supporters surrounding the growing apathy for clean tech solutions while we fight through the tough financial crisis. Moreover, their survey shows less support from high level adopters for wind energy, solar power, biofuels, biomass and hydrogen energy as technologies with “high potential” to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere over the next 25 years. It’s not just the adopters however, climate experts now have less faith of finding a ubiquitous solution for the masses that will reduce the carbon emissions to appropriate levels in time. The survey below shows the breakdown in the drop of what experts feel will make a difference over last year (this year in blue).

• The biggest drop in optimism was for first-generation biofuels from crops. Only 12 percent of respondents saw high potential there, down from 21 percent last year. This was an obvious one. Last week I broke down the math equation to why it’s physically impossible to use biofuels to come close to alleviating a major nation like the US off of standard oil. Energy conservation and more efficient technology wins everyone’s vote, but the problem is no one knows what technology that is yet.
• Electric cars are certainly not the end all solution to the problem. Even if everyone in the US drives an electric car (which won’t happen), that’s still only 33% of U.S carbon dioxide emissions. Not to mention electricity burns coal, which emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy when burned as does natural gas. (also, there is no such thing as clean coal)
• Let’s talk about the political side of things holding up clean tech. The Kyoto Protocol is about to expire, and we are in desperate need of finding a new one that includes China and India as well as puts regulations on other developing nations (not to mention ourselves). Currently, the European Union is struggling to reach agreement on its own climate rules with conflicting arguments happening between  Eastern European (and Italy) and Western European governments. Especially in the financial crisis, the climate measures being proposed upset the developing nations due to high costs, which stunts growth. They also feel that the regulations are unfair considering that the Western countries producing the majority of the emissions like the US are the ones proposing regulations, yet have barely complied with green policies, ’saying actions at this point can be voluntary for citizens’. Such a joke.
• The next few years for cleantech could prove devastating for clean tech companies, venture capital firms and the polar ice caps as we try and agree upon a sound solution to how everyone will work together and with what technology. Obama should be picking out the best of the clean tech companies come the start of his term and make stiff regulations to mandate them throughout the country. This will inject the VC’s who backed the ideas with more money to go out and fund further projects and it will put us on our way to lower emissions. If we can’t inspire hope in the eyes of the experts and the scientists, then a layer of apathy across all green minds will surely lead to far greater problems for our ecosystem than sub-prime mortgage woes. All the experts want to see is some sort of adoption happening around the nations causing the large portions of emissions. Our current technologies may not be the best it will get, but its a start and things need to change in the face of an unhealthy environment.

(An overview of the survey, along with PowerPoint slides, is available here.)

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