The Broken Record of Green Investment

Around and around it goes, playing the same tune, day after day. “How’s cleantech investment doing today?” you might wonder. And the answer, as always, is “Better than it was yesterday, two weeks ago, a year ago.”The National Venture Capital Association this week pointed out that venture capital investments in cleantech and alternative energy had surpassed yet another annual mark for investing by the end of Q3, with a full quarter yet to be accounted for. Topping out over US$2.6 billion, the investment numbers provide a glimpse into a sector of industry and investment that seems to be quite healthy, in spite of recent downturns in the US stock market.That condition is heartening in two respects: either the overall market has not been affected by credit worries and there’s still a lot of strength and growth potential in the wider market, or cleantech has continued to grow in spite of the downturn, indicating a level of traction and potential much higher than the current numbers show. Either way, they indicate tremendous upside in the industry and significant possibility that a strong showing there could help the economy as a whole weather troubles with the credit market.Overall what it means is that investors are confident that the public are ready to embrace clean technology and alternative energy, especially as energy prices continue to rise in their unstable way.In other investment news, Google.org, the web giant’s philanthropy arm, is pledging potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in order to produce one gigawatt of electricity below the current cost of a gigawatt from coal-fired plants. They’ve already been at the forefront of a number of clean energy efforts, not the least of which is outfitting their Mountain View, California campus with enough solar panels to offset around half of their local energy usage.With the absence of concerted government action, it has fallen to private and local efforts to see the transfer of cleantech through to the end. Not entirely surprising as other large scale efforts–such as humanity’s expansion into space–seem to be moving along much more capably and briskly in the private sector. Clearly the government should be getting involved, but one is left to wonder if the revolution in energy is going to happen without more action on their part than tax breaks and limited incentives.

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