Friday, May 9, 2008

The Risks of Venture Capital in Cleantech

Great minds and all that. While I was going on about risk premiums, earth2tech approaches the issue from a pre-public angle:

We talk a lot about new energy opportunities and technology breakthroughs here on Earth2Tech, and less about the high risks involved in developing new cleantech markets and commercializing unproven technologies. But at the Berkeley-Stanford CleanTech Conference this week, there was a lot of discussion over the tensions between venture capitalists backing new technologies and the utilities, regulatory and industry groups in charge of bringing the clean power to the people....

...While risk is inevitable when it comes to cutting-edge technology, bad bets can cause problems for an emerging market. But when a market is as important as saving the planet from global warming, risk isn’t something that should be taken lightly.