A lot has been written about the
potential bubble in the clean tech industry with the influx of large amounts of venture capital and the emerging numbers of clean tech funds. Unlike the Internet bubble of the earlier part of this decade, the products and services from the clean tech industry solve fundamental problems with respect to the increasing costs of living. In contrast, the Internet
bubble companies like Webvan, kibu.com, pets.com, etc… provided little sustainable customer value or a business model with any return on investment.
NEW YORK–You can’t avoid the bubble question when it comes to clean-tech investing. Get used to it: with a massive movement of capital into the sector projected in the future, people are bound to fret. |
Bill Green, a panelist from VantagePoint Venture Partners, had a chart that made the point in a compelling way.
On one side was the market capitalization of the top 10 companies in energy, chemicals, auto, materials, and water–a whopping $3.5 trillion. Venture capital investment in the clean-tech sector–which sells into all of those industries–was about $2.2 billion last year. |
Meanwhile, the market capitalization for the top 10 IT firms is $1.5 trillion. Venture capital investment into all IT-related sectors was $16.4 billion. |
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Tags: clean technology, global warming, green tech, venture capital
A lot has been written about the potential bubble in the clean tech industry with the influx of large amounts of venture capital and the emerging numbers of clean tech funds. Unlike the Internet bubble of the earlier part of this decade, the products and services from the clean tech industry solve fundamental problems with respect to the increasing costs of living. In contrast, the Internet bubble companies like Webvan, kibu.com, pets.com, etc… provided little sustainable customer value or a business model with any return on investment.
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