Venture Capitalism To the Rescue

theodp writes "Al Gore, Bill Joy, and a Norwegian cutie — a TH!NK open electric car — grace the cover of the latest NYT Magazine, which asks: Can the venture capitalists at Kleiner Perkins reduce our dependence on oil, help stop global warming, and make a lot of money at the same time? While Kleiner Perkins — which funded Genentech, Netscape, Google and others — has a number of other green-tech bets, a partner says its goal is 'to make a lot of money for our investors,' not to save the environment."

Comments

Great timing, actually.

[RyanFenton]

Sure, the stock market's bad. Really bad. Oddly, that's what makes for very good timing here - because even though a lot of people have less money to invest, there's a lot of other folks who are looking to take their money from places they used to believe as 'safe', and put it where some of it will make money back to recover from recent failures. That includes mutual fund companies, and several other sources of megabucks.

There's also a lot of potential researchers who can spend a lot of time on these projects, at relatively competitive rates. And a lot of existing data to pull together from university projects that individually have been starved for resources. That, and there's a slight possibility some politicians may be able to make a sane infrastructure to provide at least some support in upcoming budgets.

Sounds like excellent timing to get a massively multiple-approach research project like this underway. It might even save a small part of our economy through the continuing troubles.

Ryan Fenton

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Because too many folks in the past, wanting to do good, have started investment funds or invested in things to make a change and lost their shirts.

By stating the obvious (to us anyway), they're letting any potential investors know that they're not going to spend money on losing propositions just to save the planet.

I would also like to add, if they really want green investments to pay off, they should also lobby Congress to get rid of the many oil industry subsidies and tax breaks. That would make oil more expensive - actually, it should allow oil to be priced so that it reflects its true costs. The oil industry is a prime example of how tax and government subsidies can distort a market to the point that one of the most inefficient and polluting fuels had become predominant and other sources of energy have a hard time competing in the market place because of the false reduced costs imposed by Government. I think adding even more tax breaks and subsidies to an energy solution is not the way to go. We need to eliminate the current ones on oil, gas, and coal. And it will help reduce the amount in the tax code.

Re:Obvious

[hey!]

Making a better than normal return on investments has always been about timing. Many a sound plan has failed because it was too early or too late.

In the early part of the dot com era, a lot of money was invested on businesses that could not generate cash until man more people had Internet connections at home. Back in the 70's oil crisis lots of creativity was going into alternative energy and conservation technologies -- just before oil prices started to drop. When everyone knows change is coming, most people will lose money getting the timing wrong, and a few will make a lot of money.

That's just investing.

Now consider: if you had to have heart surgery, would you go to a doctor whose specialty was "ethically responsible surgery"? No. You'd go to a surgeon and expect him to be socially responsible. Maybe you'd want to know what his standards of ethics are and how those ethics are enforce. But you wouldn't put yourself in the hands of somebody who uses ethics as branding.

The problem is we don't need SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE investment funds, we need socially responsible INVESTMENT funds. Social responsibility should be something a well run fund has a philosophy and strategy for, like any other aspect of investment. It shouldn't be left to specialists.

I suspect, also, that "social investment", if I may use that term, is also a matter of timing. No investment is likely to be totally free of ethical issues, but economically driven change always happens at the margins: the next dollar spent or not spent. So if you look at a collection of investments, at any time there will be a small number of them where moving some dollars will have a big effect. Choosing to lose money everywhere means you lose money; choosing to lose money in selected places may actually mean you secure your future, since most socially "irresponsible" business practices are short sighted.

That's investing too.

Re:Obvious

[Original Replica]

I considered a "socially repsonsible" investment fund at one point. Then I realized the thing had pathetic returns

Considering that every American taxpayer just got raped to the tune of $850 billion just two days ago, I would have to say that irresponsible investments have pretty pathetic returns as well.

Electric Cars ... the Silent Killer

[hattig]

Imagine driving on a warm summer night with the wind blowing through your hair and hearing nothing but the sounds of nature.

Imagine crossing the road on a warm summer night, a gentle breeze blowing through your hair and hearing nothing but the sounds of nature ... and then: BAM! Hit by an electric car."

There are some small electric cars in London, they're eerily silent.

Just to clarify, I do think that this is a good technology and it is the future, but I am sure that there will be accidents because the cars are silent.

Re:Electric Cars ... the Silent Killer

[Eukariote]

The noise difference is not nearly as large over 50 km/h because then the road/tire noise starts to dominate over engine noise. Electric cars are silent only at low speeds.

Re:stealth tax sibsidy

[Original Replica]

I just don't think big oil is the major recipient.

Perhaps you are un aware of the windfall profits of the major oil companies since the start of the Iraq War.

"By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry's history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.

"Exxon beat its own one-year-old record for the biggest corporate profits ever by 3 percent. Put together with the announcement by the No. 2 U.S. oil company, Chevron, of an $18.7 billion year, up 9 percent over 2006, plus the earlier results of Shell and ConocoPhillips, and that's more than $100 billion in profits from four companies. It's all thanks to the historic 35 percent climb in worldwide crude oil prices in the second half of 2007, ending the first week of this year when oil briefly touched $100 per barrel...Exxon Mobil's profits are 80 percent higher than those of General Electric, which used to be the largest U.S. company by market capitalization before Exxon left it in the dust in 2005. The new economy? Microsoft earns about a third as much money. And next to Exxon, the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, looks like a quaint boutique, with annual profits of about $11 billion."

Just because they aren't getting money straight from Uncle Sam like the military industrial contractors are, don't think that this war hasn't served to make oil far more profitable than ever, and don't think that is any surprise to the oil man in the Whitehouse.