At the Going Green 2007 conference in Davis CA the world of CEO’s and VC’s are meshing in a mashup of networking, demos, and large scale lovefest of Green Technology. I think this is a terrific thing frankly. I came to the event to see if the buzz was real. Is the world ready for real green tech development on the large scale. The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Day long panels of VC’s, CEO’s and big business managers all seemed to trumpet the same message. technology is there or coming soon, and the capital world is ready to fund it. According to one VC green technology funding will still be on the margin of the corporate world for a few years but in his words “it is still good as the margin is huge right now”
Investors seem high on putting money into companies doing green tech, from [tag]biofuels[/tag] to solar and beyond. One type of biofuel mentioned in a panel was called Black Liquor, the by product of wood/paper processing. I had never heard of it before but the executive made it sound promising so I will have to go check it out and see what the scoop is on it.
According to one VC,” R&D is our job, to create the [tag-tec]green technology[/tag] and develop it so that large companies can then take over and create scale in the market in order to build out the infrastructure”. That seems to be taking off now as the money and the science meet. We should all be the benefactors in coming years as real change comes to the market.