RENEWABLOG

Musings on Green Google, VC Investment, Energy Bill

Musings on this week's green news, as I try to distract myself from the Cyber-Monday v. Green Monday debate.....

The good, the bad and the ugly (i.e. my opinion) on three major topics that hit this week:

1) Google announces a major green initiative.

The good: Google is bringing oodles of money to markets that desperately need the attention, the funding and the lobbying might that a brand name company can bring. As I have mentioned in the past, First Solar is shaping up to be one of the first green market heavyweights solely focused on a green agenda, but Google's vast resources can only help.

The bad: Google is bringing oodles of money to the market which means increased competition and a boost to any of their "portfolio" companies or ventures that get the Google label.

Conclusion: I think this is a great thing for the market at large. While competition will surely get stiffer, the industry is at the point where they need a few heavy hitters leading the charge in the media and with governmental bodies.

2) VC investment in green hits another all-time high.

The good: Again, it will help give cash to markets that need to funding to develop new technologies, improve existing ones and market at a level on par with traditional approaches.

The bad: I blogged earlier about the potential of a green bubble. It is not a good sign when National Venture Capital Association is commenting on that possibility as well. This is also bad news for all of those long-standing companies in the green market that have grown organically and don't want to take VC investment. For those folks, the competition is getting louder.

Conclusion: This is a good thing for the market as a whole, but will be bad news for companies that have grown to market leadership positions through conservative marketing and organic growth and wanted to continue down that path.

3) The latest rev of the energy bill in Washington sets higher fuel economy standards for cars, but removes requirements surrounding renewable energy levels for utilities and leaves in tax breaks for petroleum companies.

The good: Any improvement in fuel economy is a good one, although people will say that 35 MPG by 2020 is not aggressive enough.

The bad: The removal of the utilities measure will slow the pace at which they will develop and adopt renewable sources. This type of legislation will likely land in the laps of the states in coming years. California has already passed a similar requirement, which PG&E says it supports in theory but is unattainable and unpractical. Let that debate rage into 2008.

Conclusion: The utilities measure is disturbing for solar, wind and other companies that are setting up energy farms and plants with plans to sell the energy to major utilities. Government legislation or industry mandates usually means a boon for some private industry, such as PCI compliance and SOX compliance in financial IT/information security, so any such measure would likely have accelerated R&D and investment in these technologies. The news is good for ethanol-based fuels supporters and other renewable options for automobiles.

My final conclusion? The marketing hype around Cyber-Monday will eventually overtake Green Monday as the most popular online shopping day of the year.