If you attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week you would have found a bunch of hi tech gizmos, inventions on the cutting edge of technology. Inventions and innovations such as ultra-thin (less than a millimeter) bendable LED screens using Organic LED lights (OLEDs)that are brighter and more brilliant in color than existing screens. Sony, a Japanese company) came up with that one.
Just a few days before, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, John Doerr, was telling the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee how far behind America was in the green tech revolution. He pointed out that the firm in which he was a partner, the highly reputable and successful (helping launch both Google and Amazon) Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, that two of his firm’s largest investments were with foreign companies, because American companies did not have the most advanced technology. He knows what he is talking about, his firm as invested $600 million in 45 green tech start-ups, and will invest in 40 more in the next two years. Of the top 30 companies in solar, wind, and advanced batteries, only six were US firms.
We are losing the green tech race to countries like Germany, where solar power provides most of their grid electricity, Japan, whose car manufacturers have been producing fuel efficient cars while the US auto makers churned out SUVs and large trucks, and Denmark that receives a large portion of their electricity from wind power. An indication of how far our green tech sector is behind is a billboard in South Africa by Daimler that advertises their new super efficient ForFour Smart Car with the words, “German Engineering, Swiss Innovation, American Nothing” proclaiming their disdain for American innovation. Why has our reputation fallen so far?
For one thing, our government spends less than $1 billion a year on renewable energy research. That is downright paltry. Private money venture capitalists invested $1.8 billion into clean energy ventures just in California. The opinion of many of those who follow the energy industry is that the government has to reverse the position of the previous administration by making a huge statement in support of clean and green technologies. Without this statement–along with the physical support for investment in emerging technologies and companies, tax incentives for investors in green tech, long term plans instead of short term handouts, and a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system–our dependence on cheap, polluting fuels (petroleum and coal) will not be phased out to be replaced by clean and sustainable energy sources.
And as much as we know the drawbacks of corn-based ethanol, the ethanol industry needs to continue to survive and prosper so they can make the needed investments in the next phase of ethanol production, such as non-food cellulosic feedstocks like switchgrass and misancanthus, which can produce much more potential energy per acre than corn.
So what can we do? We can stop supporting subsidies to oil companies and support investment in green tech, we can support an increased gas tax to fund green tech, we can support placing a carbon tax on energy polluters (like coal-fired power plants), give incentives or pass laws, as many states have done, to force the utility companies to buy higher and higher percentages of their energy from the green tech sector–solar and wind–and fund a national power grid to get solar energy from the southwestern deserts and wind power from the plains to the rest of the country.
Investors and venture capitalists need to know that the government is solidly behind green tech, that it will not, at the whim of congressional deniers, cut off funds and head in the other direction just because gasoline falls in price. They need to know their investments are valid for the long term, and will not disappear in a puff of smoke because of a hostile congressional committee. Then the $$$ will flow and jobs will be created, and we might get back our reputation for innovation, forward thinking–and maybe even doing the right thing for a change.