Power Talks in Palm Springs Weather Unusual Storms and Shine a Light on Clean-Tech Opportunities and Challenges
By Clean Edge Staff including Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder, and Trevor Winnie
PALM SPRINGS, California -- In spite of brooding skies, cold temperatures, and uncharacteristically powerful Southern California rainstorms, this year’s 6th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit was another networking and programming success. More than 400 attendees battled airport closings and weather delays to make it to the annual Summit. Amidst a growing plethora of clean-tech industry events, the Summit has cemented itself as the premier industry event for high-level networking and thought-provoking speaker presentations and dialogue.
In 2009, Summit attendees were riding high from the inauguration of a U.S. president with a promising clean-energy agenda. Although the Obama administration has begun to deliver on many of its programs – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained more than $70 billion for clean-tech initiatives – 2010’s event was saturated with a grounded and realistic understanding that the industry must do more, in terms of pushing technology, policy, and capital boundaries, to ensure its continued growth and success.
From Tuesday evening’s opening cocktail reception all the way through to the closing lunch on Thursday afternoon, the Summit brought together the best minds in technology, government, and finance to discuss and strategize the future of the clean-tech industry.
Following is an overview of presentations given by this year’s diverse roster of speakers and links to all of the Summit presentations and sample press coverage.
What we can’t capture here, however, is the Summit’s most valuable element – the face-to-face conversations held by attendees. Each year, these relationship-building discussions sow seeds for business deals and inspire thoughts that lead to industry innovation and growth.
Our sincerest thanks to all who made the 6th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit a success, including delegates, presenters, sponsors, and board members. We look forward to seeing everyone in Palm Springs next year! |
Day 1:
The 6th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit started off in its traditional fashion – with an insightful and information-rich presentation from conference chairman Ira Ehrenpreis, general partner at Technology Partners. In this year’s opening remarks, Ira emphasized the importance of embracing a long-term perspective. He argued that today’s near-term clean-tech challenges – dormant IPO markets, elusive project financing, and unreliable government policies – will be dwarfed by the rewards to be had for those who work to solve the industry’s long-term challenges – providing clean air and water, combating climate change, and ensuring sustainable access to global resources.
Shifting focus to a more immediate and U.S.-related topic, Reed Hundt, co-chair of the Coalition for the Green Bank, educated the audience about some “hard truths of politics.” He explained that any U.S. energy legislation must first and foremost focus on job creation and not rely on near-term capping or pricing of carbon. To accelerate the build out of the United States’ clean-energy economy, Hundt believes we should be promoting industry with government-backed lending. By establishing a Green Energy Lending Authority (GELA) – also known as the Green Bank or Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) – he argued that the United States would be able to rapidly create jobs through the financing of energy efficiency and clean-energy generation.
Continuing with a look at the United States government’s role in supporting clean energy, Ira welcomed to the stage Matt Rogers, senior advisor at the Department of Energy where he plays a leading role in distributing the billions of energy-related stimulus dollars. In this “fireside chat,” Rogers conveyed the difficulties of selecting winners from the thousands of worthy applicants. He revealed that for the ARPA-E program (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy), there were more than 35,000 applicants and only 38 available award slots. Looking past stimulus funding, Rogers identified three DOE goals: to accelerate the rate of innovation; promote job creation; and strengthen national security by diminishing American dependence on foreign sources of energy.
Following these two insightful talks on government’s clean-tech role, the Summit moved to the corporate perspective with keynotes from Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft, and Ray Anderson, chairman of commercial carpet manufacturer Interface and author of Confessions of a Radical Industrialist.
Bernard expressed ways in which information technology is core to any clean-tech investment strategy, but also reminded the audience that IT activities aren’t entirely benign – accounting for around 2 percent of total CO2 emissions. IT activity has a carbon footprint that is akin to the air travel industry, according to Bernard. Bernard said that Microsoft is working to reduce its own carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2012. He outlined the huge potential of IT-based home energy management systems, including Microsoft Hohm, noting that while only 4-5 percent of U.S. homes have smart meters today, millions have IP networks that could be leveraged.
During the luncheon keynote, Ray Anderson told his story of transformation from an environmentally oblivious industrialist to a businessman driven by sustainable best practices. Anderson’s lead-by-example journey at Interface – inspirational in every way – is an indicator of just how far things have come. Interface’s sustainability success story was once an enigma, but today can be told by a growing number of corporations around the world. [NOTE: Just days after the Summit it was announced that Ray Anderson was diagnosed with cancer. Our warmest wishes for a successful recovery go out to this pioneering environmental and industrial warrior.]
After a brief overview of electric utilities’ relationship with smart grid technology, Judith Warrick, senior advisor at Morgan Stanley, moderated a conversation with industry leaders about how smart grid will change the utility business model – “more in the next decade than it changed in the last century,” she said – and what can be done to make this a smooth transformation. The session’s speakers included Ray Gogel, president and COO of Current; Scott Lang, chairman, president, and CEO of Silver Spring Networks; Anne Pramaggiore, president and COO of Exelon’s ComEd; and Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril. The panel agreed on many things including the vast potential market for smart grid technologies, the difficulties of forcing significant changes on a static, century-old business model, and the need to establish industry-wide standards and rewarding utility incentives that will accelerate smart grid adoption.
Rounding out the first day of presentations were keynotes from Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability at Autodesk, and Dan Arvizu, director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Cameron shared Autodesk’s story of working with clean-tech firms with the goal of getting their products to market faster, with less risk, through advanced design technology. She also announced that the company’s Clean Tech Partner Program, which awards up to $150,000 in free software to clean-tech entrepreneurs, would be extended to another 100 companies, and expanded to China and parts of Europe.
Wrapping up day one, Dan Arvizu stressed the industry’s ubiquitous challenge of implementing new technology into an existing and mature energy market. He explained that so far, U.S. clean-energy progress has occurred from the bottom up, with regional aspirations creating pockets of success and interest around the country. Arvizu saw 2009 as a transition year and sees innovation and access to capital as the key market drivers – even if federal legislation becomes reality.
As the Summit transitioned into the final networking session of the day, attendees were treated to a live performance from singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, who added some topical, global-warming-influenced musical flavor to the event.
Day 2:
Getting things off to an energetic start Thursday morning, Amanda Little, author of the book Power Trip – which she charmingly described as Eat, Pray, Love meets Guns, Germs, and Steel – made the case that creating a robust clean-tech industry is about more than just big business and climate economics. In an inspirational talk, Little not only walked us through her journey inside the belly of Big Oil, natural gas, and other extractive industries, but related the lessons she learned from this journey and how they might apply to the scale up of clean energy. In one story, she described the role of sustainable building in the reconstruction of New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. She shared how residents of new super-efficient solar homes in the area are displaying a greater sense of community and appreciation of resources than ever before. In her view, the clean-tech revolution is just as much about the connection of people and technology as it is about installed megawatts and price declines.
Little’s uplifting talk was followed by energy pioneer Amory Lovins, chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. To open his session, Lovins posed a multiple-choice question to the audience: “How would you like to die? Climate change, oil wars, or nuclear holocaust?” Lovins’ talk was in no way pessimistic, however, as he went on to explain that the proposed choices can be avoided – and at a profit. His talk was framed with the theme of “Reinventing Fire” and focused on opportunities to redesign today’s technology and cost-effectively improve efficiencies of energy and transportation systems. Lovins argued that improving operating efficiency at the point of end-use grants the best return on dollar investment, because it avoids the need to create as much energy in the first place.
After a short break, the audience was treated to a surprise phone-in from Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and a talk from the FCC’s recently appointed energy and environment director, Nick Sinai. As chairman of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Bingaman was a fitting elected official to address the clean-tech crowd. He discussed the efforts to make CEDA a reality, but explained that the goal is to support – not replace – private sector funding. Sinai followed the Senator, presenting some details of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan which is to be delivered to Congress in March.
As the second day wound down, an insightful panel of veteran clean-tech investors provided a look into what the rest of this year might have in store. Moderated by Scott Jacobs, manager at McKinsey & Company, the session included Jeff Lipton, managing director at Jefferies & Co.; Gary Vollen, managing director at Robert W. Baird & Co.; Skip Grow, managing director at Lazard Freres & Co.; and Jeff Adams, managing director at Goldman Sachs. A general sense of cautious optimism was shared by all, with expectations that we could see more than just a handful of new exits, in the form of an emboldened IPO market and increased M&A activity, in 2010/2011.
Finally, closing out the Summit was David Vieau, president and CEO of A123 Systems. He shared the story of A123’s spin out from MIT and the entrepreneurial path from its founding in 2001, to its successful IPO in 2009. Vieau gave insight into the company’s strategic decision to change its technology approach after some early dead ends. He also explained how a partnership with Black & Decker got A123’s product on the shelves and allowed the company to gain much-needed visibility and credibility. In parting words to fellow entrepreneurs, Vieau advised them to keep things simple, not be afraid to get outside help, and to never be satisfied with their current technology.
The 6th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit offered participants a unique insider’s view of the clean-tech marketplace – where it stands now and where it is likely to head. And in a Summit first, videos of every presentation from this year’s Summit are now online and viewable for all to enjoy. While we can’t replicate the invaluable networking experience available to those in attendance, we hope that these information-rich talks provide ongoing insight for this year’s attendees and web viewers alike. This year’s unprecedented storms aside, we look forward to next year’s almost certain sunny skies and warm temperatures. Hope to see you all at the 7th Annual Clean-Tech Investor Summit in Palm Springs, January 19 and 20, 2011. |
