Renewables Aren't the Stuff of Dreams

Editor's Note

February / March 2007 By: Bob Cochnar Volume 5 Number 1

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Analysts at a major oil company—that would be Shell International Petroleum—said in 1996 that the transition to renewable energy resources must start now and reach at least a 20 percent saturation in the energy market by 2020 to accomplish a 50 percent saturation by 2050. They also said this will happen because, they predicted, renewables will be fully market-competitive by then.

Well, some eleven years have passed since that prediction. But it now appears the stars are reaching fitfully into alignment.

Consider:
— President Bush, in his State of the Union message, said "America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change."
— Chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has passed from James Inhofe, who calls global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" to Barbara Boxer, who says that "nowhere is there a greater threat to future generations than the disastrous effects of global warming."
— In recent years investors have poured billions of dollars into alternative energy startups in areas like solar and wind power and the production of fuels from feedstock and crop waste.
— Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has signed into law a bill capping the state's greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020.
— Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the influential Silicon Valley VC firm has formed the Greentech Innovation Network to bring together entrepreneurs, scientists, academics and policy makers. VCs don't usually indulge in fantasy unless there is big money to be made.

Indeed, the Union of Concerned Scientists has released a study that says a transition of the U.S. to 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 shows hundreds of billions of dollars of profit to the U.S. economy within that same period. That's a heady prediction, to be sure, but I doubt many investors will be betting against it.

For scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs involved in renewables, the stars may well be in alignment.

We want to crow just a little bit about our circulation and readership. Since October 2003, when our first issue was published, we've reached a controlled circulation of 14,000. On the inside back cover of this issue we've published some interesting statistics about our readers, gleaned from ongoing readership surveys. Our readers are in government (54 percent), private industry (22 percent) and the financial sector (24 percent).

Readership in industry sectors includes consulting (18.6 percent), defense (8.6 percent), universities (7.1 percent), energy and environment (6.6 percent) and R&D (6.6 percent). The complete breakdown can be found on the inside back cover.

What's significant about this readership, we think, is that Innovation is of interest to seemingly disparate groups of people (the sort of folks in Kleiner Perkins's Greentech Innovation Network, but more broadly based). So, thanks for reading. And if you have thoughts about what we ought to be doing, please let us know.