Energy-Tech Venture Capital

New ideas that may transform the utilities industry.

Venture capital investments have tended in the past to focus on advances in computing, software, biotechnology, and semiconductors. Small investments led by venture capital firms hatched companies such as Apple, Google, Ebay, Amazon, Genentech, and Advanced Micro Devices-plus several others that never became household names.

Perspective

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:

State involvement in promoting renewable technologies has profound implications for the future of the energy industry.

Election-year posturing seems to have prevented the federal government from reaching consensus on a number of energy issues ranging from standard market design to global warming, MBTE to Kyoto, ANWR to nuclear waste disposal.

GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS

The states are getting into the act on greenhouse emissions, and the power industry is getting more proactive. What policy measures are appropriate?

A growing number of U.S. utility companies have come out in favor of federal mandatory limits on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from their facilities.

Perspective

Congress should not impose a federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS).

Since 1978, the federal government has relied on tax incentives to promote the generation of electric power from renewable resources-"green" power from hydroelectric facilities and windmills, solar panels and photovoltaic cells, facilities that burn biomass, municipal waste and landfill gas, and geothermal and ocean thermal resources.

AEP Spreads the Sunshine

The utility teaches school kids about solar power.

A merican Electric Power (AEP) has launched an innovative program that uses solar power to teach school children about renewable energy while-hopefully-getting them interested in math and science. The "Learning from Light!" program was started in 1999 by AEP, and now boasts membership of its 100th school.

It's a hands-on project for the kids.

Robert W. Shaw JR. IS A BETTING MAN. Shaw's Aretê Corp. venture capital fund has invested $100 million in energy technology. This year the Center Harbor, N.H., fund set aside $30 million to invest in micro-generation technologies. Already the fund has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into more than a half-dozen companies trying to develop microturbines, fuel cells and other promising small-scale generation.

"This is a hot corner," Shaw says.

Shaw bucks naysayers like Ralph Selvig of VentureOne Corp., a San Francisco firm that tracks the venture capital industry.

SCOTT SKLAR, WHO SHOWERS WITH SOLAR-HEATED water, who drinks his skim milk from his solar-powered refrigerator, who commutes via solar-powered car, who tells time by a solar-powered watch, who wears a sun-faced ring and sun-spotted tie, sweeps into a French restaurant on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C.

Sklar, who has lived the Solar Energy Industries Association for more than a decade, is bald up top, but his hair sprouts out around that spot in grey-brown brillo. Glasses hug his eyes. His beard threatens to strangle him and his mustache pitches in.