Venture Capitalists Back Away from Clean Energy

Technology Review
Aug 11, 2011

As governments around the world are scaling back support for renewable energy, venture capitalists are shifting their clean technology investment strategy. They're focusing less on high-risk technologies and more on ideas that could have a faster payoff but a smaller impact, such as technologies for improving energy efficiency. The shift is raising concerns about how innovative energy technologies will be commercialized.

Venture capitalists have traditionally focused on companies with low capital requirements that can quickly get bought up or go public. Many Internet startups fall into this category. But in recent years, many venture capitalists have been enticed to risk longer-term, high-capital energy investments in clean energy, thanks to generous government subsidies in renewable energy markets. In particular, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on solar-cell startups that need to build expensive equipment and factories to prove their technologies, and can take many years to generate a return on investment.

Now many venture-capital firms are going back to their roots. Dozens recently stopped making initial investments in clean technology companies, according to Dow Jones Venture Source. Many that continue to invest in clean technology are shifting to areas such as energy efficiency, which includes low-capital projects such as software for monitoring and reducing energy consumption, according to an analysis by the Cleantech Group.

The money that still goes to the solar industry is now directed to companies with small capital requirements. Rooftop solar panel installers are one example. (In June, Solar City got $280 million from Google to fund solar installations.) There's still some funding for solar-cell companies, such as for 1366 Technologies and Alta Devices, that are developing technology that the companies say can compete with fossil fuels. But "it's a harder place to raise funds for new ventures," says Sheeraz Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group.
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