Big Money Takes Aim at Global Warming

Lucky for us, there is big money in energy. If anything will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, it will be new technology seeded with venture capitalist investors. These investors are happy to get a piece — the bigger the better — of any technology that unseats fossil fuel as energy king.

Clean-tech ventures took a major hit at the end of 2008 and into 2009. But the investment firms have stepped back in, according to Martin LaMonica, writing in the GreenTech column on "CNET News."

LaMonica cites the Cleantech Group's estimate that "third quarter investing rose to $1.59 billion, representing 134 deals in North America, Europe, China, and India," and adds that "green tech has been one of the fastest-growing technology sectors over the past few years, but it now outpaces biotech and software in size as well."

2009 investment builds on nearly a decade's worth of big funding, which was chronicled last year in a The New York Times Sunday Magazine story by Jon Gertner. He made the case that venture capitalist firms — in particular, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, or KP — are the driving force behind technologies that are cheaper than coal and oil and would be much cleaner.

KP was one of Google's early investors. It has funded many start-ups, and it has profited handsomely, to put it mildly. A year ago, according to Gertner, the firm had as many as 40 major investments in energy start-ups.

Tonic has been following EEStor — one of the startups funded by KP — which is reported to be close to market with an ultracapacitor that would revolutionize the electric-car industry. KP also is behind Bloom Energy — which has test cells running at Google and eBay — FloDesign's wind turbine and others. It also funded Blacklight Power and other speculative technologies of the sort that would be more revolutionary than transformative.

Thanks to deep-pocketed and far-sighted venture capitalists, within five to 10 years, our energy use — starting with all-electric cars — will be much cleaner.

Photo courtesy of djevents, via flickr