Revenue growth for many companies in this current economic environment is very difficult. Enhanced margins can be achieved through energy reduction, which begins with corporate visibility and an empowered, corporate energy manager. by Paul Baier, Vice President of Sustainability Consulting, Groom Energy, and co-author of Enterprise Carbon Accounting. Read Paul’s blog, Practical Sustainability. Follow him […]
The excitement surrounding the biofuels market opportunity has been tempered somewhat by its many challenges, which include ethical questions of food versus fuel, limited availability of inexpensive feedstocks, petroleum price volatility, overcapacity of production and the global recession. However, a two recent reports from both Pike Research and Bio Economic Research Associates forecast that, despite these significant challenges, the combined biodiesel and ethanol markets will reach $247 billion in sales by 2020, up from just $76 billion in 2010. Total job creation, accounting for economic multiplier effects, could reach 123,000 in 2012, 383,000 in 2016, and 807,000 by 2022.
In a presentation before national policymakers and analysts recently, leading clean energy venture capitalists, academics and CEOs unveiled the “Gigaton Throwdown,” an assessment of the nation’s clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5-7 gigatons by 2020. The report, a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policymakers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.
The report, entitled “Cleantech Comes of Age,” discusses the trends in clean technology from the impact of oil prices to the M&A market and includes data from the MoneyTree Report, a quarterly survey that tracks cash-for-equity investments by the professional venture capital community in private emerging companies in the United States.The increased venture capital investment into the Cleantech sector can be directly associated with the growing concerns about the environment, energy costs and security. Despite signs of a weakening economy, the high investment level and intensified adoption rate of technologies in this sector validates the expected growth predicted by industry experts.
