People who say that global warming is bad for business fail to realize that global warming is a business.
After winning an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Price for sounding the global-warming alarm, Al Gore is set to make a mint as a greenhouse-gas-fighting venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
“He deserves it,” said Denver venture capitalist Federico Peña, who served as both transportation and energy secretary during the Clinton administration. “He’s created a global movement. … He’s been … raising this issue in perhaps the most forceful way of anybody on the planet.”
Gore said he would donate his salary to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection. But VCs make most of their money when they cash out of their investments. No word on what Gore will do with all of this green green.
Just goes to show that the revolving door between Washington, D.C., and big business is always turning.
Last week, Gore signed on with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the nation’s most successful venture capital firms and the backer of giant success stories such as Google and .
At Kleiner, Gore will guide alternative-energy investments.
“It’s a brilliant move on Kleiner’s part,” said Jack Tankersley of the Denver-based Meritage Private Equity Fund.
Gore’s been around the globe meeting with green entrepreneurs and comes loaded with the best investment ideas, Tankersley said. He also has the ears of the world’s regulators.
“Al has extraordinary political and regulatory contacts,” said Tankersley. “If somebody wanted to do a biofuel plant in Brazil, Gore has political contacts to get that done.”
Venture capital firms, which have always invested in technology, are glomming onto green like never before. Peña’s firm, Vestar Capital Partners, has been looking for ways to ride this wave, too.
“There’s a whole new industry to be built, and smart people with smart money are investing in it,” Peña said.
“Most Americans believe we’re running out of oil,” Peña said. “Most Americans are tired of paying $3 for regular gas. Most Americans are concerned that we’re now importing 60 percent of oil from governments that are not friendly to the United States. Most Americans get this.”
So even as some people argue there is no man-made global warming, demand for everything from hybrid cars to rooftop solar panels keeps rising. And Peña said he believes a mandatory carbon credit system is not far behind – where companies trade rights to burn carbon-based fuels.
This is one reason why Xcel Energy last week unveiled plans for a utility-scale solar power plant in Colorado, costing as much as $600 million. In a shifting regulatory environment, reducing carbon emissions will reduce costs.
Thumbing through Kleiner’s portfolio of companies, it’s obvious the firm is committed to technologies that reduce greenhouse gases and global warming.
Kleiner is backing companies that are developing geothermal, ethanol, biodiesel, fuel cell and solar technologies. But Kleiner also seems committed to squeezing every ounce of oil and gas we can possibly get from the earth.
It’s backing TerrAlliance, an oil and gas exploration and production company, with an office in Boulder, that is developing technology that makes fossil fuel production more efficient.
It’s also backing Golden-based Luca Technologies, which has discovered tiny bugs that eat difficult-to-mine oil, shale and coal deposits and excrete more-easily recoverable natural gas.
“Luca believes it will open the door to the creation of a new industry with the potential to solve U.S. domestic energy needs long-term, as well as provide a cost-effective, reliable and renewable source of the cleanest burning hydrocarbon fuel,” Luca says on its website.
Natural gas is indeed the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon fuel – but isn’t that like saying Paris Hilton is a better role model than Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan?
Then there’s Houston-based GloriOil Co., which also uses microscopic bugs “to improve and increase recovery from mature oil wells.”
Most people who know Gore say he’s sincere about global warming. Yet, somehow, he’s not giving up his jet-set life, or his electricity-burning mansion.
Global warming or not, our fossil fuel is like Maxwell House coffee, good to the last drop.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Lewis at ., 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
