Why The Rush of Cleantech Deals All of a Sudden?
Happy news all around.
The labor market showed signs of recovery this morning, with the rate of job losses slowing to almost zero in November, and the financing environment for cleantech looks to be improving by the day.
Yesterday we saw Hudson Clean Energy Partners pat itself on the back for raising just over $1 billion in what founder Neil Auerbach called “one of the most challenging funding environments in recent memory…”
No doubt, you did well Neil, but we’re pleased to say that that success may be symptomatic of a more general recovery. The Cleantech Group is reporting more than 77 cleantech deals in the last 14 days.
What can account for this rush?Cleantech Group’s Emma Ritch speculates that a rush to get U.S. government stimulus funding before it expires may account for some of the activity. To her credit, Ritch writes that she doesn’t have all the answers and seeks educated guesses.
Our best guess is perhaps the most obvious: the United States government has thrown its full weight behind a green energy revolution.
Every action, from the Energy Department’s flood of stimulus spending, to (halting) progress on emissions curbs in Congress, to Barack Obama’s pledge in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit to reduce emissions, bespeaks a commitment to changing how we generate and consume energy.
China’s own considerable investment in the sector has also been an obvious factor.
Private industry is following the government’s lead. We need only look at the preview of Exxon’s World Energy Outlook that WSJ’s Environmental Capital reported this week.
For those of you keeping score at home, here are the exact predictions. Exxon now sees wind/solar/biofuels growing at 9.6% a year from 2005 through 2030 versus 9.3% a year ago; oil is now 0.8% versus 0.9% and coal is 0.5% versus 0.6%. Now, these might seem like modest changes, but there are fortunes to be made and lost in these fractions.
That, Emma, is our best guess.
