One of the fundamental challenges facing any new energing technology is funding. It is the Rubicon for any startup business.

With any emergent technology, acceptance by investors follows your classic product lifecycle. Early adoptors, mainstream and laggards. The Cleantech industry finds itself in the early adopter (acceptor) stage just when th world needs it to be running at the mainstream stage. The sad result is that many new cleantech companies are dying at birth - unable to source the critical capital they need due to the GFC.

The American response has been to develop a Green Bank. This article provides a wonderful overview of what the bank could do, how it would work and the payback for America. So while there is a mass of ink being spent in many countries on the relative merits of Government support for climate change initiatives, the American response is to assist private enterprise to sovle the issue.

We love this. For some time we have been espousing the concept that climate change is one of the biggest money making opportunities that has ever existed!

In short, you can make money from saving the world.

Our firm belief is that you can make huge amounts of money from saving the world. Using our persecptive of market needs and opportunity identification, you could argue that saving the world is currently the greatest ‘unmet need’ in any market. Additionally, the length of time before this unmet need is actually satisfied to the point where no more value can be created is potentially unlimited. So theoretically, a planet saving offering may well provide you with an extremely sustainable business model.

So back to the issue of funding. Investment in any new technology requires a keen appreciation of both risk and the likelihood of success. The market is also, despite recent events, pretty good at picking winners, so maybe the best bet for any national government is to place the decision back into the hands of the market, but assist it with a brief and support that will drive this development process. A la the Green Bank.

Ultimately, like any technology life cycle, existing technologies will be superseded by ones that offer to do more for less. Just as Netscape lost to Google, new clean technologies will be superseded by those that do the ‘job’ better. A Green Bank that allows this process to occur faster would provide the structure for the next Google, You Tube and Facebook to germninate and also provide us with the critical solutions that are required right now.