The Cleantech Forum is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:

Guest: Kelvin Walsh - GE

Speaker
Please join me in welcoming Kevin Walsh.

Kelvin Walsh – GE
Thank you Bernardo, and you are always welcome back by the way, if you ever get lonely out there. Thank you Nick and Keith for allowing us to the opportunity to tell our story. So, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about GE Ecomagination our business Energy Financial Services what we are doing in renewables. The market opportunity in renewables in Cleantech as we see it, project finance a little bit because we hear a lot of discussion about that how it can be used for Cleantech when it can’t be used and then Venture Equity.

So, I won’t spend too much time on GE, I think a lot of people know GE — you know we’ve been around for a while and we’re still AAA, we’re one of the founding members of the Dow Industrial Index going to be one left frankly so, back in the 1896. So, and we’ve grown and changed then morphed over the years as many of you know and our business is part of GE Infrastructure, which is the collection of businesses you see in the right, and so within that to the energy business, GE Energy, GE Water and GE Oil and Gas are great compliment for us in terms of common customers, technologies, markets and such, so we leverage that to extent that we can, but we are not captives, so we’re not a captive financing company, we don’t just finance GE Equipment. In fact, 75% of my winning portfolio right now is not GE Equipment. It’s not just because we finance good projects as they come above, we evaluate the technology, if we’re like what we see, we invest and so that’s been our policy as a business for some time.

Ecomagination, you’ll hear a lot about increasing our commitment to R&D side to $1.5 billion by 2010 more Ecomagination products whether it’s clean locomotives, solar, wind, you name it, we are trying to introduce more products, so we will have 20 billion, our goal is 20 billion of revenues from these types of products by 2010. We are stepping up to reduce our own greenhouse emissions from our own factories, helping our customers meet their obligations and their targets with our products and of course keeping everyone informed of our progress. We are very proud of this and in fact the other part of ecomagination that we really want to stress, that I like to stress is that we’re really — this is a very important business for us. Yes, it has public relations benefits, but it’s a business and we think it’s a great business opportunity.

Now, we’ll talk about my businesses commitment to it which we are very excited about. EFS, this is our business, so we are relatively small in the GE context, frankly we’re 300 people, 13 billion assets across the whole energy spectrum so we invest in oil and gas reserves, traditional power plants, transmission lines, pipelines etcetera and of course renewals. Benefit from the AAA rating, we’ve been doing this for 25 plus years and our average deal size or target deal size is 25 million plus. Now, in the Cleantech side that’s a different number, it’s smaller two million to five million maybe 10, we’ll talk about that in a minute, but this is a neat little business in GE not well-known and we’re up in Stanford, Connecticut.

We are comfortable really financing the whole right side of the balance sheet, so we’ll do debt, equity everything in between to the function of risk return if you like the opportunity, we’ll do it and you can see our portfolio how it splits across the various areas of energy renewables would be included in the generation numbers you see and then the split amongst the financial products. So, what’s new is this emphasis on renewables. I moved over from a different part of the business where I ran the overall portfolio for the company. And we already have a billion dollar portfolio frankly from investing over the years in hydro and geothermal and wind and such, but it’s been accelerating and our goal is to increase up to three billion by the end of ’08.

So, we’re really stepping up and we’re investing GE’s money, this is not third-party money, this is our money and it’s global and the Cleantech effort which is extension of the team about six people increased from just two people frankly in the last few months, so we’re really staffing up that effort as well.

So, why we’re doing this? Well, like the rest of you, we see this tremendous opportunity, this tremendous growth across the Technology Spectrum, again here’s our portfolio as it splits out across to technologies. Now, the wind is probably the fastest growing piece as you would aspect, in fact, might been looking across that the chart here of first deal I did with GE, ten plus years ago was a hydro deal biomass, we’ve been doing those for years, wood-burning plants etcetera Geothermal, solar and wind are the fastest growing piece.

Some of the skills we think that are needed to do this well includes obviously technology focus because it’s evolving so quickly, tax expertise whether it’s in the US or some other foreign jurisdictions very complex. Understand the resource we spend a lot of time understanding the wind resource to solar resource, managing construction risk, working with small developers which — we don’t see in other parts of our business. So, those are some of the challenges that we think that need to be managed that we try to manage.

Just a snapshot of some of the deals we’ve done recently we thought you’d find interesting and with 12 o’clock and moving clockwise electricity big very active Irish developing company when we financed their first project in the US in Texas with Siemens wind turbines by the way. Cruiser Marks in Germany, now dependent on the feed-in tariffs in Germany which as you know are very attractive, Ocean Power Delivery is a Cleantech deal, I mean that’s a Ocean Power Company, the first commercial application of — in our view of a wave energy or wave farm. We have a contract with Energy System, Portugal to build that, and so we’re very excited about that. Alsleben is the largest German wind farm. German wind farms are generally smaller than the US wind farms because they are land constraint.

PowerLight is our partner on the world’s largest, or will be when it’s built, largest PV plant in Portugal, 11 megawatt, $75 million also realize on the feed-in tariffs in Portugal and we’re a lender and provide least financing to SIT’s customers. The San Diego School district is putting new roofs on all the schools that need roofs that have PV integrated into the roof material, so they get a new roof and they get nice clean power. So, we’ve stepped up and supported SIT and Kumeyaay is the largest wind farm on Indian reservation in the US.

So, and that I believe is either west disorganize a turbine, so, just a sampling of some of the things we are doing. Again, this is, for the most part you can see there are project deals but for Ocean Power Delivery.

Some of the challenges we see, well, it’s like an exciting space we’ve to step back sometimes to say, oh, this is not that easy, sometimes things happen and we’ve been doing this for long enough to see what can happen if you don’t understand the risks and be prepared to manage them. Some of the earlier technology wind turbines, not GE of course but had some issues and we had to step in and fix those. We’ve had issues with landfill gas projects where the wells didn’t produce at expected levels and we had to role up our sleeves and fix that, and of course, hydro deals that didn’t performed. So, well, certainly there are great opportunities here and very attractive returns need to be prepared in our view to manage the risks.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Kevin Walsh, GE, renewable energy, Cleantech Venture Forum, The Cleantech Forum

Transcript:

Guest: Win J. Neuger - AIG Global Investment Group

Announcer
It is my honor and privilege to introduce to you Win Neuger of AIG Global Investment Group.

Win J. Neuger - AIG Global Investment Group
Thank you, Bob and Good Morning to all of you. At this conference you’re going to hear from a lot of speakers who know much more about Cleantech than I do. In fact in the two sessions that we’ve already had, you’ve learned more about Cleantech then I know, but what I am going to try to do is put some context around Cleantech in an over all investment portfolio and to talk about social responsible investing as an integral part of any investment decision. I would promise that no investment should be made without taking into consideration, social responsible issues. Why is that? There are really three primary reasons.

The first is risk. Socially irresponsible companies are bad businesses and bad businesses are high risk businesses. Secondly, as we’ve talked about already today, there are huge opportunities in social responsibility in terms of return potential and not only in new technologies but in repackaging. Thirdly and finally, more and more people care and as an Investment Manager, it creates business opportunities for us to pay attention.

So, I’m going to talk about all three of those to try to put some context into this. Now I noticed as I was sitting down there and I saw my cover slide come up, you will notice two things here. First of all the building that has AIG on it, is a brand new building that we built in Hong Kong, it is a clean building, a highly successful clean building and of course we have the Wind Power there in the sale. So, to complete, I didn’t choose this slide, but I would have if I’d thought of it. So, let’s start by talking about risks.

As we all know, when we’re looking at investments, there’re many risks that we consider on a regular basis. We talk about financial risk, what’s the business plan, what are the operating risks of the company. I think all of us as investors have generally considered these risks in everything we’ve done. We do extensive modeling on those risks. We look at various sensitivities. We grow our companies both public and private on their business plan and on the degree of leverage, but most of us historically have ignored the social risks. I mean we start by saying well it’s not our job as main stream investors to look at the social risk.

That’s the job of social responsible investors, as SRI Funds, that’s what they do. They look at those risks. That’s not my job, I’m supposed to pick the best companies and pick the best return from my investors, so I don’t have to worry about those risks. Now, I’m no more of an expert on Global Warming that I’m on clean technology, but at least my risk criteria are rapidly evolving relative to these kinds of environmental risks. Companies that are irresponsible carbon emitters are paying a price for that or will pay a price for that, in fact in most of the world they do pay a price. US I think eventually they will pay a price.

Now, people who emit excess carbon in Europe, pay a true price and people who are — who generate carbon credits get paid for it. So, that’s our true dollars and cents or I guess in this case Euros and cent, transfer of wealth and in fact I believe even in the US that transfer of wealth takes place. I as an investor have to start to look at that potential legislation, that will put that tax on, for me and if I’m going to have that potential risk, I better start to factor that into, to my return equation.

So, in fact I will do that. Just as importantly, industry is pushing towards greater environmental responsibility and accountability. There’s no question in my mind that green buildings receive premium rents and a premium price on sale. This becomes even more so, when that high energy price and high energy consumption is tied in. You get that double whammy of a dirty building and a high priced rent because of energy cost.

Lastly, of course the risk of fines and other sanctions can be significant cost for companies that follow environmentally on some practices. GE, as we all know has paid something around $80 million so far. Many people think that will go to $150 million for dumping glutens into the Hudson River and just this week I received a publication called Executive Council which is on legal issues related to corporation and you see the two headlines here that were two articles in that journal, for those who can’t see it in the back. They’ve talked about criminal charges and criminal prosecutions. So, not only are we running the risk as polluters of civil sanctions, but also criminal sanctions.

So this is a very real risk to us as investors. Okay, so you say — okay maybe environmental issues, we really should take environmental issues into consideration. I’ll accept that as a risk, but that’s kind of the end of the line, I mean don’t talk to me about these other social risks.

Okay, where do you want me to start, I’ll start as I’m doing this slide with child labor. Now, I get two excuses that people use in terms of why they have child labor that produces product for them. The first is the three monkey defenses, hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. I outsourced this, I didn’t know that my suppliers were using child labor. So that’s not my fault. The other — which I think is equally bad, well it actually is a good thing because it’s bringing up the living standard in XYZ country. If it weren’t for the fact that we had cheap labor and child labor, we wouldn’t produce this good in that country. We will produce it somewhere else, so in fact that country and those kids would be worse-off.

So we’re actually doing a public service by hiring these kids. Now, I think they’re both equally bad, but in reality it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what consumers think? When you show up on 60 minutes with child labor, when you get experience and the revulsion of your clients or your customers, it has a real bottom line impact and you just have to ask Nike, who showed up on CBS with labor problems in Indonesia and in Life magazine with this 12-year-old boy in Pakistan sowing a Nike soccer ball. What the impact was on their sales, their margins and their stock price and what the impact was ultimately on the company and the changes and practices that they had to put in place.

GAP is another example, I’m sure all of you’ve read about the report that GAP did on their social responsibility report, where they reveal terrible working conditions in several countries in which they operate. Mexico, China, India and Russia. GAP actually had to cancel contracts with 136 different suppliers around the world in order to become compliant, a very true cost in terms of implementing that. In addition, I really belief that unsafe, unclean, working conditions ultimately have an impact in terms of social unrest and labor unrest in the country and eventually as people’s living standards come up to a certain level, lets say, I’m not going to take this anymore and you end up with labor unrest, you end up with strikes and certainly you have poor quality merchandise from that.

The Limited, which has made a commitment to a high quality working conditions and its suppliers and a commitment and forcing them to make a commitment that they will impose that all the way through the supply chain, is absolutely convinced that the net result of that, even though they pay a little more, the net result of that is high quality merchandise and far fewer returns and far more satisfied customers at the end. So, they make sure that all of their strategic partners have these processes throughout, as I said throughout their supply chain.

The final risk that I’ll discuss briefly is corporate governance. I think we have enough examples in the past couple of years of companies that have met there demise in the US, in Europe and in Japan, just to pick on the developed countries and a lot of that has been driven by poor corporate governance. Companies that have greater transparency have greater stability and predictability of their financial results and that’s not just greater transparency in terms of financial results, but also social, environmental and governance. Organizational stability as I said leads to predictability of corporate profits, which leads to risk reduction on their investments.

So, now I want to turn to the opportunity side of the equation. You will hear a lot about new Cleantech ideas at this conference, but it’s clear to me that between Kyoto and high oil prices, great opportunities are being created not just with new technologies, although I guess — if I look at that earlier slide, I guess it’s still considered new, things like wind and solar, ethanol, roughage to energy and carbon devouring forestry. All these are great new if you will, investment opportunities.

Furthermore, if you ought to respond to whole new trading up market in carbon emission. So, Co2 emissions are now an actively traded commodity. New social responsibility and concerns are also bringing new customers to green products. I presume that there’s a reason that BP and GE are using the themes of beyond petroleum and Ecomagination in their ad campaigns. I don’t think it’s just because they want to show themselves in a good light to the government or to the people that might prosecute them, they do it because their customers care is my belief. Their customers truly care.

So, while GE recognizes its past wrong doings, the company also recognizes the opportunities presented through climate change initiatives. Plans to double its revenues to $20 billion in 2010 from the sale of environmentally friendly products and is committed to double its annual investments in Cleantech to $1.5 billion by 2010. Even Wall-Mart, as the earlier slide shows, has gotten the message that being social responsible matters to their clients or to their customers and that people won’t show up in the store if they don’t take a better stand.

I mentioned earlier that tenants care about their carbon footprint and are willing to pay for green space. Mentioned earlier, customers are paying for premium — are paying a premium rather for hybrid cars. Furthermore, cleaning up the environment is good business. At AIG, we were able to take a — an environmentally contaminated site in Atlanta, Midtown Atlanta which is — if you know Atlanta is prime infield location and turn it from a brown field into a green field and a truly green investment. Green both in terms of the environment and green in terms of the profit to the investors. We talked — if you look at the insert or the cover page in the packet for today’s meeting, it talks about the second industrial revolution.

Well, in the first industrial revolution, great productivity produced by a wonderful steel plant outside of Atlanta which, of course, now is pretty much in the middle of Atlanta — very important to the growth of the region and to the country. By 1999, that old steel plant was an environmentally contaminated, blighted, urban location that no one would touch and today it’s a thriving green development that has in this fabulous location, close to Downtown Atlanta with a multi-use project with office, retail and residential. Atlantic Station received recognition from various organizations including the EPA’s 2004 Phoenix Award for the best national brown field development, the U.S. Green Building Counsel, LEED’s prototype credits, developments within buildings within Atlantic Station and the first high-rise building that we built was the first office building in the US to receive LEED’s Silver Core and Shell Certification, our second high-rise building was pre-certified as LEED Gold and the Sierra Club identified this as America’s best new development project in 2005.

Now, I’ll just run through those not to toot our own horn, but really decide that building a project like this, taking a blighted site, re-mediating it and building a quality project, enables you to not only do good but to do extremely well from an investment point of view. Social responsible investing socially responsible companies have also done well in the market. Nick talked about his new Cleantech index. I mean there are a couple of other industries that we have looked at that show this. For example, the Dow Jones sustainability index has significantly outperformed the general market. Over the past 12 months, the Dow Jones sustainability index outperformed the SNP by over seven-and-a-half percentage points and over the past 3 and 5 years by 16% and 10%, respectively.

So it’s paid again to make these investments. In Japan, the Morningstar Japanese SRI index has outperformed the Nikkei 225 over the past year by almost 2 percentage points and again for 3 and 5 year periods has significantly outperformed as well. So, there clearly is not a social responsible investment penalty, in fact it’s been clear up side. Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about what’s in it for us as an asset manager. The first thing is, as I said, it does matter, it matters to the results, I mean in terms of your investment performance and if you think about it, that‘s our product, that’s what we are outselling to our clients and selling to our affiliated insurance companies. These are investment results.

But, it’s also important in terms of other factors, for example, retention and hiring of people. A lot of studies have been done in terms of employees wanting to work for companies that are socially responsible. It’s interesting, I learned recently that Google as an example will pay any employee who buys a hybrid car, $5000. I’m sure they do that because of their concern and their commitment about the environment, but I’m sure also they do it because it’s a great recruiting tool, because again as I say, people want to work for a company that cares. So, the reputational advantages for SRI are also important. It’s clearly been a success or been an indicator of success as I said for hiring, for retaining, it reduces absenteeism, improves work and productivity and the quality of product. The flip side is also true. People don’t want to work for companies that have poor records in terms of social responsibility. They don’t want to have to go tell their friends, “Oh I work for this dirty company,” it’s just not where people want to work.

As we all know hiring and retaining quality workforce is one of the biggest challenges I think we have in every industry in this country and around the world. Our position on sustainability, which I’ll talk about a little bit more, in fact, was developed by an employee task force. I mean a lot of our position was developed by taking a group about ten people and saying, “Look I think this is important, you all develop what you think our practice strategy should be.”

So couple of years ago we put this team together and they came up with significant recommendations, most of which we have implemented at their recommendation. Some of the things that AIG has done you may have read, AIG has a clear policy now on environment and climate change, we have established an office of environment and climate change which is headed by my colleague Alice LeBlanc who’s here. We have worked to minimize our own green house gas emissions and we have committed to communicating and monitoring the results.

Furthermore, we have developed risk management and derivative products in Co2 trading. Again, there are clear business opportunities in all these areas. We have insured a project’s ability to generate tradable carbon credits and we have provided consulting and technical services for energy in carbon reduction programs. Within AIG Global Investment Group, I’ve already talked about our green building. All of our buildings are green. We’re committed to remediation and recoupment and brown field projects. We use environmentally sustainable construction materials, energy efficient design, etcetera. In our public and equity indebt products, we’re committed first to finding companies that meet the dual objectives, but also committed to evaluating the social issues on every single company in which we invest.

In our private equity side, we make investments in emerging markets that develop those countries, in Asia, in developing Europe and Latin America. We have a social responsible hedge fund that we sell to clients. We have social responsible equity products in the US and Japan and we have committed a significant portfolio to sustainable investments in Europe, which is run by another one of my colleagues who is here, Julia Balandina.

So, all of these things we think are opportunities for us and for other investors. So, let me conclude by saying that I believe that the evidence is increasingly clear. Any investor who fails to consider environmental, social and governance issues in all of it’s investments, is taking out risks, that it’s not paying — that it’s not accounting for and not getting paid for. Furthermore, they’re missing the upside potential of clean technology, green buildings and other product developments and finally, by missing the reputational opportunities that are important to many of their shareholders, they’re failing to satisfy employees, shareholders, and customers. Investors can in fact do well by focusing on social, environmental and governance issues and by doing good, they can do very well, so thank you very much.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Cleantech Venture Forum, AIG, Win Neuger

The Cleantech Forum is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:

Host: Rio Pesino - PodTech
Guest: Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This is Rio Pesino for Podtech.net, I am here with Steve Taber who is the Chairman and CEO of Nordic Windpower, welcome to the Podcast.

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
Thank you Rio very much, it’s a great pleasure.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Steve, first question, go and tell our listeners what your company is, and what do they do, what’s your company all about?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
We are a wind-turbine manufacturing company, we manufacture turbines based on a very innovative Swedish technology, and what is innovative about this technology is that the equipment is simple and reliable and low in cost. If you think of our competitors as being Ferraris we are a Volvo. We may not be the sexiest machine, but we are absolutely predictable and reliable. We give years and years of trouble free operation with minimum maintenance and low cost.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now, what makes your product different than your competitors?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
The main design which our competitors have followed is a rigid massive design, which is very heavy. It’s over engineered, it’s very heavy and it responds rigidly to the wind. Our design is designed to be flexible, so that it flexes with the wind. So, eccentric forces from turbulence are dissipated harmlessly, so that the turbine itself can be operated in a very low stress environment. That saves us weight, it saves us failures, maintenance problems and ultimately gives us a bottom line cost that is anywhere from 10% to 30%.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now, I noticed your Windpower system has two blades as opposed to three?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
Well, two blades have a number of advantages. It saves weight; it makes the design much more elegant in its ability to respond flexibly and passively to the wind. Like I say, the three-bladed turbine is a rigid design, it’s kind of like an ocean liner, the two-bladed design is kind of like a sail boat. It goes with the wind rather than fighting against the wind.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What’s your existing customer base?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
The existing customer base right now is entirely in Sweden and of Swedish utilities. What we’re doing with this company is introducing the technology to the United States and here our customers will be the established Wind power developers in utilities and the community energy movement. There’s a great deal of growth right now in that sector of the industry in the United States. Communities, farmers, school districts, small towns, Swedish districts and things like that, they’re all trying to put or many of them are trying to put up a few turbines, one, two or three turbines where they can use it as a revenue source to help their basic bottom line.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now, what are the some of the challenges you guys are facing bring your product here to the United States, if any?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
Well, the first challenge and the challenge which brings me here today to the Cleantech Forum is the challenge of having enough money. We don’t personally have enough money to fund this, we need about $10 million on our Balance Sheet in order to get our company up and running and sustain our growth curve, so that’s challenge number one. We are confident, we will solve that challenge because right now renewable energy is such a high growth industry that there’re a lot of real smart investors that are trying to get in it, so I’m confident we’ll get over that.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now in regards to Cleantech, what are your thoughts on this event overall?

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
I am hugely impressed; this is a Cracker Jack organization. I mean at this organization, one of the very smart things they do is that they invite all their investors but they screen the entrepreneurs very carefully so there’s only a handful of companies here in comparison to several hundred investors. So, that I think makes for an environment in which the investors don’t feel beleaguered and in which the companies that do, that are fortunate enough to be selected to come, can have a courteous reception from anybody I’ve talked to. I really admire this organization, my hat is off to Nick and Loren and everybody to put this together.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Steve, I appreciate the Podcast, thanks a lot for the time, and goodbye.

Steve Taber - Nordic Windpower
Thank you; it’s been a great pleasure.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Alright.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Nordic Windpower, Cleantech Venture Forum, Steve Taber, Cleantech, The Cleantech Forum

The Cleantech Forum is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:

Host: Rio Pesino – PodTech
Guest: Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations

Rio Pesino – PodTech
This is Rio Pesino for PodTech.net so I am here at Cleantech in New York. I am here with Pam Marrone, who is the Founder and CEO of Marrone Organic Innovations. Welcome to the Podcast Pam.

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Hi.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Now, Pam go ahead and tell me a bit about your company, what you guys do?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well we develop natural products for controlling weeds and pests in organic farming.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
How long have you guys been in business?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well we are a new startup and I am an experienced entrepreneur having other biopesticide companies started up before, but I started in April just raised our seed financing and now we are here at this Cleantech looking for the biggest — the big of round of financing two-three million.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Cool. How many employees guys having?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well, we now have three employees.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Wow, it’s a very, very neat.

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
We are a startup. Right now we’ve got a great product pipeline. We have already in licensed some products and we’ve got great people working for us, so it’s just money.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Right. What are some of the products?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well, we actually have our first weed killer, so the largest part in organic production is controlling weeds, you can’t use round up, you can’t use chemical sprays, you have to hand hold them out or use a tractor many times over the field, not very environmentally friendly to do that. So, those products actually it’s an extract of the plant that you can spray on the weeds and kill them and it’s organically certified.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
So, what are your thoughts on Cleantech, it’s a…?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well Cleantech is a great venue, I have actually presented here a couple times before and this is the biggest one ever. The Cleantech area is really hot right now and what’s nice about it is you get a lot of investors all in one room, listening to. So, it takes a lot less work to find investors when you are here.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
What’s your goal here at Cleantech?

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Well I would like to get at least one investor who could serve as a major lead investor for our series around.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Okay. Pam well good luck for that.

Pam Marrone – Marrone Organic Innovations
Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Marrone Organic Innovations, Pam Marrone, Cleantech Venture Forum, The Cleantech Forum

The Cleantech Forum is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:

Host: Rio Pesino - PodTech
Guest: Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This is Rio Pesino for PodTech.net. I’m here at The Cleantech Forum, here in New York. I’m standing with Kyle Schwultz, who is the CEO and Founder of Electrojet. Welcome to the Podcast.

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
Thank you.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Kyle, tell us why you’re here?

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
I’m here to promote my company Electrojet, which does small engine fuel-injection technologies. This is obviously a clean network of venture capital and our products reduce emissions as well as increase performance of small engine products that you might find in motorcycles, ATVs, even modern garden equipment.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What’s your existing customer base?

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
Well, currently we are in R&D, so we do not have any current customers, but we’re hoping to — we’re speaking to many and we’re hoping to secure development contracts over the next year.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This is obviously a competitive field.

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
Well, I think we’re trying to be somewhat modest in our company goals. We just like to — first of all, it’s a fun business to be in, it is exciting. I came from the auto industry which is a little bit depressed right now. So, it’s fun to do product development in exciting field such as recreation. Obviously we’re looking for funding. We’ve been through the Angel Networks within the state of Michigan, but we find that the amount of money they’d like to invest was a little bit lower than what we’re asking for.

So, we’re hoping to find individuals in this arena who obviously have the funding for what we’re asking for, but more specifically Clean is aligned very closely with our products. We’re really looking forward to growing our company, getting our products accepted into the marketplace and hopefully moving from there.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What are some of the challenges that you’re facing right now?

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
Mostly capital. So, we have an exceptional team in Michigan. As you may know, Michigan’s pretty much the home of automotive technologies, and what we’re doing at Electrojet is porting those technologies into the small engine market. So, we’ve got a great poll of employees, but most of them are part time.

So, we’re looking to take on money to take the next step, get our team on board full time and really aggressively penetrate the market. So, we came here because we’re excited about the opportunities. I’ve seen a lot of very interesting technologies here and I just hope there’s a few companies that think that our value proposition’s greater than the others.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Well Kyle, I appreciate the time, thanks for the Podcast and good luck with everything.

Kyle Schwultz - Electrojet
Thank you very much.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Alright.

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Tags: Ford Motor Co., Kyle Schwultz, Electrojet, Cleantech Venture Forum, The Cleantech Forum

The Cleantech Forum is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:

Host: Rio Pesino - PodTech
Guest: Len April - Sunarc

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This is Rio Pesino for PodTech.net. I’m here with Len April, President and CEO of Sunarc. Welcome to the Podcast Len.

Len April - Sunarc
Thank you very much.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now, Len go ahead and tell me a bit about Sunarc, what’s it all about and why you guy are here at Cleantech?

Len April - Sunarc
Thank you. Sunarc has developed an On-Demand Insulation & Shade System, primarily targeted at the commercial greenhouse market. What we’re doing is we’re infusing liquid foam, specially formulated liquid foam, between the two layers of the double polymembrane of a greenhouse, and we do that only at night. So, in effect we’re putting a R15 roof on a greenhouse every night.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Interesting.

Len April - Sunarc
In the morning the liquid foam has dissipated on its own and enables solar energy, natural heat, to enter the greenhouse all day long. It’s a closed loop system, so we repeat that again every day during the cold season to insulate the greenhouse. What we’re enabling is greater than 50%, 50% heat energy saved for commercial greenhouse growers.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
That’s a lot. I’m looking at the demonstration here and seeing how it works, it looks pretty interesting. How long have you guys been in business?

Len April - Sunarc
The company was around — 2000 was when it was started.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
How many employees are there?

Len April - Sunarc
We’re 15 employees right now.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What are some challenges you guys are facing in regards to your product, and you guys trying to push?

Len April - Sunarc
Challenges, when you talk to a grower that is spending anywhere from a $100,000 to $4 million every season to heat their greenhouse, and you can pretty much guarantee that they’ll save at least 50%, because we’ve actually demonstrated up to 60% heat energy saved. You really get their attention, and we’re talking substantial dollars.

The other thing that’s interesting about this system is it also can be used as a shade system. Instead of using it at night in cold weather, you can use it midday in a hot climate or temperate zone summers. We provide shading, and this provides fantastic agronomic benefits to a grower, including increase crop yield, increase size of fruit and less waste. So, we’re contributing to a grower’s top line and we’re also saving the money and reducing their operating cost on the bottom line.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What are your numbers in regards to sales of this product so far?

Len April - Sunarc
We have no sales yet. We have eight systems that are up and running and we’re currently negotiating our first sale’s contract as we speak.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Last question for you Len.

Len April - Sunarc
Sure.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What are your thoughts on this Forum over all, Cleantech over all?

Len April - Sunarc
I think it’s really interesting. My own background is in Information Technology, so I was part of the Internet boom and bust, and following that we saw Biotech, and what Cleantech is doing is they’re creating a community of investors for the clean technology area and I think it’s fantastic.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Okay, well Len, thanks a lot for the Podcast, I appreciate it.

Len April - Sunarc
Thanks Rio.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Sunarc, greenhouse, Len April, Cleantech Venture Forum, The Cleantech Forum

The Cleantech Forum XII is right around the corner, February 19-22, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Cleantech Forum brings together more than 600 top investors, companies and thought-leaders for two days of unparalleled networking and cutting edge exchange. Register here.

Transcript:
Host: Rio Pesino - PodTech
Guest: Nick Parker - Cleantech

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This is Rio Pesino for PodTech.net; I’m here with Nick Parker who’s the Chairman and Co-founder of Cleantech. Thanks a lot for joining us on the Podcast Nick.

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Rio, it’s the pleasure to be with you.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Tell us what Cleantech is and basically how did it get started?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Well, Cleantech with a small sea in terms of what we mean by Cleantech is about basically doing more with less, in terms of natural resources, it’s about optimizing how we use natural resources particularly energy. It’s about reducing or ecological impact and it’s about adding economic value in the sense of how can we move markets forward with better and new services that improve the way we use natural resources. As an organization we brought the concept of Cleantech to the business in financial world in 2002 and we build a whole community around that.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
So, tell us a little bit about the growth of Cleantech, how it’s started and how it is today?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Well the predecessor of Cleantech was environmental technology, now, it’s about scrubbers on smokestacks and sort of cleaning up the mess that we’ve made and doing it because we had to for regulatory or compliance reasons. Today Cleantech is about much more economic stuff. So, we’re worried about oil prices, we’re worried about energy security, I’m not worried about climate change.

So, that is forcing market change and consumers are asking for market change, whether it’s organic foods or better water supply or whatever it is, so what we’re seeing is in the capital market in venture capital and entrepreneurship is, we’re seeing a whole generation of people coming into this space now.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
What are some of the challenges Cleantech is faced since its inception?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Well, the challenges, is that often stuff that’s new is not new, and once people – once things get into the headlines, whether its biofuels or solar you get a bit of herd mentality of people chasing after sort of headlines. So, one of the challenges is a little bit too much exuberance in a couple of the headline areas.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
This week’s venture forum, go and tell us little bit about the actual forum and its purpose.

Nick Parker - Cleantech
We’re building a community where people do business and we’re bringing people who didn’t know they had a common agenda together. And so what the forum is about helping to provide inside relationships, opportunities to a whole range of people who make up the ecosystem of the Cleantech entrepreneurial and venture community and it’s very, very exciting to be here because you’ve got a whole range of major actors in the economy from Wal-Mart, to GE, to Goldman Sachs, now hooking up with economic grassroots, entrepreneur in the garage and that’s very same, but it isn’t exciting.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
So, you mentioned the entrepreneur in the garage being at this forum it kind of reminds me of the Internet and how it started I mean, is that do you think that’s a fair comparison?

Nick Parker – Cleantech
The comparison is very interesting in the sense that, the Internet came along, the microchip came belong and then people went out and found markets for it, markets for this new technology. The reverse is true with Cleantech, we’ve got these major problems, whether it’s climate change, or water scarcity or what have you and we are finding the technology to solve the problems. We’d — the problem with the market, we had the pain first and then the solution and historically in technology it’s been the other way around.

Rio Pesino – PodTech
Let’s go to back track to the forum. How many forums have you guys hosted and in terms of attendees how has it grown since the very first one?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Alright, 11 forums we’ve been in New York, London, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington DC. First forum had a 120 people all in, today we had or this week we had between 450 and 500 people. And what’s changed has been, it seems to be a bit of a club of everybody who knew each other and now we’re seeing a wide range of people who never before had thought they had an interesting space come together. So, we’ve had over 2000 investors at all of our forums and it represents everything you could possibly imagine.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Now, when is the next event?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Alright, thank you very much; the next event is 19th -21st of February in the heart of San Francisco at the Marriott.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
That’s where we’re at; we’re at (Voice Overlap).

Nick Parker - Cleantech
We’re going to have you guys there and we do lots of good Podcasting.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
Cool, now do you guys have a Website that any of our listeners can go to, if they’d like to?

Nick Parker - Cleantech
www.cleantech.com, it’s the place to be, if you want to know about this space.

Rio Pesino - PodTech
There we go. Nick Parker, Chairman, Co-Founder of Cleantech, thanks a lot for the Podcast.

Nick Parker - Cleantech
Rio, pleasure.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Cleantech Venture Network, venture capitalist, Nick Parker, The Cleantech Forum