Green tech and clean tech are heavy buzzwords in the investment community, but are still somewhat untested investment prospects. They often need large scale investments in order to take a product to market and deploy it globally, and as this great article from GreenBiz.com shows, the price tag falls in an odd place that is too low for large banks that like to fund giant infrastructure products and many investment bankers don’t have the knowledge to assess these deals. That’s why GreenBiz is excited over the appointment of Bill Green (isn’t that surname just so appropriate?), a former leader of several green companies including Ecolink and Strategic Chemical Management Group, to Macquarie Capital Funds.
You can read more about Macquarie’s choice of Green in the GreenBiz article, but here are a few of quotes from the article on while green and clean tech are ripe for investments and what sort of projects Macquarie will be looking for:
“What began in the 1980s and 1990s with a handful of scientists, engineers, and idealistic entrepreneurs, funded by a small circle of friends, came to life during the 2000s with the infusion of tens of billions in venture capital, private equity, and corporate and government investments. That gave rise to the thousands of growing companies that today are manufacturing everything from solar cells to electric cars — and all of the batteries, fuels, engines, controllers, software, and other components that make these things work.”
As he sets now out to find and fund proven commercial technologies, Green says he will focus on wind farms, utility-scale solar, utility-scale solar thermal, and geothermal energy. Beyond that, he says, “I’m interested in finding the opportunities that are a bit less obvious but that come in the form of more traditional infrastructure.” Transmission, for example. “We believe that there may be opportunities for Macquarie in the emerging conversation around how renewable energy is moved from point of generation to point of use. This has been a real puzzle piece that’s starting to get more attention, but I think it’s still underserved from the standpoint of capital development.” Wastewater purification and landfill waste-to-energy technologies are two more interesting infrastructure opportunities, he says.
To check out Australian green and clean tech businesses, check out the green section of IPitch.
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