Renewable Energy and Crowdfunding

A friend sent me this piece earlier today on the concept of crowdfunding for renewable energy.

In the main, I’m not a fan of crowdfunding in this space—for the same reason that VCs tend to avoid the subject: it’s capital intensive. You think you’re going to raise a billion dollars a hundred dollars at a clip?  Wrong.

That’s what makes the subject so thorny: generally, capitalists are terrified of projects like these, whether we’re talking about algal biofuels, molten salt thorium reactors, or anything else.  For-profit companies want extremely short-term returns, and projects like these are, by their very nature, long-term.  Sure, we can turn to government, but guess what?  Capitalists pride themselves on their vitriolic hatred and distrust of government.

As it happens, however, there is one piece of good news – and it’s incredibly good: the cost of certain forms of renewable energy have become so cheap that the game is over, the good guys have won, and now all we have to do is watch and see how the pieces of the puzzle align. Not to repeat myself, but that’s the theme of my new book (working title: “Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose”).