Bill Weihl, former Green Czar at Google will start work greening Facebook in late January next year. As Fresh Dialogues predicted on his departure from Google last November, Weihl will stay in the green arena and plans to “advance sustainability” at Facebook. No details yet on his job title or the extent of his responsibilities, but he confirmed, “the focus will be on sustainability, clean energy, energy efficiency, etc.” We anticipate Weihl will use his extensive experience and passion for green to drive Facebook’s sustainable practices, leveraging its game-changing apps and Facebook’s vast membership of over 800 million active users.
Under his leadership at Google from 2006 to 2011, the company took a unique role in green policy advocacy as well as over $700 M in cutting edge clean energy investment. In July, Fresh Dialogues covered Google’s Green Dream, an audacious report outlining how the right green investment and policy could positively impact the economy and the planet. Without Weihl at the helm, Green at Google may lose some impetus, although Google’s Parag Chokshi assured us green investment and programs will continue. A new Green Czar has not yet been announced.
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Innovation and Silicon Valley go together like bits and bites. Another month another innovation competition. But Intel’s Global Challenge caught our attention for the breadth and quality of its innovators from around the world, who competed for $100,000 in prize money and the chance to pitch some of the valley’s top venture capitalists at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Fresh Dialogues was delighted to see a good number of environmentally conscious innovators made the cut, including PolySol, a recyclable alternative to plastic, made from coconut husks; Nitrate Production System, a low-cost earth-friendly fertilizer and ValleyFeed, a wireless wildfire detection system. These innovative teams came from India, Jordan and Saudi Arabia/Lebanon respectively. Closer to home, NextDrop, a Berkeley based team demonstrated a ground breaking system that uses crowd-sourcing technology to monitor and facilitate efficient water use in India. The venture capital judges agreed and gave NextDrop the Social Innovation Award.
The award winning team includes National Science Foundation Fellow, Emily Kumpel (pictured) who is a PhD candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. She brings her water management experience in Madagascar and Tanzania to NextDrop’s diverse team who include Ashish Jhina, Thejovardhana Kote, Anu Sridharan, Madhusadhan B, and Ari Almos.
We look forward to following their progress blog as they scale up NextDrop’s project in India.
One day after Steven Chu defends his department’s handling of the DoE loan guarantee to Solyndra, we look at the impact of Solyndra on the venture capital industry. In this exclusive interview, Andrew Chung, the newest member of the Khosla Ventures investment team, shares his views on the Post Solyndra era. Will the failure of Solyndra have a significant impact on cleantech investment? How does Chung respond to critics who say that cleantech investment is a disaster?
The downside
“Downstream, there are other investors who are a bit more skittish about investing in following rounds…”
The upside
“In the past twelve months, we have three companies that have gone public and generated over $1.1B in profits for the firm. ..It’s possible to make money in cleantech and drive a lot of change and drive significant returns.”
The future
“It’s still relatively early…we are in the second inning of an extra inning game, in the development of this industry.”
“(At Khosla Ventures) we continue to be incredibly excited about the cleantech opportunity…we just raised a $1.1B fund, half of it is going to be in cleantech.”
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Check back soon for more highlights from our interview with Chung:
On America’s comparative advantage vis a vis China
On what we can learn from China’s cleantech policies
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Google is on a green spending spree. By July 2011 it had invested over $700 M in clean energy. Today the figure is over $850 M and set to grow (approaching $1 B as at August 2012). Fresh Dialogues asked Google: How does it choose green startups and projects?
He’s talking about large solar power tower projects, like BrightSource’s Ivanpah project in California’s Mojave Desert to which Google contributed $168 M; and one of the world’s largest wind farms, Alta Wind Energy Center, also in the Mojave Desert where Google invested $55 M.
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In June this year, Google demonstrated its game-changing strategy by investing in SolarCity. This time it was a $280 M investment, to create a fund enabling the solar company to make residential rooftop installations more affordable (often eliminating the upfront cost for homeowners).
“Google is setting an example that other leading American companies can follow,” said Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity. “The largest 200 corporations in the U.S. have more than $1 trillion in cash on their balance sheets. Investments in solar energy generate returns for corporate investors, offer cost savings for homeowners, create new local jobs…and protect the environment.”
Despite the departure of Google’s Green Czar – Bill Weihl – this week, Parag Chokshi confirms that “we have a strong team and our work will continue. ..we actually have several executives that work on our green initiatives … other executives include Rick Needham, who has led and oversees our $850M in clean energy investments; and Urs Hoelzle, who oversees our entire infrastructure and has spearheaded our energy efficiency work.”
This video was recorded at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View CA on July 8, 2011.
Last night, Jeff Skoll joined an eminent group of change-makers – Bill Gates, Al Gore, Gordon Moore and Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan. He was honored with The Tech Awardstop prize, the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award. This former eBay president, Skoll Foundationfounder, and billionaire champion of global peace and prosperity, was recognized for his energetic quest to find the answers to climate change, water scarcity and nuclear proliferation.
In an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Skoll talked about the role of the tech community in making the world more sustainable. “Tech companies have a pretty big world view,” he said. “People here tend to have a better grasp of the bigger issues of the world…technologists can get ahead of these issues and create products that help.”
In 2004, he founded Participant Media, the Hollywood production company responsible for such provocative movies as An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman, and Fast Food Nation. Participant Media aims to “create entertainment that inspires”…and in several cases has achieved both box office success and created positive social action around the world.
So, will there be a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth? Skoll admits there is definitely something in the works, and it could even be a TV Show. Check out the Fresh Dialogues video for more details…
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As if all this weren’t enough, Skoll recently founded The Skoll Global Threats Fund, led by former Google.org chief, Larry Brilliant. Top threat on their list of five? Climate Change. Let’s hope they have some brilliant success with their mission.
The Tech Awards gala also recognized 15 laureates from around the world for creating innovative technology solutions to benefit humanity. The winner in the Environment category was Agua Clara a Cornell University program that designs sustainable (gravity powered) water treatment systems to provide clean water to over 25,000 people in communities around the world every day. I talked briefly with young AguaClara coordinator, Daniel Smith who plans to use the $50,000 cash prize to scale up the impressive work his organization is doing in Honduras.
Check back soon for part two of the Jeff Skoll interview to hear what one thing we can all do to make the world greener.
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“Believe in yourself.” That’s the core advice from Weili Dai, cofounder of Marvell, whom some are dubbing the new Tech Wonder Woman, given the recent ouster of Carol Bartz from Yahoo. Dai’s advice for women in business is resonating, given the focus on women’s crucial role in reviving the economy at the historic APEC Women and the Economy Summit in San Francisco last week, chaired by Hillary Clinton. The summit concluded that that increasing women’s participation in the economy could lead to a 14 percent rise in per capita income by 2020.
Weili Dai spoke at APEC and has strong views about women’s role in the business world. She argues that the best way to grow the world economy is to fully engage women as business leaders. She points out that fewer than 29% of global decision making positions are held by women. Encouraging more women to focus on science and technology is key she says. At the Game Changers Conference in Silicon Valley, despite calls from other delegates for trade intervention against China, she voiced her preference for collaboration not confrontation. “We are powerful, China is powerful. Today, we live in the global world….let’s collaborate…cooperation is the healthy thing to do.”
In this Fresh Dialogues interview, she shares some tips about how to succeed in the tech world. A native of Shanghai, Dai attended UC Berkeley and cofounded Marvell in 1995. Since then, she’s helped to grow the company into one of the world’s largest chipmakers. Marvell touts a few admirable green policies but could do better as a green leader, coming 434th in Newsweek’s green ranking of America’s largest 500 companies.
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