Friday, 9 April 2010

Cleantech, Renewables & Sustainability Investment - Deal Flow



It’s encouraging to see creative ideas around fund raising for Cleantech, renewable & low carbon technologies – The Founders Club for example “where dealmakers club together” ... looks good, Par Equity - is this the largest Advisory board gathering of the great and good? There’s even talk of some novel and interesting off-grid (pardon the pun) boutique social stock exchanges emerging too.

But they all want the same thing - post revenue / growth potential businesses to invest in - so supply & demand will be a problem for the smaller players wanting quick returns.
This week also saw a Government announcement about the establishment of a Green Investment Bank operating on a commercial basis and involving both public and private sector capital. £1 billion will be raised from the sale of “mature government-owned infrastructure-related assets” (will we have anything left soon – even Dover Docks appears to be up for sale?). This would be matched by £1 billion of private sector investment ... I haven’t seen the detail yet but I’m sure the latter will be a challenge given the state of Corporate businesses today – and again its targeted on investment into heavyweight large complex infrastructure projects.
So – who’s tackling investment into the start up and innovation side of emerging green technologies?

There’s an ever increasing funding gap between early stage “fresh out of the shed entrepreneurs” and “high growth” ready businesses.

Ultimately this will impact deal flow at maturing business “high growth” stage. Inevitably this will get tighter and more and more investors will be chasing fewer deals... that will be interesting as the tables may turn a little perhaps.


By Debby Lloyd
Managing Director, EcoSearch

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