EcoSearch "State of the Nation" Update - April/May 2010

It seems we have a lift!

The big question is “for how long?”. I’m sensing an underlying nervousness, what will happen post summer, post election, post Greece?

For a whistle-stop tour of what else I’m seeing;

Finance & Investment in general: -

• Early stage Innovation businesses in cleantech are still suffering from lack of finance although there’s some Creative fund ideas are emerging but these are pre-fund raising and still some months away
• There is still a lack of quality investments – with all investors sticking to traditional post revenue models
• Large scale asset based projects based on “known technologies” are more appealing to investors although a switch to investing in “IP” is being detected for some areas

CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment):

• Public sector – enquiries are up across the board but delivery is problematical
• FM – large companies gearing up internally to tackle CRC opportunity but clients showing frustration with over-layered FM business models
• Government Knowledge & Advice on procuring these products and services is sadly lacking and will affect the placement of orders

Microgeneration:

• Consumer & Business Demand is growing for product – however manufacturing problems in small wind, supply problems for inverters & Solar PV are issues
• Installer capacity to deliver projects and scale-ability will be an issue in the near term
• Renewables purchasers are frustrated with a fragmented market, product comparison is hard to action, corporate “slickness” is lacking in delivery
• The present MCS accreditation framework appears to be preventing the industry from reaching “sales” maturity
• The present sales & distribution models are problematical – especially in small wind

Business Models:

• The SME Services & Product Sector for Renewables & cleantech is suffering casualties, further casualties are expected from cash flow burn-out crisis
• Specialist & experienced installers will perhaps be prime for acquisition but managing integration will be key for any acquirer
• The Corporate & Utility sector is struggling to internally ratify traditional operating models with highly adaptive, flexible & fast moving emerging markets
• Innovation in the Corporate arena is constrained due to cash flow/focus on core business, smaller workforces & lost internal entrepreneurial ability

Disruption Technologies & Conspiracy Theories?

• … suffered from professional anti-blogging attacks? Well interestingly – now the furore of East Anglia has died down we uncover a rise in this type of activity. So who are the organisations having sufficient funds who have a vested anti-lobbying interest to procure the services of these anti blogging rings.
• And is it wrong to believe that some of those same industries are also buying up IP to shelve “disruption technologies” …
• UK Manufacturing – over-engineered & over-priced? KISS for the future – the Chinese are coming!

These are personal views. I welcome comment, debate and discussion – debby.lloyd@ecosearchglobal.com

Debby Lloyd,
Managing Director, EcoSearch

Image by Micky on Flickr

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

Green & Renewable Energy Events - March 2010

Here is EcoSearch's regular Events list for March 2010. If we have missed an event in the industry, don't hesitate to let us know.

Green Mondays (2degrees)
1st March 2010 - London, UK

National Energy Foundation - Introduction to Renewable Energy
2nd March 2010 - Milton Keynes, UK

EcoBuild 2010
2nd - 24th March 2010 - London, UK

Carbon Market Insights
2nd - 4th March 2010 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Renewables East - Feed in Tariff - The real potential for renewable enregy support
3rd March 2010 - Cambridge, UK

New Energy Finance Summit 2010
3rd - 5th March 2010 - London, UK

BWEA Wave & Tidal 2010
4th March 2010 - London, UK

EnerTech World Expo' 2010
3rd - 5th March 2010 - Mumbai, India

Gulf Environment Forum
7th - 9th March 2010 - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

UK OFFSHORE WIND SUPPLY CHAIN CONFERENCE
9th March 2010 - Bristol, UK

Climate Change: How will it impact on your business?
12th March 2010 - Aberdeen, Scotland

World Biofuels Markets
15th - 17th March 2010 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

RENEWABLE HEAT INCENTIVE - WARMING UP THE MARKET
16th March 2010 - Bristol, UK

Thin Film Solar Summit Europe
17th & 18th March 2010 - Berlin, Germany

New Energy Husum 2010
18th - 21st March 2010 - Husum, Germany

National Home Building and Renovation Show
18th - 21st March 2010 - Birmingham, UK

Scottish Renewables - Annual Conference
23rd & 24th March 2010 - Glasgow, Scotland

GLOBALCON 2010
24th & 25th March 2010 - Philadelphia, USA

Offshore Wind & Transmission
30th & 31st March 2010 - Hamburg, Germany

Green and Renewable Energy Events - February 2010

Each month we aim to bring you a comprehensive list of all the events happening in the world of Renewable Energy, Clean Technology, Carbon Management and Sustainability.

If we have missed any events, just let us know and we will be happy to add to our list.

You can also see our list for January 2010 here.

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Green Mondays (2degrees)
1st February 2010 - London, UK

Offshore Wind Power
2nd & 3rd February 2010 - Philadelphia, USA

The CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards 2010
3rd February 2010 - London, UK
You can follow @CIBSE on Twitter

RETECH 2010
3rd - 5th February 2010 - Washington, USA

Bioenergy Expo
4th - 7th February 2010 - Verona, Italy

Scottish Energy and Environment Conference
9th February 2010 - Glasgow, Scotland

Plastic and Thin Film Photovoltaics
11th & 12th February 2010 - Barcelona, Spain

Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo
23rd - 25th February 2010 - Texas, USA
You can follow @REWorld on Twitter

Cleantech Forum San Francisco
24th - 26th February 2010 - California, USA
You can follow @cleantechgroup on Twitter

Stay tuned - we will publish a similar list for March 2010 soon.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from EcoSearch

All at EcoSearch would like to wish our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We are all looking forward bringing you more exciting news, views and snippets from the world of talent in Renewable Energy, Clean Tech and Carbon Management in 2010.

If you would like to keep up to date over the festive period, EcoSearch is on Twitter. So feel free to follow @EcoSearch and never miss a thing.

In the meantime, you might like to check out some of our most popular posts of 2009:

• Our Green and Renewable Energy events lists
• Do you still need head hunters in a down economy?
• Green IT challenges
• Boost Your Career in 2009 with LinkedIn
• VCs - Where has the 'venture' gone from Venture Capital?

Image by josh.liba

Green and Renewable Energy Events – January 2010

Here is the first event list for 2010.

If you know of an event we have missed, please let us know and we will add it to the list. You can drop us an email or leave us a comment here on the blog. You can also view and download our full list of events for the next six months.

If there is anything else we can add to this service to make it more useful to you, just let us know.

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Green Mondays – Post Copenhagen
11th January 2010 – London, UK

Green Drinks – London
Green Drinks events are held globally – find many other events via their website.
12th January 2010 – Soho, London UK

Follow @greendrinks on Twitter

InterSOLUTION - the 1st and only solar energy trade fair in the Benelux
14th – 16th January 2010 – Belgium

World Future Energy Summit
18th – 21st January 2010 – Abu Dhabi, UAE

Solar Power Generation USA
20th & 21st January 2010 – Las Vegas, Nevada USA

Distributed Wind Interconnection Workshop
21st – 23rd January 2010 – Golden, CO USA

Climate Change: Effective Communication
22nd January 2010 – Edinburgh, Scotland

Energy from Biomass and Waste
26th & 27th January 2010 – London, UK

Wind Power Monthly Offshore Event
27th January 2010 – London, UK

Wind Power Commercial Strategies
27th – 29th January 2010 – Vienna, Austria

Course: Renewable Energy Technologies for 6* Sustainable Homes
29th January 2010 – University of Brighton, UK

Here is December 2009’s event list, and pop back or subscribe via RSS as we will be publishing a similar list for February soon.

VCs: Where has the “venture” gone from Venture Capital?

Well here is a question that no one seems able or willing to answer, I’ll throw it open to the investment Universe -VCs, private equity, corporate finance, angel funders, high net worth individuals – be you early stage, late stage (or indeed ANY stage which would be good right now)

Who is REALLY investing over here in the UK – have we closed for Christmas early this year?

From where I am sitting (having watched a colleague bash the phones for the last 4 weeks across a myriad of investor networks on what is – to me – a “no brainer” cleantech medical device manufacturing process) it strikes me that there is an inordinate amount of tyre kicking going on out there, people sitting on piles of cash with no home and not a lot of action.

Today we hear of an investor pulling the plug on a £7m investment because they were feeling “over exposed”.

And at the other end of the spectrum on my desk I can’t find £150K for something that has mass market developing country and remote energy application potential.

Come on people, shame on you! Do I really have to create something totally radical to bypass you lot?

If the anti risk and tyre kicking stance most of you are taking presently continues, how do we progress the low carbon technology agenda? The Carbon Trust and those delightful public sector competition rounds are not going to get us anywhere fast.

My sweeping generalisation about investment land presently is that you are all lacking in creativity, sophistication, knowledge and your models and ideals means you will miss some technology waves. Some spaces are moving so fast by the time you’ve even “gated” the first investment proposal the opportunity has been snapped up into corporate land, is mothballed never to see the light of day, or worse – goes bust before it's started.

The lack of funding supply also means that there is a world of collaboration starting to open up out there that will completely bypass you in future. All those lovely technologies that are scalable and interesting may well find themselves swept up into the arms of a cash rich Corporate doing a nice line in acquiring patents and technologies and sand-bagging for the future. Again, some of those may never see the light of day because we all know corporate cultures aren’t great at “incubating”.

Anyone notice a bit of sweeping up of patents going on of late?

Push back by all means …

By Debby Lloyd

Managing Director, EcoSearch