No industry is perfect, and the green tech industry has lately been proving that.
U.S. venture capital dollars going to cleantech have dropped 55% compared to the same time last year.
Not the best news we’ve heard… But fortunately for us, VentureBeat’s annual cleantech conference took a look at the next step in the market…
Which are all about generating data on energy use–the key to cleantech’s next step is making that data useful and producing it in real time.
And we’re seeing some companies already taking that step: Genscape collects information that helps energy traders in the trillion-dollar energy markets. WeatherBill has been using weather data to serve weather-linked insurance policies.
Regardless of the recent pessimisms on cleantech, there is still a lot of activity out there… smarter activity.
In fact, Google’s new Powermeter project is aimed towards free energy monitoring that allows you to view your home’s energy consumption from anywhere online.
And although many venture capital firms are going back to their roots in IT-based cleantech investments—Data is likely going to be the next big step.
Happy Investing,
-Michael Boytano
