I've received a ton of helpful feedback after putting out the Cleantech Venture Capital in 2015 presentation; thanks much to everyone for the thoughts and reactions. Glad to see it sparking some thinking and conversation out there, which is why I did it. I'll post a follow-up here in a while.

In the meantime, I'm finding myself spending a not-insignificant amount of time on two "extracurricular" projects lately, the Clean Economy Network (where I'm co-chair of the board of the CEN Education Fund) and the Cleantech Open (where I'm serving as the chair of the Northeast regional competition/organization, Ignite Clean Energy). It's not like I don't have a ton of direct investor...

We've been talking about the need for new investment models in cleantech venture capital for some time now.  A couple of years ago, I put out a presentation calling out some of the more unsustainable trends in cleantech VC in evidence at that time. By now, many of those trends and practices are even more upfront in the minds of many investors and LPs. In the meantime, the cleantech venture industry has entered a period of significant stress. . . and potential reinvention.

Over the past few weeks, based upon lots of conversations with fellow cleantech investors, LPs, and entrepreneurs, I've been working on an effort to look forward to what's next for the sector. It's been an...

Forgive a combined post on two different topics today, but between the ARPA-E conference in D.C., the MIT Energy Conference in Boston, and a general flood of activity in the office, it's been a crowded week. Plus, at least in my mind, they're connected.

First, on the ARPA-E conference: one thing that struck me at the conference was how the exhibit hall seemingly was dominated by bugs and carbon-capture techs. Now, I'm glad that ARPA-E funds are going to tackle such difficult technical challenges, and I hope that someday there will be breakthroughs in these areas as a result.  

But it did drive home for me just how much I'm bothered by the disconnect between the strong efforts by...