Not really. But several pieces of sobering news from the past couple of days:
They say that more wars have been fought over water than oil. Even if that's a now-dated statement, it still highlights the environmental, humanitarian, and national security implications of this report from SRI Consulting that concludes that global demand for water will exceed supplies by 56%... within 20 years.
Then there was this nugget regarding long-term oil production forecasts from the head of French oil giant Total: "100m barrels [per day]...is now in my view an optimistic case. It is not my view: it is the industry view, or the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly, and not...?just try to please people." Bear in mind that the IEA and the USGS are forecasting 116+ mbpd to meet demand under "business as usual" by 2030, up from around 85mbpd today. Don't expect oil prices to go into any sustained decline anytime soon, in other words...
So we can expect severe water, fuel and electricity supply challenges... Which seems like a good segue into the past week's cleantech venture deals:
Battery component innovator Atraverda has raised a $21.5mm Series B round of financing, from BankInvest New Energy Solutions, Espirito Santo Ventures, and existing investors Scottish Equity Partners, Chord Capital, Finance Wales, EnerTech Capital and OnPoint.
"No really, we're" Serious Materials has raised a $50mm Series B to help further commercialize their eco-friendly drywall. NEA, Foundation Capital and Rustic Canyon Partners participated in the round.
Khosla Ventures and BIOeCON have joined forces in a Series A to form KiOR, another developer of lignocellulosic biomass-to-fuels technology.
Rob Day is a Partner with Black Coral Capital, based in Boston. He has been a cleantech private equity investor since 2004, and acts or has served as a Director, Observer and advisory board member to multiple companies in the energy tech and related sectors. Rob was a co-founder of the Renewable Energy Business Network (www.rebn.org), a non-profit organization which was acquired in 2009 by the Clean Economy Network. The views expressed on this blog are those of Rob, not necessarily the views of any of his colleagues and affiliated organizations. Contact Rob at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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