Impact Investing + Cleantech. This Is The Year.

By Ener­gy Excel­er­a­tor: What do Bill Gates, Steve Case, Nan­cy Pfund, Pierre Omid­yar, and Will Smith all have in com­mon? All Hol­ly­wood action stars? Umm­mm…. yes, and, they are all clean­tech investors.

What do Bill Gates, Steve Case, Nan­cy Pfund, Pierre Omid­yar, and Will Smith all have in com­mon? All Hol­ly­wood action stars? Umm­mm…. yes, and, they are all clean­tech investors.

It was a flur­ry of activ­i­ty. The Fed­er­al Trea­sury announced that it may be stream­lin­ing the tax rules relat­ed to mis­sion-relat­ed invest­ments and pro­gram-relat­ed invest­ments. A new cen­ter at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy called the “Clean Ener­gy Impact Invest­ment Cen­ter” was form­ing. My orga­ni­za­tion, Ener­gy Excel­er­a­tor, was announc­ing a new fund for our port­fo­lio com­pa­nies and more.

But amidst all this buzz, the news that made head­lines was that Will + Jada Smith’s Foun­da­tion was invest­ing in a lit­tle known start­up called Quid­net Ener­gy — a new ven­ture that’s try­ing to use nat­ur­al cav­i­ties in the earth to store ener­gy. Men In Black Caves? Inde­pen­dent Investor day? Fresh Prince of Clean Air? But seri­ous­ly… how and why did this all happen?

Let’s take a step back here. What is clean­tech, exactly?

You may be famil­iar with promi­nent indus­tries such as solar, wind, elec­tric cars, bat­tery stor­age, etc. But clean­tech is much more than that. Clean­tech enables chil­dren in Tan­za­nia to read at night. Clean­tech helps women in Nicaragua access clean water for their fam­i­lies. Clean­tech is cre­at­ing micro-entre­pre­neurs in Thai­land through mobile phone charg­ing sta­tions. At Ener­gy Excel­er­a­tor for exam­ple, we take a broad view and invest in every­thing from water effi­cien­cy to regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture to off-grid ener­gy access. Clean­tech is big and broad.

To read the full arti­cle, vis­it Clean­Tech­ni­ca.