Silicon Valley's Conflicted Relationship With Cleantech

In 2012, Wired magazine ran a prominent feature on why "the cleantech boom went bust." A couple years later, after a slew of venture investment failures in the industry, 60 Minutes ran a major story on "the cleantech crash." The stories were widely criticized by cleantech experts as incomplete or inaccurate (the Energy Gang even ran its own critique of the 60 Minutes story). But they did reveal some hard truths: venture investors lost a lot of money on clean energy investments. There was indeed an investment bubble -- and it popped. Over the last couple of years, investors have taken on a more capital-lite, software-dominant approach to cleantech. But now some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley are taking on one of the most capital-intensive industries of all: automobiles. So what are we to make of the venture investment climate? This week, we'll talk with Katie Fehrenbacher, a senior writer at Fortune, about trends she's seeing in the sector. Later in the show, we'll take a look at SunEdison's latest troubles. And we'll end with a discussion about the recycling industry's economic woes. The Energy Gang is produced by Greentechmedia.com. The show features weekly discussions between energy futurist Jigar Shah, energy policy expert Katherine Hamilton and Greentech Media Editor Stephen Lacey. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.