绿色科技正在怎样吞食世界

许多投资者可能还记得之前的“绿色科技泡沫”。投资公司花费数亿美元去资助清洁能源和绿色科技企业，但这些企业大多遭遇了惨痛的失败。投资者开始退出这个领域。

而如今，按照两家杰出的清洁能源技术投资公司的说法，绿色科技正在吞食世界。本周二，Kleiner Perkins绿色成长基金（Green Growth Fund）的大卫·芒特和Prelude Ventures的创始人加布里埃尔·克拉在新奥尔良举办的新兴技术大会Collision上，讨论了这个领域的发展。

芒特称，2008年绿色科技泡沫的那些企业“低估了发展这项技术所需的成本，高估了消费者采用他们产品的紧迫性，可能还低估了竞争格局的变化速度。”不过该领域现在已经吸取了教训。

他们表示，如今，初创公司正越来越多地为工业用途开发“绿色”技术，它们或许可以被归为农业技术、物联网或自动技术之类，不过对绿色技术投资者而言也是机遇。

芒特说，绿色科技企业如今已经“准备好借助数字领域成本大幅降低的利好，给工业、能源、环境、制造和运输领域带来影响”。所以，现在可以扩大对“绿色”投资的定义了。克拉表示：“我们的机会很多。”

我问他们，支持煤炭的特朗普总统上台，是否会改变他们的投资预期？答案是否定的。克拉和芒特表示，短期内，他们会投资使用绿色技术节省公司成本，带来经济价值的企业。也许下一任总统上台时，他们会加快投资步伐。芒特指出，他考虑的是长期投资，碳排放和经济生产力的历史联系还需要10年到30年的时间才会消失。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

Most investors remember the late aughts "green-tech bubble." Firms poured many hundreds of millions into failed clean and green technology companies, most of which failed badly. Investors retreated from the sector.

But now, green tech is eating the world, according to two prominent clean tech investors. On Tuesday, David Mount of Kleiner Perkins' Green Growth Fund, and Gabriel Kra, founder of Prelude Ventures, discussed how the sector has evolved on stage at the Collision conference in New Orleans.

Companies from the 2008 greentech bubble "underestimated the amount it would cost to scale the technology, overestimated how eager consumers would be to pick up their products, and probably underestimated how fast the competition was moving," Mount said. But the sector has learned from those mistakes.

Now, startups are increasingly developing "green" technologies for industrial uses that might be categorized as ag-tech, IoT, or auto-tech, but they're also opportunities for green tech investors, they said.

Companies today "are ready to benefit from massive cost declines coming out of the digital world that are ready to make their impact on the industrial world, the energy and environmental sectors, manufacturing sector, transportation sector," Mount said. So, expand your definition of "green" investing. "We are not opportunity limited," Kra said.

I asked whether the election of coal-friendly President Trump changed their investing outlook? Nope! In the short term, Kra and Mount say they're investing in companies that use green technology to generate savings for companies and make economic sense today. Maybe under a new President they could be accelerated. Mount noted that he's thinking long term -- breaking the historic linkage between carbon emissions and economic productivity will be a ten to 30 year process.