Ecotality Life

So what’s next for Al Gore now that he’s attained the Nobel Peace Prize and, even more importantly, an Oscar? This week’s Fortune examines his “next act”.

Not long ago, Gore started Generation Capital, a $1 billion investment management firm, with David Blood, former head of Goldman Sachs’ $300 billion asset management operation (personally, I think they should have called the firm Blood and Gore). While Generation has deep pockets and plenty of research power, it limits its investments to publicly traded companies. Since much of the cutting edge work in the clean technology arena is happening in smaller, privately held companies, Gore has decided to join forces with his friend John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins. The two firms will pool information, and Gore will serve as an active, hands-on partner at Kleiner (this is not merely an honorary post).

While Gore certainly brings the star power, and a good deal of expertise, the significance here extends beyond the cult of one personality. The real news is that Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley’s leading VC, which made initial bets on companies like Amazon, Netscape, and Google, is aggressively expanding beyond IT and Healthcare into the Green Tech arena. They have already invested $270million in clean technology, and they plan to invest an additional $200million, one-third of their latest fund, by 2009. An upcoming post will examine the fund’s specific holdings. For now, let’s appreciate the scope and ambition of Gore’s undertaking –

“To halt global warming, nothing less will be required than a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business. Coal plants, gas stations, the internal-combustion engine, petrochemicals, plastic bags, even bottled water will have to give way to clean, green, sustainable technologies. “What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project, and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally,” Gore continues. “It’d be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part.”

Meanwhile, as a reminder of the steep opportunity costs of Al not sitting in the White House, just take a peek at this letter, which the Bush administration recently sent to House Speaker Pelosi. It dictates its business-as-usual requirements for an energy bill and threatens to veto anything else, all with its standard boilerplate and doublespeak. So last century….

Ah, Florida – you should have voted for Al in 2000. Now you’ll be underwater before we know it. (Oh wait, you did vote for Al, didn’t you? Never mind.)

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