What does this mean to us? A lot, actually. Investors power start ups with great new products that we eventually consume in large numbers. Clean tech is diverse, touches many industries, makes most aspects of life more efficient.
So, we hope investors are a quick study on the amazing potential of clean tech, and quickly open up their checkbooks to back our latest innovations.
Private investors often lack knowledge about the latest trends in cleantech, says Candace Johnson, president of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN) in an interview with Energy Post. But they are catching up quickly. EBAN has started a partnership with sustainable energy accelerator InnoEnergy to learn more about what is happening in the cleantech sector. “Business angels have more patience than venture capitalists”, notes Johnson. “We could make a real impact here.”
In June of this year, InnoEnergy, Europe’s largest sustainable energy accelerator, and EBAN, the European trade association for Business Angels, Seed Funds and Early Stage Market Players, set up a partnership under the name of EBAN Energy. The goal: to give EBAN’s network of business angels (EBAN has 197 member organisations in 59 countries) and InnoEnergy’s 170+ pan-European sustainable energy start-ups a networking platform.
The partnership will provide InnoEnergy’s start-ups with direct access to funding, helping to reduce time to commercialization of their products. EBAN’s members invest some €6.1 billion a year in startup ventures.
But the investors also have a lot to gain by the partnership. The most important benefit to them, says their president, Candace Johnson, is not merely to be presented with investment opportunities, but to learn more about the trends in the energy sector as well as about the complex regulatory challenges involved.
Johnson is a famous innovation expert and serial entrepreneur in the telecoms and satellite sector. She is, among many other things, the co-initiator of SES/ASTRA and SES Global, the world’s pre-eminent satellite group, founding President of Europe Online Investments, the world’s first internet-based online service and satellite broadband network, and founder of Loral Cyberstar-Teleport Europe, Europe’s first independent private trans-border satellite communications network.
She is also President of Johnson Paradigm Ventures (JPV), a principal founding shareholder with AXA, Caisse des Depots, Bayerische Landesbank, and the SPEF, of Sophia Euro Lab, Europe’s first trans-border early-stage investment company based in Sophia Antipolis, a technology park near Nice, France. She has now turned her attention to the cleantech sector, because she is convinced this will become a huge market – and because climate change is one of the key challenges of our time. Through EBAN Energy she hopes to become more familiar with this promising market.
Johnson is a panelist at the Inno Energy Business Booster event on 25-26 October in Amsterdam, where she will take part in a discussion about financing new energy technologies. We caught up with her on the eve of that event.
What made you become interested in sustainable energy and cleantech?
“First, any involved citizen today has to be interested in cleantech. Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. Second, private investors invest in what we call the addressable market. That has to be a large, scalable market in order to get a decent return on investment. It is very clear that all countries and citizens need to have new sustainable sources of energy and that a huge market is coming about. It is also clear that the incumbent energy companies today have a problem. They still depend on fossil fuels as a cash cow, but their organisations aren’t really geared to innovation.”
What can business angels bring to the cleantech sector?
“Business angels can be crucial for bringing cleantech innovations to the next level. Cleantech has a long investment cycle and business angels are very good at that game. Better usually than venture capitalists, who invest other people’s money and have to promise a certain return on investment within a limited time. Business angels, because they are investing their own money, can be more patient. They may also feel very strongly that investing in clean energy is good. They get personally involved.”
What are the biggest challenges for business angels in the cleantech sector?
“I think it is the knowledge of the sector. Many business angels do not have that much knowledge about cleantech innovations. There are new technologies that are coming along that need an expert eye, because developments in this field go so fast. Unfortunately, in the past, a lot of private investors lost money when they invested in solar and wind. Today sustainable energy has become much more competitive and is linked to a host of other technologies, such as sensors, the internet of things, artificial intelligence techniques. Those are fabulous new opportunities to invest in. That’s why we private investors have to become more knowledgeable about energy trends.”
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