Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 04/2010

Venture Capital Investment in the Greentech Industries: A Provocative Essay*

Martin Kenney

July 2009

Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy

Abstract

In the first decade of the 21st Century there has been increasing awareness of environmental issues and recognition that these are now global in scope. This has occurred for many reasons and is perhaps best epitomized in the global warming discussion. The dramatic rise of China and India, in particular, has reoriented the debate about the sustainability of the current trajectory of fossil fuel usage and environmental degradation. Put quite simply, if the economic growth of China, initially, and then India were to follow the historical trajectory of fossil fuel energy usage and resource consumption that Japan, Taiwan, and Korea followed, the environmental impacts would be nothing short of monumental.