High fuel prices may be a blessing in disguise
Investors rush to support development of greener technology
11:25 a.m. Thursday, July 3, 2008
Right now, billions of dollars are being poured into turning things like cow manure, algae, cooking oil, corn and even tiny microbes in lab beakers into new sources of fuel. It's being called a "green gold rush," an investment stampede rapidly accelerated by soaring gas prices.
"There's certainly a gold rush of speculation, kind of like 1849 when everyone was rushing with their picks and shovels and finding opportunities," venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson said.
Last year alone $148 billion poured into alternative energy -- double what it was from the year before -- from venture capitalists, even pension funds.
Some of that investment money is going to towards cars that run solely on hydrogen. Some of these cars are on the road right now.
Meanwhile, there is feverish work being done on electric cars, plug-in hybrids, even cars that run on compressed air.
You can also see the investment at work at a bottled water company in North Carolina. No longer making plastic bottles out of petroleum, they're making them out of bio-safe corn instead.
And then, there's the really mind-bending stuff, like microscopic bugs that eat things like coal or sugar or wood chips and turn it into natural gas or jet fuel.
"There is a lot of money coming in. It is going to make a difference but will these new technologies take time to deploy," technology forecaster Paul Saffo said.
For all the the pain, there are experts who believe higher gas prices may truly be for the best.
"If gas prices stayed artificially low for the next ten to 20 years, we probably wouldn't see enough innovation as we desperately need as a planet to stave off future global warming," Jurvetson said.
Surely some of these new companies will fail but as one investor told us today, those that survive will change the world.
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