Clean Energy – Market and Investment Opportunities

This is a 1-day workshop where we reveal and analyze opportunities worth more than $35 trillion in the build-out of the clean energy economy over the next four decades.

” It was an amazing experience and one that I won’t forget anytime soon. Your passion, caring, and deep industry knowledge are simply astonishing.”
Joshua Hurst, Oracle

The Clean Energy Economy is where the personal computer / information technology world was three decades ago. The PC, the Internet and cell phones created opportunities that tech entrepreneurs took advantage of to build powerhouses like Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and Google. Clean energy may well be many times larger than the PC – and the markets are up for grabs. Now, as then, there is a great deal of hype, confusion, and misundertandings surrounding this new wave. What are the real, scalable market opportunities and which ones are dead ends? Do you bet on “clean coal”, “green nuclear”, biofuels, wind, geothermal, or solar? What other industries are going to grow alongside clean energy?

This 1-day workshop starts with Tony Seba’s Clean Energy Opportunity Framework – a clear and concise view of clean energy and cleantech  from generation to transmission to storage to use.  We also look at the present and the future architecture of energy including sources, financial viability, technologies, and scalability.   We look at the opportunities in the short-term (today there are billions of dollars in unclaimed market opportunities); in the medium term; and in the long term (over the next four decades.)  Drawing from Seba’s real-life clean energy entrepreneurial experience, as well as case studies, examples, and frameworks that the instructor developed for his Stanford course and his recently published book “Solar Trillions” we analyze opportunities worth more than $35 trillion in the build-out of the clean energy economy over the next four decades.

We will cover several clean energy market opportunity, such as utility-scale; industrial, island-scale, village-scale, commercial, and residential ; energy storage; clean water; and the smart grid. While most of the instructor ’s energy-generation examples are solar-related, many of the opportunities presented in this workshop and well as the thinking process are  portable to other clean energy choices – such as geothermal and wind.

Several companies have already been started by entrepreneurs who took this course at Stanford in the fall 2009.

The course is based on Tony Seba’s book: “Solar Trillions – 7 Market and Investment Opportunities in the Emerging Clean-Energy Economy.”

For each opportunity we will cover

• Long term market drivers, needs, challenges, and opportunities.
• Technologies and products that work today.
• Examples of successful companies and innovations in creating new markets.
• Myths, misconceptions, and challenges.
• How to find the entrepreneurial opportunities: countries, industries, geographies, market niches.

“Your class is exactly what our civilization needs right now.”

- Garrett Jacobs, VicePresident, Landbank Investments

Sample schedule (for a 1-day course):

Day One

• Clean Energy – myths, secrets, and the coming clean energy infrastructure boom.
• Why many things are not what they say and why this presents entrepreneurial opportunities.
• Clean Energy Choices – what are our energy choices? How do we choose? Wind, geothermal, hydro, bio-energy, green nuclear, clean coal, and solar? What are the limits and viability of each one?
• Clean Energy and Clean-tech Trillion-dollar Opportunity Framework.
• Opportunity 1: Utility Scale
• Opportunity 2: Industrial Scale
• Opportunity 3: Island Scale  and Village Scale
• Opportunity 4: Commercial and Residential Scale
• Opportunity 5: Energy Storage
• Opportunity 6: Clean Water
• Opportunity 7: The Smart Transmission Grid

Note: This is a course about business opportunities and entrepreneurship. While we will cover and talk about technologies and innovations, this is not a technology R&D course.

“Nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to produce and use energy. The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. “

- President Barack Obama