StockGuru Blog: ZAP – Venture Capitalists are Going Green

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court awarded a victory to environmentalists with the court’s 5-4 majority authorizing federal regulation of greenhouse gases from cars. The basic issue in the case presented was whether Massachusetts and other state plaintiffs had standing to sue for federal regulation. The Court ruled that carbon dioxide emissions should be covered under the Clean Air Act, paving the way for regulatory strategies by the EPA.

This new direction will squarely involve a change for industry, business and utilities. The stage set by and with growing green market demands the use of energy will shift towards green energy that produces less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

In January, the leaders of 10 of America’s largest energy, manufacturing and financial services companies — including Duke Power, DuPont and Lehman Brothers — held a news conference with leaders of several environmental groups. They called for government-required action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, using a market-based system similar to that employed in fighting acid rain. Their call has increasingly been echoed.

Back when President Bush was governor of Texas, he enacted mandatory caps on carbon emissions in his state. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he promised to regulate carbon emissions nationwide. Shortly after taking office, though, he backed away from that pledge.

Over the past several years, calls for mandatory caps on carbon emissions — from environmentalists, scientists, business leaders, evangelical Christians — have grown. Now the Supreme Court has joined in.

Gas prices will average slightly more than $4 a gallon by 2015 and just over $5 a gallon by 2020, according to the survey conducted by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). UMTRI said it surveyed more than 100 powertrain experts, including chief executives, from across North America for the report.

“Our research reveals surprising agreement among all stakeholders in the automobile industry that fuel prices are on a steep upward trajectory,” said UMTRI researcher Bruce Belzowski in a statement. “There is also consensus that fuel economy and emissions regulations will not just continue but substantially increase over the next decade,” Belzowski added.

TIME TO GO GREEN:

In Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists, the same ones that invested in Cisco, Yahoo, and YouTube are looking for the next green venture.

John Doerr, the legendary venture capitalist who uttered the famous: “The Internet is the greatest legal creation of wealth in history” recently gave his opinion in Fortune Magazine about green technology: “This could be the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” Fortune in it’s recent edition reviewed the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists who are examining “clean” technology–solar panels, coal gasification, electric cars, and the like.

If the Earth is choking on greenhouse gases, it’s not hard to see why. Global carbon dioxide output last year approached a staggering 32 billion tons, with about 25% of that coming from the U.S. Turning off the carbon spigot is the first step, and many of the solutions are familiar: windmills, solar panels, nuclear plants. All three technologies are part of the energy mix. Carbon dioxide can be lethal.

In 1986 a giant surge of carbon dioxide bubbled up from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, asphyxiating 1,700 people as they slept. The Royal Commission of Environmental Pollution in Britain warned recently that the air pollution in London is now as damaging as the low-level radiation Chernobyl survivors were exposed to.

Greening your portfolio makes good sense and Zap has been doing this for a long time.
Source: Zap Automotive and Fortune