Friday, 13 July 2007

Clean or green?

Over on the Cleantech Blog, Neal Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners ponders nomenclature - should 'the industry' be called Cleantech or Greentech?
When I asked my friends Keith Raab and Nick Parker who cofounded the Cleantech Group to comment on why they coined the term "cleantech" - Keith Raab said ""who wants green air or green water"? The greentech term (and we use small caps unless referring to an org) is very retro[...]
As you know, often cleantech is purchased primarily for non-environmental reasons even though it may offer significant environmental benefits. While some media outlets may be using the greentech term, just about all corps, Wall Street players and VCs who are active in the area use the term cleantech[...]
[F]rom a capital markets perspective it's important there is one term so that a defined asset (allocation) category emerges."


Cleantech definitely seems to dominate in the UK, being adopted by such players as 3i, Library House, Forum for the Future and the new Cleantech Magazine. It just seems a shame that the first result Google.co.uk throws up for 'cleantech' is a Scottish firm selling window-cleaning equipment...

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