Generation and KPCB team up

News of a major cleantech investment partnership setting up in London, with a rather big name on the masthead. Generation Investment Management, a specialist in sustainability-focused investment in listed equities, and veteran tech VC Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have announced a dedicated greentech alliance.

The collaboration will, to quote the PR, find, fund and accelerate green business, technology and policy solutions with the greatest potential to help solve the current climate crisis. The partnership will provide funding and global business-building expertise to a range of businesses, both public and private, and to entrepreneurs [...] The two teams will collaborate on opportunities spanning sectors such as renewable energy technologies, building efficiency, cleaner fossil energy, sustainable agriculture and carbon markets.

In practice, that seems to mean combining Generation's contacts and sector expertise with KPCB's financial heft and experience of building private businesses. And Generation should give good contact - it's the firm co-founded and chaired by former US VP, award-winning alarm-raiser and new Nobel Laureate Al Gore (I'm still not convinced he really deserved to share the prize on an equal basis with the IPCC, but fair play to him anyway).

Gore joins KPCB as a partner (donating his salary to the Alliance for Climate Protection, which he also chairs), while KPCB partner John Doerr joins Generation's advisory board.

The global alliance will apparently be based in London, with KPCB 'co-locating' their European operations in Generation's West End offices. The VC currently has offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Shanghai, while Generation also has a base in Washington DC.

Fortune has more of the inside juice.