Dubner writes (How Will the Recession Affect Clean Technology?):
Way back when in 2006, here’s what venture-capital legend John Doerr had to say about clean technology: “This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”
As recently as early 2008, plenty of investors and technology companies were still predicting a clean-tech boom.
But now? With a recession that has scrambled nearly everyone’s spending and investing priorities, with a government deeply focused on the mainstream of the energy economy rather than the fringes, and with gas having fallen to about $2 a gallon, what does the future look like for clean tech?
We asked George Tolley, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago and president of RCF Inc.; John Whitehead, professor in the Department of Economics at Appalachian State University and contributor to the blog Environmental Economics; and Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance, to talk about this topic.
Personal Note: George Tolley was the dissertation chair of my dissertation chair which makes him sort-of like my academic grandfather. Also, as editor of Resource and Energy Economics, he accepted one of my and Glenn Blomquist's (Tolley's student, my disseration chair) papers that got unfairly beaten up pretty dang good at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. I've never forgiven AJAE (I've only sent them one other paper and it was, er, rejected ... yet, this year I'm on the AJAE top paper award committee [go figure]) and I've been ever grateful to Tolley.
Congratulations! Now I'm going to spend my day watching statcounter for the Freakonomics spike.
Posted by: Tim Haab | January 08, 2009 at 08:54 AM