Description
After completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at MIT, David Miller realized that climate change would define the 21st Century. (0:45)
This set him on a course which would result in him forming the Clean Energy Ventures Group. (02:08)
In this fascinating interview, David discusses the importance of clean energy invenment the decision making processes behind investing in clean energy technologies and companies. (02:55)
He explores how citizens, entrepreneurs, and engineers must come together in the absence of federal government if a clean energy future is to be achieved.
Transcriptions
[00:00:01:14] The world will be powered by clean energy. Hopefully sooner rather than later. But almost definitely at some point in my lifetime. And the question is, can we get there sooner rather than later? How much will do we have politically? How much can we do on not only technology development, but marketing, selling, deploying, financing, every part of that chain. And whoever does that most effectively, I think is also going to do extremely well economically.
[00:00:48:27] I have my bachelor's and master's from MIT, Course 6, Electrical Engineering. From there I went to Bell Communications Research, or Bell Core, as part of the 6A internship program. And from there I ended up being involved in a startup. Actually, multiple startups. And then ended up starting my own company. I came to the realization that more than anything else, climate change was going to define the 21st century. And what can I do about that? Well, clean energy seemed like the place to go.
[00:01:24:09] Some of the folks I was talking to an MIT said, well, why don't you come back here and learn something. So I ended up coming, up coming back as part of the Technology and Policy master's program, initially. And then the Technology Management and Policy PhD program Working with John Sterman at Sloan. And working on system dynamics model of clean Energy Ventures. To really understand them better, understand the dynamics of investment decisions, management decisions, external factors, what controls their rate of success, what influences their rate of growth. How can better decisions be made?
[00:02:10:02] When I moved to Cambridge, I was also looking to continue making direct investments in early stage companies, but now focused on clean energy. So I started looking around, meeting people. And by 2005, there were four of us who were looking to make these types of investments. And we said, hey, why don't we do this together. So we formed what we call the clean energy venture group. Looking to invest in early stage clean energy companies. And those first few years, we were actually creating and incubating companies ourselves, more than anything else. There weren't a ton of companies being started by others.
[00:02:55:10] When we invest, one critical question is, can this technology or business model, when scaled, can it help mitigate climate change? Can it help have a significant effect on reducing greenhouse gases associated with energy production or use? If this is successful, is this going to make a difference with respect to climate.
[00:03:21:26] There's going to be no rescue from the federal government. We have to do it. As citizens, as investors, as entrepreneurs, as engineers, if we believe clean energy is the future, and firmly believe that, we have to make it happen. And to a large extent, the market is driving this. And we have to find market-based solutions that can be scaled and deployed. We're looking at companies that are obviously scaling commercially. They don't require subsidies or any policy support. So this is something that is driven by the market. So if the market's going to drive massive scaling of a company, and the technology or service by its nature is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to accomplish both in spades. And that's what we're looking to do.
