GREEN ENERGY Where’s the money?
It’s all very well for large companies like GE to invest in green technology. It can afford some risk of failure—though that is not to say that these projects are unprofitable. For smaller players, securing investment can be a challenge. Patents play their part, but as Lane says, “one of the problems you run into with patenting some of these technologies is that much of it has been done before, either in green technologies or in semiconductors, or in other fields. So what you have is a question of whether this is truly new, and if it is new, whether it’s not an obvious variation of what went before.”
Meeting those patentability standards is a challenge given what has been done before and what this technology borrows from the past. Te other challenge, Lane says, is that “the US patent office is notorious for being overworked and slow. If you’re looking for venture capital money, it makes it that much harder to make your case if you have to wait so long to have approval from the patent
office...the money people are hesitant because they want to know there’s a patent available, but it’s going to take years to know whether there’ll be a patent. So
it’s a chicken and egg situation with the money and the patents.”
Te US government and individual states have roles to play here. Te Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) was set up in the US Department of Energy to provide funding for R&D projects in green technology. Researchers and developers can submit proposals for funding to ARPA-E; its second round of funding awards will see up to $100 million distributed. While this won’t answer all the need, it’s indicative of the kinds of things governments can be doing to encourage innovation. Alongside friendly feed-in tariffs for renewable technologies, and a good cap- and-trade system, ARPA-E and programmes like it might just be the way to solve the problems.
Even larger companies like GE can benefit. While more than 90 percent of its projects are funded internally, Horton acknowledges that there are situations where government backing is useful. “Te more unproven the technology, the more helpful the government involvement,” he says. Of course, government funding may come with strings attached, just like it would from any other source. “Anybody who taps into those funds ought to be ready, willing and able to abide by
the various obligations and requirements that accompany such funding,” Horton says. “Where the government’s putting up the funding, they have the right to set the terms.”
Forward thinking
Despite the positive noises coming from government, energy companies and even small-scale inventors about the future of green technology, there is a sense that no one has quite pinpointed the best way to go about creating a truly thriving market. Some countries (Germany is a notable example) have already enjoyed substantial success in incentivising investment in green tech, and such efforts are paying financial and ecological dividends.
But for the global energy crisis not to develop into a full-blown disaster, it will be the largest energy consumers that lead the way. Governments, businesses, developers, investors and regulators will need to start pulling in the same direction. Unfortunately, if the discussions at Copenhagen provide a guide, we may be some way off that happening. In the meantime, IP and its rewards are as good incentives as any.
www.worldipreview.com
World Intellectual Property Review September/October 2010
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