As someone who works primarily with large global energy and technology companies, I can say with certainty that their interest in cleantech-related investments, expansion initiatives, and real-world project deployments is on an upswing. In fact, there are a number of mainstream conglomerates and industrials who are gearing up their focus on cleantech areas, as well, and spending in key sectors is already increasing substantially on a year-over-year basis. Availability of more traditional financing (such as project finance) is also loosening up considerably. In short, while VC hype cycles come and go, and while some sectors will continue to experience ups and downs (and let’s face it, some of these areas, exciting as they may be, are simply not viable businesses) the underlying fundamentals of the broader cleantech business are quite healthy.

That greentech has a future is as true now as ever. Gas is over $4/g. Renewables are needed more than ever with nuclear discredited and natural gas looking worse and worse due to fracking. Global warming is only going to get more intense and that will mean we need better, more efficient solar, wind and storage. Nothing happens as fast as business plans need them to happen in order to justify tens of millions of dollars of investment but we will shift to renewables over time and every startup that can craft a business model delivering defensible value to this process will have merit. Can it meet the scaleability and hype of internet stocks? No. That however is not the standard that investors should be looking at. They should be looking solely about price performance in comparison with alternatives in the traditional fossil fuel sector and the value they could add delivering a solution for that market.

And don’t forget, a lot of these internet people want a way to spend their billions and many of them care a great deal about all things green. ie: Paypal => Tesla. Google => all kinds of green initiatives. New internet boom => next round of green tech.

It reminds me of a popular blog post by Chris Dixon: “Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.”