What do you need to be a powerhouse in the CleanTech Sector?
Well Vinod Khosla, thinks you need intellectual capital, industrial capital, trained technologists and the will. All of which India has in abundance. Vinod Khosla, Venture Capitalist from KPCB and co-founder of Sun Microsystems spoke recently at the CleanTech Conference in San Francisco about the future of Clean Technology in India. Here is an excerpt from his presentation and a short brief on the startup of Cleantech India, a fund headed by Jesswinder Kaur to encourage funding of green technology enterprises in India. India is working to create an industrial revolution in the CleanTech sector. To that end It has created the world's first Ministry of Renewable Energy which will work to concentrate investment in areas where there is predicted to be strong growth. Australasia in general is using Clean Tech Policy as a driver of innovation. Singapore with its Solar and Water, China working to build a sustainable or at least low impact city for 8 million from scratch and India all seek to capitalize on innovation in this sector as an economic motive force. Khosla points out that even though while the largest current focus is on the energy sector with about 85% of investments in the CleanTech sector going into alternative fuels and recently solar. There are many other markets for innovation from cement to glass. Cutting the cost and environmental footprint of cement and other common building materials in half would make a huge difference in worldwide carbon reduction.