Global Green News
At Solar Conference, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sees Tide Turning For Clean Energy
THE NEW YORK TIMES. October 29, 2009. By Todd Woody
In a barn-burning speech Wednesday at the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim, Calif., Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., sounded a bit like green Gordon Gecko.
“We are in process of overthrowing the incumbents in a $1.3 trillion industry,” said Mr. Kennedy, a veteran environmental activist, in a full-throated attack on one of his long-time foes, the coal industry. “We are going to democratize the energy industry and take it away from the incumbents.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Kennedy joined VantagePoint Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley firm that specializes in green technology investments — including several with solar startups.
After his speech, Mr. Kennedy retired to a Starbucks to huddle with the chief executive of BrightSource Energy, a VantagePoint-backed solar power plant builder, and then sat down for an interview with Green Inc.
“There’s been a coalescence of interests between the environmental and business communities,” said Mr. Kennedy. “For me, fighting the bad guys has been a David and Goliath battle for many years, because they have all the money on their side. This changes the odds for us,” he said. “Now we have industry on our side. We have our own industry.”
Mr. Kennedy pointed to the roughly 22,000 attendees of the solar conference — people “who are going to make money from rational environmental laws,” he said — and noted that “the boom in green technology in this country, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
As the senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Mr. Kennedy has focused on clean water issues and fighting mountaintop mining. At VantagePoint, he works with startups like Ostara, which transforms municipal wastewater into fertilizer, and energy-related companies like BrightSource and Premium Power, which makes batteries for utilities and wind and solar farms.
He also speaks the venture-capital lingo, studding his conversation with references to “the strengths of management teams and capital structures.” But Mr. Kennedy, who in his speech called his involvement with green-tech “the most subversive thing I’ve done,” said he hasn’t hung up his briefs.
“I’m still suing people,” he said. “I have 40 cases right now in litigation. I’m still doing advocacy on Capitol Hill.”
The rabble-rousing tone of his speech reflected a new aggressiveness on the part of the solar industry, whose leadership this week took on the oil and gas industry and called for renewable energy advocates to bankroll a new lobbying campaign in Washington.
