Silicon Valley’s emerging clean-tech cluster

Green VC blogger, Rob Day, is griping about how Silicon Valley seems to be trailing other areas of the world in developing clean technologies. He looks at data that suggests investors are investing less money in Bay Area clean tech companies than you’d expect. The reason, he explains, in this noteworthy post is because no “cluster” had developed for clean-tech like the ones that exist for software, semiconductors and biotech.

That might be changing though, as our column in today’s Merc suggests (scroll down to bottom-half). True,…

…our piece is highly anecdotal. It would be great to see a more definitive study. We’d also point out that statistics seem somewhat subjective on clean-tech investing, and we took issue with Day’s conclusions in the comment on his post. The available stats appear to include investments in almost any industrial design and process company, for example, including many borderline cases. Though it is easy to criticize, and we’ll have to do a more definitive check. Anyway, the main point is, its hard to believe the Bay Area lags other places, at least nationally. But it is true that it doesn’t have any obvious lead, and so Day’s point is well taken.