Silicon Valley’s Water Conservation Conundrum
The Valley’s investors learned a hard lesson — that energy technologies often required larger investments and had longer development cycles than they would have liked. And when the market for solar panels was flooded by low-cost Chinese competitors, the “change the world” mantra of the venture capital community moved on to focus on social networking, software and other Internet investments.
The water crisis simply may be a poor match for the Valley’s skill set.
.. The solutions may have more to do with changing policy than technology breakthroughs at this stage.
“Water is not a rational market today,” said Brook Porter, a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers Green Growth Fund. The problems, he said, include inefficient or nonexistent pricing mechanisms, and regulatory bodies that may be resistant to change.
.. He argues that the Valley has excelled in creating new markets rather than satisfying crying needs in existing ones.