The key to sustainable development worldwide is the responsible use of natural resources. To combat climate change, the nations of the world will have to boost the percentage of power they generate from renewable sources. At the same time, they will be placing strong emphasis on efficient consumption of increasingly scarce resources like water.
As so often in the past, we expect technology to again be the key driver in this kind of fundamental change toward the more responsible use of those resources, and that many of the necessary groundbreaking innovations will be coming from young companies. In the Cleantech area, Wellington Partners is focusing, in particular, on renewable energies, energy storage (at the grid level), better waste treatment and water purification.
Renewable energies are gaining ground worldwide. Wind has already developed into a mainstream energy generation sector. Following pioneering years in solar energy, second and third generation devices are now emerging that will be driving the continued commercialization of the way we use the sun. And wave energy seems poised to become a major alternative source of energy in the future. These kinds of inexhaustible natural resources will serve as the foundation for energy production in the post-oil world we are inevitably moving toward. The era of renewable energy will drive the need for new forms of energy storage and transportation, as power generation will naturally not be as constant as in the fossil fuel era.
Waste treatment has long been a focus area for the developed world, and open-pit landfills are increasingly becoming a symbol of the past. New technologies will drive even more efficient recycling, decreasing the burden on both waste disposal as well as resources per se.
Three main factors have made clean water a scarce resource: On the one hand, growing demand on the part of consumers, farmers and factories; and on the other, increasing water pollution and simply the decline in the availability of runoff water from the world’s highest mountain ranges as their snow caps are melting. So technologies for more efficient and less costly water purification will be a top-priority issue in the years to come.