2004 Forum Report: Financing Technologies for the Environment
Financing Technologies for Conserving Natural Resources
Facilitated by Susan Dawson, Sapling Foundation
Ben Cook (SELCO, their affiliate, SELF is a Tech Award Laureate):
- They sell household electric systems to people without grid electricity in India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
- They are profitable but still face financing issues, three primary types:
- customer finance (since up-front costs are large but customer savings come over a 20 year period) - they have partnered with banks, microfinance groups and others to assist with this
- capital at operating level for inventory, accounts receivable
- company-level equity for expansion
- Expansion capital is the biggest issue right now, it either needs to come from their parent (a non-profit) or from outside investors
Erick Mata (INBio, Tech Award Laureate):
- Conservation/biodiversity NGO in Costa Rica
- Their goal is to generate 2/3 of revenue internally and get the rest from donations/grants, including from development agencies
- Wide variety of earned income sources:
- licensing fees to pharmaceutical companies
- biodiversity theme park
- training for graduate students
- publishing unit
John Pappas (PG&E):
- They are in the process of increasing their purchases of renewable power to comply with the renewable portfolio standard passed by the state of California
- The additional costs of renewables are funded by a supplemental fee on customer bills
- In addition to the supplemental funding, they have found that standard contracts and terms with developers and the use of long term contracts have been important elements of making this program work
