December 2004

January Forum to Focus on Energy Technology: Emerging Opportunities

The first Entrepreneurs Forum of the new year will look at an old but increasingly urgent concern: the world’s continuously growing need for more energy and how that need can be addressed by innovative entrepreneurs. An outstanding panel of industry experts will discuss emerging technologies for implementing renewable energy generation and improving energy efficiency. They will also provide an analysis of which of those technologies will be eligible for venture funding and which will have to find alternate financial resources if they are to reach the market place.

The evening’s program has been arranged and will be moderated by Ira Ehrenpreis, general partner at Technology Partners. Ira leads Technology Partners’ Cleantech investment practice, investing in Energy Technology, Water Technology, and Materials Science opportunities. He is a member of several industry Advisory Boards, including the Cleantech Venture Network, the Energy Investors Forum, the Energy Venture Fair, the China-US Energy Efficiency Alliance, and the Southern California Tech Coast Alliance. Technology Partners is a 20 year-old venture capital firm that manages more than $400 million of investment. The firm invests approximately half of its capital in Information Technology companies and the other half into companies focused on the Life Sciences. Within Information Technology, Technology Partners currently focuses on the areas of Cleantech (Energy Tech, Water Tech, and Materials) and Enterprise Software.

Joining Ira on the panel will be Bryant Tong of Nth Power and John Woolard from Itron. Bryant is a Managing Director at Nth Power, a leading venture capital firm dedicated exclusively to high potential investments resulting from the restructuring of the global energy industry. Before joining Nth Power, Bryant was founder, President and CEO of Pacific Venture Capital, LLC (PVC), the venture capital arm of the PG&E Corporation. At PVC, he led investments in the energy and telecommunications sectors.

John Woolard is Vice President of Energy Management Solutions at Itron, a world leader in energy efficiency, renewable energy, distributed energy generation, load analysis, and market research. John joined Itron when they purchased Silicon Energy, a provider of enterprise energy management solutions. John had co-founded Silicon Energy shortly after receiving his MBA from the Haas School.

The evening’s program will be supplemented during the networking hour by displays and demonstrations by scientists from the Berkeley community who will be showing advanced ideas in energy solutions that may form the basis for the products of tomorrow.

We urge anyone interested in solutions for the growing energy dilemma to attend this program. For more information, see the Forum’s January 2005 Program..

[top of page]